Media & Internet
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Globalization Fears That Drive Political Discourse
about 7 hours ago
What is the Big Idea? The backlash against U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra’s political attack ad is coming from all sides, including those in his own party. For those who missed it, the ad slams incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow’s foreign economic policies and depicts a young Asian ... Read More
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Is Kim Jong-un Dead?
3 days ago
On China's microblogging site Weibo, rumors of Kim Jong-un's death surfaced earlier today when bloggers posted that he was assassinated in Beijing. Media outlets have yet to issue any official reports, but the rumors have spread to Twitter and they are ripe for punny jokes. Gawker was one of the ... Read More
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FU Asks: Should the Government Fund the Arts?
3 days ago
Welcome to a new feature on the Floating University blog, FU Asks, where we open up the academic debate on our e-learning platform to the Big Think community. This week we're featuring a discussion prompt from Leon Botstein, President of Bard College and conductor of the American Symphony ... Read More
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Will Graphene Replace the Silicon Chip?
4 days ago
What's the Latest Development? A pair of Nobel laureates have created what might become the replacement to the silicon computer chip. Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov have constructed a multi-layer graphene transistor which succeeds where past models have failed ... Read More
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Digital Breakup? No! Digital Get-Over-Your-Ex? Yes!
6 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Online dating sites are increasingly accepted as a good way to look for a partner but, unfortunately, that is only half the story. For people who need to get past an ex, some new apps and websites are dedicated to keeping you from the obsessive side of your ... Read More
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Why Do People Become Digital Pirates?
6 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Enabling digital piracy must be one of the least profitable theft crimes ever. By the time 'James', as we'll call him, was just 19 years old, he had begun cooperating with many elite piracy sites, using his formidable technical knowledge specifically to not sell ... Read More
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How Twitter May Save Democratic Society
6 days ago
What's the Latest Development? The stubbornness of the Assad regime in Syria seems a sharp contrast to last year's Arab Spring, when tens of thousands took to public squares in Cairo. At that time, Twitter mobilized crowds that no community organizing could, says BBC correspondent Paul Mason ... Read More
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Forget Search Engines: Web 3.0 Is a Knowledge Engine
6 days ago
What's the Latest Development? The Semantic Web, also known as the Web 3.0, is set to come of age this week when a powerful data crunching service becomes available to the public. Wolfram Alpha has been online since 2009 but has had trouble gaining traction in circles beyond statisticians and ... Read More
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It's Your Data: Why Facebook Should Pay You
6 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Facebook is seeking to raise $5 billion in cash by becoming a publicly traded company, an action the social networking firm is expected to take by this spring. Over 70 percent of the company's profits currently come from advertising revenue, which is tailored to ... Read More
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The New Hustle: Artists in the Digital Age
6 days ago
Enjoy the article, then check out the Big Think, Short Fiction Contest (#1: Sci Fi) - an Iron Chef-style event in partnership with Storiad. The Unrealized Utopia of DIY Artistic Success There was a lot of unexamined fist-pumping among the youth of 1998 when Napster "took down" the music ... Read More
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Robot Nurses, Robot Doctors
9 days ago
What's the Latest Development? A well known robotics company is teaming up with a large health care provider, hoping to revolutionize the way patients receive medical care. iRobot, the company which makes the Roomba robo-vacuum, has invested $6 million in InTouch Health, a telemedicine company ... Read More
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Life's Too Short: How to Read the Right Books
10 days ago
Let’s say you’re in the top fifth percentile of avid readers, tearing through a book a week on average. With such literary gusto raising your sails, you might feel like the entire world is an open book to browse at your leisure. But in actuality, you will hardly scratch the surface of available ... Read More
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What's the Best Degree for Entrepreneurs?
10 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Individuals with advanced engineering degrees may be more successful entrepreneurs than MBA graduates, according to a new online survey. The business blog Identified combed its Facebook Rolodex and found that engineering post-graduates outnumbered MBA grads three ... Read More
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Smart Clothing: The Unexpected Tech Revolution
11 days ago
What's the Latest Development? A Canadian laboratory is experimenting with special fibers that could be woven into the fabric of your clothing to make soft, interactive screens, putting control of all your electronic devices literally at arms length. The lab turned to the manufacturing process ... Read More
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Nano-Oils Keeping Electronics Nano-Cool
11 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Researchers at Rice University have successfully added a heat-extracting nano-material to transformer oils used to cool the inner workings of electronic devices. By inserting a tiny amount of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) particles, enough to equal .1 percent of ... Read More
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Virtual Reality Contact Lenses Are One Step Closer to Reality
12 days ago
As Dr. Michio Kaku has been predicting for years, we are inching ever closer to producing virtual reality contact lenses that will add a layer of interactive, rich information over our mundane visual landscape. The newest innovation comes from a joint venture between DARPA (Defense Advanced ... Read More
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What Makes Online Dating Work (or Not)?
13 days ago
What's the Latest Development? A new dating website run by the former president of the Onion wants to make online matchmaking more personal and less gimmicky. The site will take lessons from social media, allowing its users to interact in real time about things that interest them. Users can ... Read More
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Surveillance Cameras to Gather Shopping Data
13 days ago
What's the Latest Development? That surveillance camera over your shoulder, once there exclusively to protect you and the shops around it, could be being used to gather a wealth of consumer data. New software, designed so that it cannot identify single individuals, can process raw footage from ... Read More
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Is Facebook Really Worth $Infinity?
13 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Facebook could become a publicly traded company as soon as Wednesday, possibly raising $10 billion in cash and a valuation of $100 billion. That would give the company the same value as McDonald's and about half the value of Boeing. Unlike other Web-based companies ... Read More
