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Technology vs. Brain

Brain is now on totally new path of evolution caused by technology.

Probably everyone had this strange feeling that our mobile is vibrating but no one was actually calling. This effect is being studied and has name HPVS Human Phantom Vibration Syndrome. But there is no more to say than just a name. Scientists are still trying to figure out why we have it and how does it affects our brain.

Another issue is the fact that mobile conversation are stressful, especially work conversation. And because our brain learn certain reaction so then neutral conversation can simulate stress and tension.

American specialist of brains ageing, professor Gary Small from UCLA University states that new generation will be expert in human relations.

People who suffers Internet Addiction Disorder have the same brain changes as alcoholics and the same concerns video games addicts. As Chinese Academy of Sciences states part of brain responsible for executive and cognitive functions is defective.

On the other hand, everyone who uses internet and technology on daily basis can feel overwhelmed by amount of impulse coming from different sources. It is difficult to concentrate on particular task. Thick book to read during one evening? Impossible without break for checking Facebook or email.

After all, short way of communicate by text or Facebook status changed how we perceive books or 500 page long document...

#Brain #Technology impact

Match Puppy: New social service… for dogs.

Beta website MatchPuppy is now online. It is another social network service for making new friends with that difference, that this time is for dogs. How and more important, what for?

So far service is available only for New York citizen and enable to create dog’s profile with description of its temperament, likes and dislikes. After your type your dog favourite walking spots website will suggests other dogs’ profiles which can play with your puppy. So idea is to find a doggy friend but probably lonely dog lovers can also gain a new friend. Still, is it necessary to create a website when you can simply start a conversation when your are actually walking your dog in your favourite park?

#Social service #Motivation for using social media

Google Drive: What about owning our files?

Google Drive is an great opportunity to create free hard disc online. But what will happen with our files when we actually send them to Google’s servers?

New privacy term by Google:

“Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps).”

So make it simple: There is no boundry that keeps Google from using what we upload on our drive.

Simply put: there’s no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service.

It also states:

#Google Drive #Privacy #Ownership #Google privacy terms

Facebook: Duckface perfection

Living in the times when everyone has camera in their mobile is not easy for teenagers. Pressure of looking good everywhere and everytime is so high, especially that anytime someone can just shoot unexpected photo of you.

Permanent social supervision and tagging on social services where all friends can see awkward face expression drives to real obsession. Young girls always wear make-up and nicely done hairstyle, primarly during parties when photo gallery will end up on Facebook imiediately. What’s more, adolescent girl become an expert in duckface and 'sexy cover' poses.

"I feel like I have to look good all the time — at school, at parties, at the mall, whenever I am socializing out of the house. I want people to say, ‘She looks great.’ I’m not happy if I don’t think I look good." added a 13-year-old

How many girls are actually boot hairstyle and make up before video chat? Times of wearing tracksuit in home are oficially over.

According to Dr Robyn Silverman, child and teen specialist “The sexualization of girls at this age is very dangerous,”. It makes girls feel hurried. … And feeling hurried can cause anxiety, depression. The preoccupation with “How do I look?” may well be getting in the way of living authentically. “They are looking outward in at themselves — constantly thinking of the mirror,” rather than being fully engaged in the conversation, the activity or the learning.”

The way how technology is reshaping the brains of kids is a bit scary. But what’s done is done. Now we have to adjust to new reality.

#Facebook #Teenagers #Duckface

Privacy online: Web traffic monitoring?

Great Britain is already full of surveillance cameras in every possibly public space but now British government wants to make Intelligence Service even more powerful when it comes about investigating and analyzing online activity of average citizen.

According to project of legislation each Internet supplier will be force to pass information about details of visiting pages, mails and phone connection to Intelligence Service to analyze them in ‘real time’. Currently they can process call, web, and email data, such as when communications were made, but not the contents of such data. New law will allow the intelligence services to trace people’s communications with others, who they are contacting, and how often for. The legislation is expected to be announced at the Queen’s Speech in May.

"The proposals were shot down by the then opposition Conservative government, but now in power seek to bring these plans into law by the end of the year.” - ZDnet.com

#Privacy online #Legislation #Web traffic monitoring

Society novelty: Hire a girlfriend for 5 dollars.

