June 1

21st Century Living

Friday’s Big Idea

Today's Big Idea: Humanizing Technology

By altering our ability to construct and adapt to our environment, technology constantly transforms how we think, how we interact, and how we see the world. The possibilities that have arisen as a result of the widespread use of personal computers and the invention of the Internet will require a whole new set of theories and conversations about the world. Everything has changed, from foreign policy to local governance to the arts. 

We're in the early stages of constructing a digital society, which means re-examining old ways of doing things with a newly critical eye. Rebecca MacKinnon argues that social media can be a tool for organizing and participating in the creation of a global society. Jason Gots writes about the plight of the self-published e-author  -- or how artists can take advantage of digital technologies. Dominic Basulto looks at our changing relationship to objects, asking, can we ever be attached to an e-book in the same way we're attached to paperbacks? Parag and Ayesha Khanna highlight an innovative startup that has created the first visually-arresting and easily-searchable electronic memory.

  1. 1 Saying "No" to Censorship: The Fi...
  2. 2 The New Hustle: Artists in the Di...
  3. 3 The Art of Creating Emotional Att...
  4. 4 Compiling Our Digital Memory
   
  1. Saying "No" to Censorship: The Fight For a Free Internet is In Our Hands

    Saying "No" to Censorship: The Fight For a Free Internet is In Our Hands

    What's the Big Idea? On May 20, Pakistan shut down Twitter for eight hours after the ...

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  2. The New Hustle: Artists in the Digital Age

    The New Hustle: Artists in the Digital Age

    The utopia of instant, effortless DIY success for writers remains a pipe dream. Still, digital distribution and online networking are calling into question the established paths to artistic fame and fortune. Into this vacuum steps Storiad, an intriguing new approach to empowering writers and connecting them with the right buyers for their work.

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  3. The Art of Creating Emotional Attachments to Digital Objects

    The Art of Creating Emotional Attachments to Digital Objects

    The argument for or against e-books always seems to boil down to one central issue: e-books can ...

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  4. Compiling Our Digital Memory

    Compiling Our Digital Memory

    With Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc, we have all become "life bloggers," and innovative startup Memolane is the first to compile all these data points into searchable electronic memory.

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