Filter posts by:
Happy Birthday, Pick A Charity: Are Facebook Fundraisers All They Seem?

Happy Birthday, Pick A Charity: Are Facebook Fundraisers All They Seem?

Facebook recently introduced the birthday fundraiser; users now have the option to start a fundraiser for any of Facebook’s 750,000 nonprofits to honor their birthday, and can invite their friends to donate. While this has raised a significant amount...
IGTV: The Latest Blow to Traditional TV?

IGTV: The Latest Blow to Traditional TV?

  On the 20th of June this year, next to an announcement that they now have over a billion monthly active users, Instagram announced the release of Instagram TV – also referred to as IGTV – in a video that...
Vulnerabilities in Car-Sharing Apps

Vulnerabilities in Car-Sharing Apps

  Car-sharing applications, like Uber and Car2Go, do not really need an introduction. These days it is as easy to order or rent a car through an application as it is to order food through an application.  But are...
Article 13: The End of Internet Freedom . . . and Memes?

Article 13: The End of Internet Freedom . . . and Memes?

Generally speaking the world of European politics and memes have very little overlap. However, a vote on the 10th of September in the European Parliament has brought together two parties that are traditionally mutually exclusive. Article 13 of the ‘European...
Drones Floating to Freedom

Drones Floating to Freedom

On a warm August night in the Dutch summer of 2018, I went for a stroll in the heart of my new home: Amsterdam. Arriving at the edge of the center, I found myself surrounded by thousands of people...
Big Brother is watching you play football

Big Brother is watching you play football

The new football season has recently started again. Millions of people will watch the matches of their favourite professional football clubs live on one of their digital devices. For the first time in history, it will also be possible...
Selling Sexualities: The ethical implications of Grindr’s new advertising tool

Selling Sexualities: The ethical implications of Grindr’s new advertising tool

The gay dating app Grindr is trying to reinvent itself. In a mission to leave behind its image as a hookup platform, Grindr Inc. has launched several new projects, including the LGBT-themed magazine INTO, anti-discrimination campaign Kindr, and the...
Wonder or Worry? Google has a new human-sounding Assistant!

Wonder or Worry? Google has a new human-sounding Assistant!

We can see AI at work everyday in the form of virtual personal assistants, which are embedded in almost any smartphone today. Whether its Alexa, Siri or Google Now, these virtual assistants have made our everyday lives simpler and...
To what extent is digital media influencing human-to-human relationships?

To what extent is digital media influencing human-to-human relationships?

Sex or companion dolls are becoming more and more part of society. What are the triggers for this trend? Do companion dolls offer their users positive imaginary tools that are being diminished by modern technology, such as social media?...
AI IS WATCHING YOU

AI IS WATCHING YOU

Artificial Intelligence is, and actually always has been, a hot topic of debate. In the computational sciences AI is conceptualized as the study of intelligent agents. The computer perceives the environment and consequently performs actions that are expected to...
Monopolies of Knowledge Facilitated by Black-Box Algorithms

Monopolies of Knowledge Facilitated by Black-Box Algorithms

Whether you search for something on Google or Twitter, or scroll down an Instagram or Facebook feed, a vast amount, if not a majority, of online content is present to users via algorithms. These algorithms, the code of which...
ArtPassport: A Digitalized and Democratized Experience of Art

ArtPassport: A Digitalized and Democratized Experience of Art

As media technologies and practices continue to advance, the art world is simultaneously facing a metamorphosis that presents new challenges to not only what constitutes art—but how art should be experienced. ArtPassport is one such example of an app...
The Elephant in the Room: Privacy and Zoo Animals (and Humans Too)

The Elephant in the Room: Privacy and Zoo Animals (and Humans Too)

ABSTRACT – Would you want your whole life broadcasted, without you knowing it? Thankfully, humans have rights protecting this from happening. As concern over privacy grows, paradoxically the trend to watch other animals online increases. Are we biased when...
TimeFlip: You are only as efficient as you track your time

TimeFlip: You are only as efficient as you track your time

Multitasking is not for everyone. However, sometimes there is no other choice and it becomes a necessity. Many time tracking software solutions have tried to make multitasking easier, but more often than not these software end up stopping your...
CareAI: A Solution for African Healthcare?

CareAI: A Solution for African Healthcare?

The concept of artificial intelligence as we know it today first appeared in 1956, however, it was Leonardo Da Vinci who initially set the stage for the development of this field with his sketches of Robots (Hamet and Tremblay). Since...
Facebook’s ‘Rosetta’ System: A Form of Safety Implementation or Data Exploitation?

Facebook’s ‘Rosetta’ System: A Form of Safety Implementation or Data Exploitation?

Facebook has announced its latest technological development, code-named Rosetta, which detects and recognizes texts in images, as well as videos. They claim that it’s for the benefit of the social network community because of the safety features it provides...
Will Mind Control Devices Soon Make Us Loose Our Minds?

Will Mind Control Devices Soon Make Us Loose Our Minds?

Bionic brains What is the first thing that visually comes to mind when you hear the words, “mind control?” Do you picture a scene from a sci-fi film based in the distant future, an episode from Black Mirror, or...
Possible ‘Alexa’ commands of the future: “ Home, tweet ‘Home’ ”

Possible ‘Alexa’ commands of the future: “ Home, tweet ‘Home’ ”

  The conceptual ‘Home of the Future’ (HoF) has been a curiosity and fixation for as long as technological design has existed. In 1967, a U.S. television special aired the conceptual design for ‘The Home of 2001’, which displayed now-standard...
Platform Capitalism: Democratic Subjectivity and the Democratic Surround

Platform Capitalism: Democratic Subjectivity and the Democratic Surround

Drawing on Fred Turner’s book “The Democratic Surround”, this blogpost will dive into what it means and where it originates. The main question of this book is: ‘Was there a mode of communication that could produce more democratic individuals?’...
Airbnb and the Experience Economy: the end of sharing?

Airbnb and the Experience Economy: the end of sharing?

Video: Introducing Airbnb Trips, Airbnb Airbnb Trips: the promise of an ‘easy’ and ‘magical’ stay booked alongside your Airbnb home. Launched in November 2017, Trips is Airbnb’s biggest and most significant development since its initiation eight years ago (Airbnb)....
Platform Capitalism: Conceptualising the ‘Social Factory’

Platform Capitalism: Conceptualising the ‘Social Factory’

  The core concepts outlined in this visualization relate to society from a post-marxist viewing point: autonomism. The ideas of the operaismo discerned from classical marxism and provided new readings of some of Marx’s famous works, particularly the Grundrisse....
Winter is coming for Uber

Winter is coming for Uber

            V.S             Knockout or next round? All eyes towards the battle between the online platform Uber and London’s transport regulation system ‘TfL’. Employee conditions and security affairs triggered the next...

Call for Applications – MA in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam 2018-2019

One-year and two-year international Master’s programs in New Media available: MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (one year, full time) Research MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (two years, full time)   MA New Media...
Tagging onto #MeToo

Tagging onto #MeToo

Halleluja! Alyssa Milano was preaching to the choir with her tweet on october 15th 2017. As a young feminist that has experienced her share of harassment and patriarchal justifications, she could not have found a more receptive public. But...