New launched website, GirlfriendHire.com May looks like a joke but it is serious business for those who need special service. It is all about being someone’s girlfriend, but just for few hours.

What you can buy is a service of writing an emails, texts, Facebook comments or answer question about women your were too afraid to ask. Sometimes it’s about to impress friends. But never in real live, only by online interaction. What is interesting is the fact that most of services cost 5 dollars. And you can even ask to make homework for you or arrange situation which makes breaking up with real girlfriend easier. It doesn’t sound really mature but the founder of the website is 22-years-old American student. He doesn't want GirlfriendHire to be seen as "an adult service" — he wants it to be "fun and safe."

"Guys have a tendency to try to look cool in front of their friends," and messages from an out-of-town girl will help them do that. One request already on the site illustrates this principle: "Help me trick my friends into thinking I started dating a punk rock chick." – said Cody Krecicki

#Society #Social Network #Motivation for using social media #Identity #Image #Impression Management

Vimeo: Diary of life?

12-years-old Lotte is being filmed regularly since she was borned by her father, Frans Hofmeester. Clips showing how girl is changing are posted on vimeo as documentary of growing up.

As a new dad, I thought this was exceptional. I hope you don't mind if I copy your idea. Wilfredo R.

Absolutely beautiful. As the father of a young girl who is growing up faster than I can believe, this was very touching, made me shed a tear. What a wonderful fortune it is to be a father. Scott H.Thank you for this, as a timelapse photographer I can appreciate your commitment, and as a father of a 5 year old daughter I can see the beauty in this. Thank you for the reminder to cherish every moment with her. Truly beautiful work. Givot

Keep coming back today to watch this :) Thank you so much for the experience you are giving us. Love the soundtrack, anywhere that I can get it? Sludge Bullet

#Vimeo #Growing up #Identity

Facebook: Driving to distraction?

Another university research reveals that even one single distraction can drop down efficiency of our work.

300 students were examine whereas studying something important for 15 minutes. Group of researcher observes how difficult is to stay focus. What is not surprising at all, most of the people were distracted by technology, however, the number of distraction wasn’t important for the whole distraction process. It means that students who checked Facebook had worse results no matter how many time they went to see their social network profiles.

Surfing in the Internet can help with productivity and can inspire but when it comes about difficult and important assessment usage of Internet cause dramatic drop down of work rate.

How to teach yourself to stay focus? We can always use breaks as a time to check mobile messages, email account and social network sites. But then turn phone into silence or switch it off until the next break. So far though the best we can get is about 30 minutes of focus. Neuroscience is just now starting to emerge as a means of studying the impact of technology on the brain.

#Facebook #Productivity #Distraction #Neuroscience #Brain

WWW: North Korea’s homepage for 15 dollars

North Korea shocked world again. This time it wasn’t about human rights, food production or prohibition of the freedom of speech. Lately North Korea’s homepage were published and it wouldn’t be that shocking if not the fact, that website design costs 15 dollars.

What’s more, Korean administrators left some of the author’s sources such as: “This is link to Twitter page, put here your own”. It is probably not the best image which elite and respected nuclear power country (as they claimed) would like to promote.

“I had no idea,” told Robert Westmore, the website scheme’s designer to FoxNews.com in an interview. “Honestly, I didn't even know North Korea had a website.”

While the notorious totalitarian government continues to spend hundreds of millions on failed rocket launches, North Korea did not actually bother to create professional homepage. Especially that Son-il declare that they created the site not for its own citizens (who mostly has lack of internet access whatsoever) but "For the people outside DPRK, to have basic information and a direct connection point with the country". Well, apparently the idea must have changed because currently the Democratic People's Republic of Korea’s website is not available (korea-dpr.com)

And in the country itself, access to the global Internet is a very unique privilege for a few thousand highest government authorities. Average citizen can have at most access to Intranet called Kwangmyong created around 10 years ago. Intranet is incessantly monitored and controlled operation system written by North Korean computer programmers for government’s needs.

#Internet #Intranet #Barriers to access

TWITTER: Tweet or eat?

A survey has found that British people spend more than 3 hours daily on using social services, mails and playing game consoles and only 35 minutes to eat. It proves how popular Facebook and Twitter become and how, sadly, people cutting times for family meals.

