|Wednesday, June 19, 2019

You are here:

Technology

Will technology be humanity’s ruin?

As presented in many Hollywood movies the technological race will also create a group of “drop-offs” that will be the growing field of new terrorism. The emergence of new technologies without the anticipation of their effects on work, privacy or political and social relations generates technophobia, a fear of technologies that will be the trigger for a new wave of terrorism in the next two decades. At least, that ...Read full article...

Trump Administration puts the magnifying glass on Big Tech

Last Monday the alarms went off on Wall Street. Google, Amazon and Facebook fell sharply on the stock market after it was divulged that US authorities are closing in on possible monopolistic practices by those companies and Apple. The US House of Representatives announced that it was opening an investigation into this matter. According to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Justice is ...Read full article...

1984-style Totalitarian control is already in your home

The dystopia imagined by George Orwell in his book 1984 is the most recurrent example when we want to explain what a dictatorial society we live in right now. The novel, which was not meant to be a manual for current governments and technology companies, but that has become just that, describes a State that is governed by Big Brother through a series of mechanisms and devices that, far ...Read full article...

Internet interaction: Compulsive, competitive and anxious

The obsession with metrics on the Internet, by the number of our followers who say I like it, leads us to compulsive, competitive and anxious behavior, and pushes us to create more and more content pursuing an opaque idea of social success. To combat this crazy desire to like companies are now offering software that hides all the data in social networks, with the intention of curbing the apparent ...Read full article...

This is the virtual world where your identity lives

The virtual world is painted as an invisible environment that we do not see or touch, but which in reality is very palpable. The Cloud, or The Clouds, seem to be empty spaces located somewhere we do not know or understand where they are, but it is closer than we think. The Cloud is not a cushy place. Moreover, it is not even in heaven. It is anchored in ...Read full article...

Internet: It’s all about Surveillance and little about Democracy

The Internet was, from its inception, financed and promoted by the Pentagon and Wall Street. One is tempted to miss the simpler and optimistic times before the internet was out of control, or perhaps, too much under the control of so few. In a manifesto published in September 2018, Tim Berners-Lee himself recognized that “despite all the good that we have achieved, the Internet has become an engine division ...Read full article...

The terrifying future of facial recognition

Although we do not notice it, automatic learning is an element present in our lives. Different algorithms learn on their own and choose the ads we see, identify us when we cross borders, let our cars know when they have to brake, etc. Among all these cases, facial recognition is perhaps the most powerful. Current technology allows us to recognize tens of thousands of points of our face in ...Read full article...

This is how Google and social networks erode our ability to think

The Internet has turned the human being into a superficial animal, far from the depth that is presupposed to his reasoning. Twitter is just a place to express personal minutiae. It offers a refuge for insignificance because that is what opinions without facts are: insignificant. We have lost our innocence with respect to the digital realm. We have become disillusioned. Social networks are infested with people with depression, anxiety, ...Read full article...

Technology shapes our human identity

The human essence is modified by technology every day. We can’t see it or feel it. It just happens every time we interact with computers, cellphones, tablets and other devices. Advances in the digital era lead us to new brain-machine interfaces that could modify our mental abilities, for better and for worse. We know that human brains have been changing, adapting and developing for centuries in response to external ...Read full article...

Digital Isolation may be the only way to protect yourself from cyber crimes

Powerful governments understand the dangers of being on the grid and are already creating their own internet infrastructure, independent of the world wide web. A good part of the soldiers of our day does not carry firearms. Not even knives, unless the keyboard of a computer or a wireless mouse can be considered sharp elements. Neither are the battlefields the same: wars between nations take place on the internet and ...Read full article...

Hyperconnected and hyper impatient

Making abusive use of electronic devices turns people, especially teenagers, into obsessive, impatient and selfish beings. In some countries, almost 30% of ten-year-olds already have a telephone, which can make relationships in family contexts difficult if clear limits are not established from the start: Sometimes we assume that with that age they are too young to get into trouble and we give them a freedom that could lead to ...Read full article...

Technology can now beam voices inside your head

We’ve had all sorts of articles on this website about technology run amok, like videos that are undiscernable from reality and doorbells that monitor the entire neighborhood and China mining data from the brains of workers. But this one takes the creepy sci-fact cake. According to MIT, (Edited to add: the website where this paper is hosted is now offline) there now exists technology that can beam a voice right ...Read full article...

These are the very real risks with 5G technology

Risks would multiply in line with the multiplication of the number of devices and their ease in hacking them. The latest generation of mobile communications is allowing us to access multimedia content or interact with computer systems at hitherto unknown transmission speeds. However, even before its use has been consolidated, a new concept has emerged, 5G. But, really, what does this new generation of mobile communications mean? One of ...Read full article...

From multitasker to non productive: How technology makes you useless

Low productivity is not the result of poor organization. Today, we have a huge amount of tools and systems that help us measure, manage and maximize our performance. The technological battlefield is full of thousands of applications and software that aim to improve our day. Some technology websites like Zapier mention up to 25 apps to improve our personal productivity and manage time well when a person only needs ...Read full article...