Human Programmability and Happiness
Perception pushing art from Dries Verhoeven talks about pharmaceuticals and makes us question our humanity.
Keep Calm and Carry on
Digital media has provided our society with endless amounts of information and previously unimaginable connectivity; however, this comes with the cost of constant distractions that have become overwhelming to the everyday user. From texts, to emails, to push notifications...
Amazon Prime Air – convenience, surveillance and more from your “friendly” ecosystem
“The pleasure of consumerism is so widespread that it is has reached the status of a universal human right” (Lovink 4). But for a right like that to exist, others had to fall – such as individual and collective...
Neuralink – Are Brain-Computer Interfaces leading us into a technological utopia?
Elon Musk did it again. In July 2019, the Tesla and SpaceX founder held a detailed presentation about his newest project called “Neuralink”. This startup has been developing a system that allows linking human brains directly to computers with...
Free Trial Surfing or how to reshape affordances through institutional legitimization
DoNotPay is a company that announced a new app called ‘Free Trial Surfing’ which generates fake credit card details that users can use to sign up for free trials of (web) services without risking having to pay after the...
Responsible Tagging: Trampled Flowers and the Commodification of Your Footprint
Location sharing or ‘Geotagging’ has become a popular way for social media users to share their experiences and it has enabled new forms of communication. However, is it worth damaging fragile ecosystems and sacrificing personal location data? We’ve all...
Me, myself and my Apple Watch: how wearable tech is becoming our health assistant.
Wearable devices that monitor our health are not exciting anymore, and one could even say they are mainstream. In fact, according to the research by Business Insider, more than 80% of respondents are willing to wear one (Phaneuf). Yet,...
Terrorism in the Digital Era: The Dark Side of Livestreaming, Online Content and Internet Subcultures
In the space of 26 minutes on March 15th, 2019 Brenton Tarrant, a radical right-wing extremist, opened fire on two mosques in the city of Christchurch in New Zealand killing 51 people during New Zealand’s worst mass shooting in...
Beware of Stalkerware
In our modern age as internet users, our data is constantly being collected and used, location services can easily track us, and websites monitor our presence online. We make ourselves vulnerable to location tracking, information gathering, and privacy infringement...
Bluetooth and Its Mutation Into a Surveillance Tool
The almighty Facebook corporation has announced its entrance into the dating industry using bluetooth, facilitating the social network with yet another facet of user-generated data. In the past, this repurposing of the Bluetooth technology as an actor within the...
The Worrisome Biometrics: Deepfakes, ZAO and Privacy Issue
In early September, a face-swapping app called ZAO attracted universal attention in China. Using the technology of “Deepfakes”, it allows users to swap their faces into famous characters’ in the film and TV show clips. ZAO prevailed like the...
The Illusion of Choice: On the Datafication of User Interactivity in AI Storytelling
AI technologies have found their way to yet another field in the media landscape: film & television. While some claim AI technologies are revolutionising storytelling, others are critical of the implications involving user participation and interactivity. “The fascination with...
Build your own community on Discord
Initially meant as a platform for online gaming, text and voice chat app Discord has become much more than that. It allows for communities to sprout and conversations to spark. But where do we draw the line on the...
Neurchi d’algorithmes
In 2017 Mark Zuckerberg decided that he wanted to help Nigerian women and reinvigorate Facebook’s business model. Somehow it triggered a renaissance in French memes.
United States of Facebook: new methods of online governance
As of June 2019, Facebook boasts almost 2.5 billion monthly active users (Company Info | Facebook Newsroom). If it were a country, Facebook would be the biggest in the world by a large margin. However, everybody knows that it...
CAN MUSIIO BURST THE SPOTIFYBUBBLE?
In the ever-changing music industry offering the best discovery tools is key. A small start-up from Singapore called Musiio could be a serious rival to big player Spotify.
Amicus Instagram, sed magis amica veritas?
Last November, Instagram introduced a new functionality to its app, the “close friends” list (Constine). This feature was a years-late response to the rise of finstas, aka “fake instas”, private alternative accounts intended for a smaller audience than the...
Are you watching Netflix (or is it watching you)?
Bandersnatch (2018), is the first release of an interactive film for adults on a platform (Netflix) where the viewers make decisions for the main character, taking control of the storyline. The question is: do we really monitor the characters’...
A.I. Influencers: Preaching to the Choir?
As virtual influencers are gaining popularity on social media platforms such as Instagram, an increasing amount of money is being invested into the development of so-called A.I. influencers. Will such influencers cause a shift in the relationship between different...
“Hey, Siri…” “I am listening…”: Apple, Privacy & Siri
Summer 2019 was quite eventful for virtual assistants across platforms. The big five all got exposed for recording their virtual assistant users’ audio, Apple among them. Such revelations prompt the prior mentioned company to at first temporarily suspend the...
Instant Apps – The Future of Mobile Applications?
Eleven years after the introduction of the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, mobile application development is a multibillion-dollar industry. As of Aug 1st, 2019, there are 2.46 million apps on the Play Store and 1.96 million...
What the Jonas Lund Token Tells us About the Curious Convergence of the Art World and Blockchain Technology
The Jonas Lund Token (JLT) is a work by Dutch conceptual artist Jonas Lund, who has created 100,000 shares in his own artistic practice. Each share gives the shareholders agency and voting power over future decisions concerning Lund’s art and...
Cross media learning: from a book to an online tribe – Miracle Morning
How the book “Miracle Morning” can be the driver of a social movement on the web 2.0? Prosumers are combining traditional and new medias to foster innovative ways of learning. Welcome to our online tribe!
“Swipe, swipe, vote“: Match your political opinion
You are sitting at home, watching Netflix, but you are still bored. How about a quick look at your smartphone? Before you know, you find yourself opening the online dating app Tinder, swiping left, right, left and checking out,...