New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

“Hey Siri, are you sharing my private data”: A commentary on the impact virtual personal assistants have on surveillance capitalism and user information consumption

For a digitally immersed society driven by technological developments and innovations, personal voice-controlled virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri have become a crucial component to task completion, user interaction, and information consumption. Virtual personal...

By on 10/03/21 Comments Off

Google Stadia: A new player has joined the platform wars

You either die an information utility, or live long enough to adopt the politics of platforms. Imagine video games no longer being tied to the hardware boxes they’re designed for, but instead being playable anywhere, on any device. We...

By Tiede Bart on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Who controls your voice controlled world?

One of the latest trends in the tech world is the development of the smart digital voice assistant. It was first popularized by iPhone’s Siri, and now companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are developing software and hardware technology...

By Aleksandra Straczek on 10/24/17 Comments Off

SCiO: the Star Trek tricorder in real life

One of the most emblematic and authentic motifs from the American sci-fi television series Star Trek involves the medical officer Leonard McCoy using a tricorder in order to scan and analyse living beings and environments. He records data with a small...

By Josip Batinic on 09/16/14 Comments Off

Are your nude pictures save in the cloud?

How safe are the files you keep in your cloud? We live in a world where more and more things are being saved at distance servers, and we can access them only thru an internet access. How can we...

By Chaïm Wijnberg on 09/11/14 Comments Off

Online celebrity leaked pictures. An ongoing debate about security and privacy in the Digital era.

Last day of August ended with startling news. On Sunday 31, a hacker leaked naked celebrity pictures online. He apparently breached the cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple, iCloud, thanks to a supposedly security vulnerability in the...

By Giovanna Salazar Ojeda on 09/11/14 Comments Off

The Cloud: The Cost of Digital Comfort

Last week’s Internet sensation, the leakage of compromising pictures of approximately hundred (mostly female) celebrities, has evoked different reactions that can be divided into three categories: Excitement about the exposure, Indignation about the violation of privacy, and Fear for...

By Markéta Horázná on 09/09/14 Comments Off

The Fappening: why you shouldn’t trust the Cloud

The Fappening On August 31st, 2014, “The Fappening” took place. This ‘event’, or ‘happening’, stands symbol for the leakage of hundreds of nude pictures of female celebrities. The images where first posted on the internet forum 4chan.org, after...

By David de Bie on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Cloud Based Web

Overhyped or overmarketed? Cloud based applications involve a number of computers being connected through a real-time connection provided by the networks of the internet. It coins the common goal of enabling customers to outsource specific computer...

By Christoph Rauch on 11/04/13 Comments Off

Cloud storage – Infinite storage for 10 $ a month

Mum, what’s that white fluffy thing in the sky? -Well dear, this is where all your memories are stored. -Huh?

By Clément Adam on 10/12/11 Comments Off