It takes a fair amount to get my blood boiling at 5:21 a.m., but an NPR Morning Edition interview with a new savior of investigative journalism, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, […]
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A Finnish team made crowdsourcing a literal public affair by setting up large touchscreens in busy areas and watching passersby as they performed basic research tasks with them. The results were on par with those of paid online volunteers.
Faced with a modernizing society and subsequent falling birthrate, the South Korean government is taking unusual steps to encourage its younger citizens to link up, get married, and have children.
The true culprit in the residual gender wage gap is wage secrecy.
Billed by some as “Facebook for cops,” BlueLine will allow officers to share and collaborate in a much more secure environment.
We sometimes get risk wrong. We fear some things more than the evidence says we need to, and some things less than the evidence says we should. […]
The same company that installed bins with digital ad screens during the 2012 London Olympics has now added a gadget to some of them that can track smartphones, eventually allowing for more targeted sales pitches.
In the July issue of The Scientist magazine, my colleague Declan Fahy and I contributed a commentary discussing the need for scientists and ethicists to engage the public on major trends and […]
A new study of the brain’s biology completed at Columbia University has overturned the accepted theory for how humans process higher-order thoughts, such as reflecting on the past and planning for the future.
Careers. Paychecks. Horrible bosses. If you want a roof over your head, or to make a lasting and meaningful contribution to the world, then work will consume your life. Doesn’t […]
Every company has both information and knowledge. What’s the difference? Knowledge is something that’s actionable and that generates value for the receiver. Information, on the other hand, is not actionable. […]
Soon, the Moscow metro police will be able to track individuals’ movement through the city’s ornate underground transport system by reading data from the cellular phones.
Researchers at Arizona State University want help with gathering and editing information about each of the estimated 30,000 power plants operating worldwide.
Reza Aslan has to explain The Genetic Fallacy to idiot and FoxNews.com interviewer Lauren Green.
When people use plastic to pay for food, they make more impulse-based purchases, like ice cream, donuts and chips, compared to those who pay with cash, as I wrote here […]
The Human Bionic Project catalogs all the FDA-approved prosthetics and other bionic devices currently available. Its creator says it should serve as a starting research point for amputees and others, and will grow with input from the public.
Can computers learn the same way a children learns? Yes. We are starting to tap into the power of cognitive computing.
By the time you finish reading this short article, I hope you agree with me so much that you’ll join me on my mission against “dieting” — at least the way the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry has been pushing it on everyone for years.
The National Security Agency leak is only the latest in a series of events in which “super-users” have caused significant damage to a company or organization. What, if anything, can be done to prevent such rogue behavior?
Sometimes the toughest shadow to escape is one you cast over yourself. When artist Art Spiegelman began publishing Maus in 1980 in chapter form in the indie comics magazine Raw, […]
It’s quite a refined art to be able to assess the quality of the information wherever it’s acquired.
German carmaker Daimler has announced plans to put QR code stickers on its Mercedes-Benz vehicles, providing emergency personnel with valuable information that can be accessed via a smartphone at the scene.
I’m so concerned about the fact that Big Data is going to change the world in every conceivable way.
We hear the admonishments all the time; smoking ___ cigarettes a day will take ___ years off your life, drinking ___ glasses of alcohol a day will take […]
The U.S. Supreme Court determined that biotechnology companies are not allowed to patent genes. The Court has not gone far enough.
We need to step back and have a morally robust debate about where markets belong and where they don’t.
Online data fed directly into the brains of human beings via a “software/wetware” interface? We’re closer than you think. But the impact on humanity may be devastating.
A comment on my most recent blog post reminds me both why I love blogging and why comments on science blogs are such a good thing. The commenter might write […]
I wrote a short post on Thursday suggesting that whether you’re a fan or a sworn enemy of the surveillance state, you’d be wrong to condemn the pending prosecution of […]
If you’re like most Americans, you probably spent most of the long Fourth of July weekend hanging out at a family BBQ, watching baseball, enjoying the fireworks and… obsessively checking […]