The Wisdom of Crowds: Reddit, Twitter, and the Hunt for the Wrong Man
By WILL GLOVINSKY posted at 6:00 am on April 23, 2013 Thursday night’s abhorrent online vigilantism — in which Reddit and Twitter users seized upon police radio chatter to accuse a missing (and completely innocent) Brown University student of bombing the Boston Marathon — reminded us of one of the most under-acknowledged facts of the internet: that […]
Anyone Can Be Found on Social Media in 12 Hours
The Physics arXiv Blog for MIT Technology Review In 1967, the American social psychologist Stanley Milgram sent out 160 packages to randomly chosen individuals in the U.S., asking them to forward them to a single individual living in Boston. The task included a simple rule: The recipients could only send each parcel on to somebody they knew […]
Warning over child ‘addiction’ to smartphones and gaming devices
BY NICOLA ANDERSON – 23 APRIL 2013 More young children are showing signs of becoming “addicted” to gadgets such as smartphones and gaming devices, psychologists have warned. Children are having problems concentrating in school and have motor skills worryingly below their appropriate age because they are spending “hours” playing computer games each day. One professional recently […]
Research finds that video games hold both risks and rewards for children with Autism
By Anthony John Agnello — April 22, 2013 One in 88 children in America have a disorder that falls somewhere on the Autism Spectrum according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These range from conditions like the high-functioning Asperger’s syndrome to pervasive developmental disorders. With autism diagnoses rising at an incredible rate in recent decades, it’s […]
Google launches tool to manage ‘digital afterlife’
Users can decide what happens with their email and other accounts after they die. Google has launched a tool that lets users decide what happens with their email, Google Plus and other accounts after they die – or become inactive online for any other reason. Called “inactive account manager,” the feature lets users of Google’s […]