Science and Technology
First-person Shooter Games, the US Military, and Serial Killers
By Pat Elder, Both Nik Cruz, the Parkland shooter, and Dimitri Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the Santa Fe shooter, were emotionally distraught because of girls who rejected their advances. They were both outcasts in their respective high schools. They both played video games that simulated war. In his Facebook bio, Dimitri showed… »
Big Data is watching you
We republish here two related articles from The Conversation that show the need to remain vigilant of what social media is doing with the information we share. Four ways your Google searches and social media affect your opportunities in life Lorna McGregor, University of Essex; Daragh… »
Access to End-Use Technologies Key to Catalysing Development in Africa
By Joshua Masinde NAIROBI (IDN) – Productive use of energy holds the key to livelihood transformation in Africa’s rural areas. Small industries could improve their production processes and efficiency if they had better access to electricity and technologies. Without electricity, rural micro-enterprises make do with labour intensive and time-consuming manual… »
Facebook Unfriends Democracy
The for-profit social media giant Facebook harvests vast amounts of data from each of its 2 billion users across the globe. This data trove gives Facebook unparalleled commercial power and, as is becoming increasingly clear, the ability to influence significant events, including national elections. Revelations about Facebook’s role in the… »
Science Can be Used for Oppression or Liberation
Danny Katch interviewed, geneticist and author Joseph Graves, who helped organize 67 fellow scientists to write a response to a piece in the New York Times arguing that race is a valid biological category. I was way out of my depth here but I was able to fake it enough… »
Not 50 million, not 87 million… Facebook admits data from ‘most’ of its 2 billion users compromised by ‘Malicious Actors’
Buried in a company announcement was acknowledgement that nearly all of its users have been targeted to some degree by Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams “Buried in Facebook’s announcement that Cambridge Analytica had improperly gathered data from up to 87 million users—rather than the… »
Why the Google Protest of War Work Is Wonderful
By David Swanson, The fact that 3,100 Google employees signed a letter opposing Google doing work for the U.S. military is wonderful for what it reveals. It does not reveal that a major company exists that has not long been a contractor for the U.S. military. Google, whether its employees know… »
Decolonise science – time to end another imperial era
Rohan Deb Roy, University of Reading for The Conversation Sir Ronald Ross had just returned from an expedition to Sierra Leone. The British doctor had been leading efforts to tackle the malaria that so often killed English colonists in the country, and in December 1899 he gave a… »
The Isolation of Julian Assange Must Stop
We call on the government of Ecuador to allow Julian Assange his right of freedom of speech. by NOAM CHOMSKY, CHRIS HEDGES, JOHN PILGER, ET AL. First published on Counterpunch April 2, 2018. If it was ever clear that the case of Julian Assange was never just a… »
Cambridge Analytica is what happens when you privatise military propaganda
ADAM RAMSAY 28 March 2018 for openDemocracy You can’t understand the Cambridge Analytica scandal until you understand what its parent company does The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”. This audacious claim was made by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in March 1991, only… »
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Milagro Sala
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
