July 1, 2020
Robots May Gain The Right to Vote, But Can They Electioneer?
This is not about the potential of Android phones to facilitate voting. It’s about whether the other kind of android—the artificially intelligent robot type—would not only have the abstract right to vote, but would have the potential to be a full…
May 11, 2020
“All You Need Is Love” and the Comm Tech Marvel of 1967
At a time when political activists and campaigns can host Zoom conferences with over a thousand attendees, and when astronauts can make outer space Skype calls, it’s easy to feel numbed to the sense of wonder that may come from contemplating our…
May 10, 2020
The Colonization of the Moon Is Already Underway
Cyberpunk lit pioneer William Gibson once said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” There’s no doubting the second part—new technology will replicate the inequality of old technology. But for the next few paragraphs,…
April 28, 2020
A Black Hole’s Gravity is Like a Spirograph
Space and time are not fixed–or more accurately, seemingly fixed or regular movement across spacetime is actually “warped.” That warping causes the trajectory of motion to manifest as dynamic rather than nondynamic. A straight line is never really…
April 21, 2020
Truly Toxic Speech: When It Comes to Pandemics, We Really Talk Too Much
This was already in the news last December, and not in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic. A UC-Davis study had found that “the louder people talk, the more airborne particles they emit, making loudness a potential factor in spreading…
March 22, 2020
How Women in AI are Changing the Face of Tech and Campaigns
“Life doesn’t always give us what we deserve, but rather, what we demand. And so you must continue to push harder than any other person in the room.” Those words from Wadi Ben-Hirki, a young feminist activist from Nigeria, are a good reminder that…
March 10, 2020
Big Data Can Track Students. Can It Improve Education?
From the EdSurge news page, we learn that colleges and universities are discovering the benefits of big data. It’s no secret that colleges and universities have to do a lot more with less these days—or face closure. Whether because of high…
March 2, 2020
High-Tech Treehouse Roundup
Even for the most austere person who doesn’t need lavish, exotic, or elaborate surroundings, there is something fascinating about treehouses. Not the kind that are every kid’s dream and every parent’s bad trip. If you were a kid who grew up in…
February 25, 2020
Smithsonian Opens the Digital Doors
When we’re working in digital, one of the hairiest issues can be finding appropriate imagery and other resources to build on without stepping on a creator’s rights or paying through the nose. That’s why you see so many blogs and social media posts…
January 24, 2020
Voter Turnout: Throw More Parties?
On voting, Americans tend to swing widely between the hyperbole of having an inviolable moral obligation to vote in every single election for every single position, to believing that if elections could really change anything, “they’d make them…