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When the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in the European Union in May 2018, its biggest impact for me as a web user was the scores of GDPR emails in my inbox and cookie consent requests...
“Can I Read Your Diary?”
Meditation apps, fitness apps, water intake apps, calorie count apps, menstrual cycle apps and, as of recently, journaling apps – all too popular, but the repercussions of data transparency online are rarely acknowledged. An ongoing trend Becoming...
Is Blockchain Technology on the Verge of Revolutionising Our Lives?
Blockchain technology was originally created by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2008 as the platform to power the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. While Bitcoin has been widely known for a number of years, it is the technology behind it that is...
Are we ready to accept an AI judge?
Nowadays we live in an automated world full of algorithms that are shaping our actions and affecting our decisions by the use of predictive models of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We might feel okay by being “helped” to decide what...
Forcing Gamers to Gamble: The Star Wars Battlefront II loot boxes debate
Edit Edit status When Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) (SWBFII) released on 17 November there was a huge backlash from the gamer community surrounding the implemented loot boxes and micro transactions in general. In SWBFII the gamer plays...
The Cost of Convenience: Alexa As A Cloud-Based A.I. Smart Home System
Alexa is seemingly the A.I. of choice for smart home users in the current digital environment, and with the introduction of an audio assisted A.I. system into homes with more and more compatible devices released every year, what is...
Are we compromising our privacy and safety for comfort and ease?
We are becoming more and more used to the idea of new technology being embedded, into our everyday lives and activities. Marshall McLuhan believes that we treat “technologies as extended bodily organs.” (Durham Peters) We are continuously experimenting...
How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System? The Case of Benjamin Grosser
What would happen if one morning, a morning like many others, after you got up, you discovered that your Facebook home page is completely empty, without any type of content? I’m not talking about a crash or...
Hello, we’re from the internet: “Hacking” museum spaces using AR
A description of Augmented Reality as we know it today first appeared in 1901, when L. Frank Baum’s sci-fi novel called “The Master Key” was published. In this book, Baum describes the workings of a so-called ‘Character Marker.’...
Are we being mollycoddled by our phones; or are usage accountability measures a necessary intervention?
In June 2018, Apple announced that functions on their latest iOS update were intended ‘to help customers understand and take control of the time they spend interacting with their iOS devices’(Apple, 2018). In the same month, Google announced its...
The Ultimate ‘Data Selfie’: An era of self-tracking explosion
‘The End of Forgetting’: Self-tracking and the Quantified Self Humans are forgetful. We make errors. We easily neglect matters that are trivial. However, this is not a problem in the 21st century: we have self-tracking apps and devices to...
Facebook’s Rosetta: How Are Algorithms Using Our Data?
Digital networking companies have started to build artificial intelligence software that can filter through unwanted content that may be offensive to their users. Facebook recently announced the latest addition to this trend with a machine learning program called Rosetta; software...
Autonomous Cars Are The Future – But For Whom Are They The Future For?
Autonomous cars have been hailed as the next leap for mankind in automotive transportation and infrastructure, offering not only advancements in private and public transport, but addressing difficulties in health infrastructure, emissions, road collisions, and government overheads on...
Mission Control: The changing boundaries of control and ownership in the world’s biggest crowd funding success.
The latest controversy surrounding the in development game Star Citizen, struck me as illustrative of the pitfalls and complexities of new forms of financing, and how they manifest the sunk cost fallacy in new, unexpected ways. It isn’t just...
I’m a good person…seriously…just check my Kinditude!
My phone noisily vibrates on the empty train seat beside me, snapping me out of my daydream. A notification on my locked screen says “Remind to be kind!”. The grammar needs work, but the message is clear: I need...
WhatsApp Doc? The alternative
WhatsApp Doc? The privacy alternative Within the digital media environment, we nowadays live in, it is taken for granted that every piece of desired information will appear on your display within seconds. Even so, we are finger clicks away...
Solutionism in peer-to-peer networks: solutions by Supshare
Abstract: Thanks to the sharing economy, people who need a certain product or service are easily digitally connected to people willing and able to provide that service or product. As a result, platforms like Supshare that offer these solutions...
Talkspace: how reliable and responsible is mobile psychotherapy app?
Just two days ago, Apple started its sale for the company’s latest smartwatch Apple Watch Series 4. Boasting the new ECG sensor and much improved health functions including fall detection and emergency SOS, Apple claims its newest device to...
China’s Social Credit System could bring George Orwell’s 1984 character ‘Big Brother’ to life by allowing Big Data Surveillance to control Chinese public life
Any person who has seen the critically acclaimed Netflix show ‘Black Mirror’ will think the following is straight out of a dystopian futurology thriller. Unfortunately, the idea of every member in society being attributed a ‘social credit score’ based...
Facebook “M assistant”: a power of suggestion
It was never a secret that Facebook for a long time was trying to engage AI technology to expand the activity on their social media services. From their introduction of functions to identify people who are depressed and who...
Extended Browsing, Plugged-In Activism
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. … And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t” (“I Am Part”). The anonymous...
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...
The new Xbox adaptive controller, another step towards digital inclusion?
It is not easy for some players to enjoy the virtual experience of video games. Microsoft noticed the issue and, to break down the barriers faced by people with disabilities, the multinational technology company just launched a couple weeks...
When Fiction Becomes Reality: From Black Mirror to China’s Social Credit Score
Since 2014, the Chinese government is working on implementing a new behavioral scoring system: the social credit score. Presented as an assessment of the ‘reliability’ of citizens, it combines a whole set of criteria such as consumption habits, records...