Evgeny Morozov Animated: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

in Current Affairs, Politics, Technology | March 24th, 2011

RSA has released its lat­est ani­mat­ed video, and this time it fea­tures Evge­ny Moro­zov, the Belarus-born researcher, who takes the con­trar­i­an posi­tion that the inter­net can often inhib­it (rather than pro­mote) democ­ra­cy, espe­cial­ly with­in author­i­tar­i­an con­texts like Chi­na and Iran. And what fol­lows (above) is a more sober­ing talk about how author­i­tar­i­an regimes use the web to sup­press civic engage­ment and fledg­ling democ­ra­cy move­ments. This clip is part of a longer 27 minute lec­ture (see full ver­sion here) that peers into “the dark side of inter­net free­dom,” a phrase that hap­pens to be the sub­ti­tle of Moro­zov’s new book.

Moro­zov is cur­rent­ly a vis­it­ing schol­ar in the Lib­er­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram at Stan­ford, and if you’re won­der­ing how he looks at tech­nol­o­gy and the role it played in Egyp­t’s rev­o­lu­tion, you can watch a quick clip here.

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Visualizing WiFi Signals with Light

in Science, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Have you ever won­dered what the WiFi sig­nal looks like around your office, school, or local café? In this video, Timo Arnall, Jørn Knut­sen, and Einar Sneve Mar­t­i­nussen show you the invis­i­ble. And they pulled this off by build­ing a WiFi mea­sur­ing rod, mea­sur­ing four meters in length, that can visu­al­ize WiFi sig­nals around Oslo, Nor­way with the help of long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy.

What’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see is how the WiFi sig­nals vary across the city. Away from res­i­den­tial build­ings, the drop-off in WiFi strength is steep. On the oth­er hand, the WiFi sig­nal is dense around com­mer­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic build­ings. The amaz­ing visu­al­iza­tion gives us a glimpse into the com­plex rela­tion­ships between WiFi net­works and the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ments under­pin­ning them. For a deep­er read about this project, see this blog post.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Discovery’s Final Launch Viewed from Airplane

in Technology, Video - Science | February 26th, 2011

A rather dif­fer­ent angle on the Dis­cov­ery’s final launch. The view from 35,000 feet.…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The Facebook Obsession

in Life, Technology | February 25th, 2011

Are we obsessed with Face­book? It’s hard to argue with the num­bers pre­sent­ed visu­al­ly in this artis­tic lit­tle video by Alex Trimpe. One data point that struck me (if true): 48% of young Amer­i­cans learn about the news, about what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, through Face­book. A big shift in the way infor­ma­tion gets into peo­ple’s hands.

And that’s part of a trend we’re see­ing here too. More and more, Open Cul­ture fans are join­ing our Face­book page, let­ting our dai­ly posts trick­le into their Face­book News Feeds, then shar­ing the intel­li­gent media with friends. You can join our Face­book Page here, or also fol­low us on Twit­ter where we tweet and re-tweet extra cul­tur­al good­ies 24/7.

Thanks Ian for the heads up on the FB video…

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Kasparov Talks Chess, Technology and a Little Life at Google

in Google, Technology | February 23rd, 2011

Gar­ry Kas­parov, still the high­est-rat­ed play­er in the his­to­ry of chess, pulled through Google late last year and field­ed ques­tions from the Googlers. (Don’t miss Conan O’Brien’s hilar­i­ous riff on that term.) As you might expect, the ques­tions often drift­ed back to Kas­parov’s famous 1996–97 match­es against IBM’s Deep Blue (a pre­cur­sor to Wat­son) and more recent bat­tles between humans and com­put­ers. The 65 minute Q&A includes a lot more good chess talk, but it also gets into the cur­rent state of Russ­ian pol­i­tics (Kas­parov has opposed Vladimir Putin and ran for pres­i­dent in 2008), plus the chess mas­ter’s var­i­ous the­o­ries about lead­er­ship and strate­gic think­ing…

PS Be sure to read Kas­parov’s thoughts on Wat­son writ­ten imme­di­ate­ly after watch­ing the much pub­li­cized Jeop­ardy! pro­grams last week.

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The First Talk Radio Show on the Net (1993)

in Radio, Technology | February 16th, 2011

Back in the ear­ly 1990s, while most of us were still try­ing to wrap our heads around this new thing called the inter­net (don’t miss this amus­ing bit), NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day start­ed push­ing the enve­lope and host­ing the first inter­net-based radio talk show. This marked the first time that lis­ten­ers could “phone into” a pro­gram via the web and talk togeth­er – in this case about the cre­ative uses of this emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The broad­cast, which sin­gle­hand­ed­ly brought the inter­net to a crawl, has now resur­faced online. You can lis­ten below (or here).

via @Alyssa_Milano and Extreme­Tech

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IBM Supercomputer v. Humans on Jeopardy! Next Week

in Technology, Video - Science | February 11th, 2011

Next Mon­day, the long-run­ning Amer­i­can game show, Jeop­ardy!, will air a tour­na­ment of cham­pi­ons, pit­ting its two biggest win­ners, Ken Jen­nings and Brad Rut­ter, against Wat­son, IBM’s newest super­com­put­er. And it will pro­vide an occa­sion to answer an impor­tant ques­tion: Can com­put­ers under­stand the sub­tleties of lan­guage? Can they answer ques­tions when they’re posed in less than straight­for­ward ways? When, for exam­ple, the ques­tions use word­play and puns? IBM worked on the project for four years, and the ear­ly indi­ca­tions sug­gest that com­put­ers can undoubt­ed­ly mas­ter these sub­tleties. (Just watch this Wat­son match against less accom­plished Jeop­ardy! play­ers.) This arti­cle does a good job of explain­ing the fair­ly stag­ger­ing things hap­pen­ing on the back­end of the new IBM com­put­er, and how this research might shape the future of com­put­ing. The Watson/human face­off begins next Mon­day, with two match­es tak­ing place over three days. Once video becomes avail­able, as it inevitably will, we will tweet it on our ever-flow­ing Twit­ter stream.

PS NOVA aired a pro­gram last week ded­i­cat­ed to the Watson/Jeopardy! chal­lenge. If it’s not geoblocked, you can watch it right here. H/T to @eugenephoto for flag­ging the pro­gram.

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What’s the Internet? That’s So 1994…

in Media, Technology | January 31st, 2011

Now mak­ing its way around the inter­nets, a lit­tle semi-vin­tage clip of Bryant Gum­bel and Katie Couric, then hosts of The Today Show, try­ing to sort out the new, new thing called “The Inter­net.” This bit was record­ed on Jan­u­ary 24, 1994, just months before Justin Bieber came into the world and Kurt Cobain exit­ed stage left…

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