The same survey for breakfast biscuit brand Belvita revealed a staggering 36 percent said they spent less time eating than they did 10 or 20 years ago. And actually, family mealtimes just disappear, because more and more of us prefers to eat quick and alone.

Family Mealtime Survey (2009) shows that 75% Britons eat lunch in front of the TV, children eat alone in their bedrooms playing games. Only 1/5 of families eat meal together… once per week. It proves how popular Facebook and Twitter become and how, sadly, people cutting times for family meals.

Belvita marketing manager Nicola Wilkinson said:

“Tweeting and social networking are being put ahead of getting a good start to the day.”

#Twitter #Social changes #Family #Meal time

Facebook and social network: Changing our brains?

Research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B magazine proves dependency of volume of grey matter in brains with amount of Facebook’s friends. Brain area responsible for emotional reaction and retrieving memories was main issue during studies run by Professor Ress team. And it appears that people with bigger number of Facebook friends has more active grey matter and more of it in the brain! Other areas which were examine in brain connected with Facebook were the one which allows us to see moving objects, to memorize and navigate and recognize social signals.

“Since the ability to understand other people's intention is a key to successful social interactions, the size of online social networks might be reflected in the structure of these specific social brain regions.” - says professor G. Ress

Human brain activity during 1. reading a book, 2. using internet search engine (UCLA)

Social network become crucial part of our lives, but still not enough research were carried out. There must be the way of how internet is actually changing our brains not only in political but mostly in biological meaning.

Research were conducted on 125 student. They were examined by looking at social life in social network (Facebook) but also in real life (mobile phone contacts, to how many people they send birthday wishes etc) then the experiment were repeated on another group of 40 students.

However few year ago, another group of scientists (with prof Gary Small from Univeristy of California) find that because of internet services in our brain appears new connection. After just few days since starting using google search engine human brain creates new conjunctions. Maybe this is great breakthrough in case of human’s brain evolution. Brain of modern child develop in different way that it was 30 years ago. However, children could become victims of this process. New social networking skills should be based on real life experience. Or maybe Facebook is just enough?

#Brain #Society #Facebook #Social Media #Social Network

Google: New Privacy Policy

On 1st March Google updated privacy settings and linked over 60 their services. It means that right now data from search engine, Gmail, YouTube, Google+, Android, are under one, superior policy. As a matter of fact, it is the biggest and most influential to users change Google has done so far. What actually has changed?

According to Google, new setting are just “simplified policy, which reflects the efforts to create one, simple experience”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGghlPmebCY&feature=player_embedded

Changes apply to everyone how log into Google account and uses their services, so Google can connect in one all information about how we use it. What does it mean? More or less, Google can create a more accurate behavioural profile which can be used for behavioral targeting by websites publishers and advertisers. It increases the effectiveness of campaign by capturing data generated by selected page visitors ad defining audience segments.

Example? Google knows names, email address, which devices are connected with Android, which application were ever installed, calendar schedule, Gmail’s contact list, searching history, default localization in Google Map and so on.

After all, it’s all about money. Last year Google earned 24 dollars for every user. We can assume that this year the amount will increase because of the fact, that potential advertiser have chance to adjust ads on the website.

Indeed there is no optioCNIL, French Commission on Information Technology and Liberties summarises the issue:

“By merging the privacy policies of its services, Google makes it impossible to understand which purposes, personal data, recipients or access rights are relevant to the use of a specific service. As such, Google’s new policy fails to meet the requirements of the European Data Protection Directive. (...) Under the new policy, users understand that Google will be able to track and combine a large part of their online activities thanks to products such as Android, Analytics or its advertising services. For instance, the new policy would allow Google to display on Youtube ads that are related to the user’s activity on its Android phone (personal number, calling party numbers, date and time of calls) and to its location data. (…)The CNIL and the EU data protection authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of data across services and have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing"

Indeed there is no option to not agree for New Policy settings. When decline, user cannot log into google account or when it comes about email account – deleting email account.

On the other hand Google still provides free of charge services.

Even though we are not paying in cash, the price of it is to give back some of our private data.

#google #privacy online #lecture 5

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