Facebook, Google and Apple make the headlines, but there are many inspiring startups to dissipate the sense of techno-dreadA quarter of a century ago, the Canadian author Douglas Coupland published his third novel. Microserfs was the tale of a group of young Microsoft employees who decide to exit the realm of Bill Gates in Washington state and chase a dream of their own in California places that, back then, sounded like the epitome of futuristic magic: Palo Alto, Menlo Park. As well as prescient flashes of the world to come – “Beware of the corporate invasion of private memory,” warned one of its protagonists – what always stuck with me was its air of techno-optimism, perfectly crystallised right at the end, when the central character’s mother has a stroke and is rescued from silence by a set-up attached to an Apple Macintosh. She communicates via such staccato sentences as “I am here”, and “I feel U”; the novel’s closing pages capture her and her family marvelling at the fact that she has become “part woman/part machine, emanating blue Macintosh light”.The book was published in 1995, when computers suddenly offered an ever-expanding window on to the world. Many of us had no doubt that the leap from old to new represented nothing but progress. By the start of this decade social media platforms were being hailed as a means of individual and collective emancipation. But where has this faith in the future gone? Related: The rise of technology in care: how will it affect... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2018-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook, Google and Apple make the headlines, but there are many inspiring startups to dissipate the sense of techno-dreadA quarter of a century ago, the Canadian author Douglas Coupland published his third novel. Microserfs was the tale of a group of young Microsoft employees who decide to... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Where exactly is tech going? Joanne McNeil's debut novel 'Wrong Way' and billionaire Marc Andreessen's 'Techno-Optimist Manifesto' offer some clues. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-12-12 11:00:26 UTC ]
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Gannett, a news publisher accused of monopolistic behavior, is suing Google for monopolistic behavior. It’s the latest in a string of lawsuits against the search giant, and it repeats many of the arguments made by the Department of Justice in its second lawsuit against Google, filed earlier this... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-06-20 16:46:02 UTC ]
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Dear Readers, In what feels like a never ending cycle of disappointing media news, last week we in the literary community were astonished to learn that after two decades The Believer magazine will discontinue publication. (Since 2017, The Believer has been published by the Black Mountain... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-10-28 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Days after Canada pledged to make Facebook pay for news content amid an ongoing media battle with tech giants, a Winnipeg newspaper publisher is warning local news could be in trouble if the government doesn’t take bold action. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2021-02-21 22:04:21 UTC ]
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The US experience of watching sport online should ring alarm bells for those who prize the Premier League’s ability to bring people togetherIn the late 1960s, the American author and tech seer Richard Brautigan wrote lyrically of “a cybernetic meadow / where mammals and computers / live together... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-12-02 18:49:42 UTC ]
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Voice and artificial intelligence are the most likely candidates to further disrupt the book business, according to the results of a survey of the book trade's most innovative, the FutureBook 40, conducted ahead of FutureBook Live, The Bookseller's publishing conference taking place on 30th... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-11-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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September Publishing has bought John Howkins’ Invisible - The Future of Work, about the increasing importance of the often invisible creative process in the work place. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Legislation opposed by firms like Facebook and Google and groups warning of detrimental consequences for the internetMusic companies, film-makers and media publishers could be in line for billions in payouts after EU lawmakers voted to accept controversial changes to copyright rules that aim to... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-09-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A study of how Facebook, Google and Microsoft have applied the EU’s new GDPR rules shows users are being manipulatedOne of the most influential books published in the last decade was Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. In it, the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-07-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Blake Publishing, part of Bonnier Publishing UK, is releasing a "definitive" biography of Prince Harry by journalist and author Angela Levin. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Intimidation, grooming, exploitation: we pay too high a price for the internet’s wonders. The state has to introduce far tougher regulationThe stupidest article I ever wrote, in the 1990s, forecast that the internet would benefit just two groups of people: lawyers and pornographers. I was wrong.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-10-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Multimillion fines are just the start for Facebook and Google, as the world comes to realise how political big tech has becomeIn his wonderful book The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began, the literary historian Stephen Greenblatt traces the origins of the Renaissance back to the rediscovery of a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Newspapers’ business models have been taking on water for years thanks to the rise of Google and online advertising, and they’re continuing to gradually sink as their readers find more of their news on Facebook. The social network and the omnipresent search engine steer some online traffic to... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2017-07-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Reshma Saujani, founder of the national nonprofit Girls Who Code, told librarians that getting young girls interested in technology is the key to better future—and urged them to help her “change the culture” that is pushing girls away from coding, and computers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Facebook founder puts all his faith in an empowering ‘global community’ to cure all our ills. Dream onOn Thursday 16 February, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and supreme leader of Facebook, the world’s most populous virtual country (population 2bn) published an epistle to his 89m... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-05-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sree Sreenivasan and Kinsey Wilson, two titans of digital media, are revolutionizing New York City and the ‘New York Times’ for the digital age Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-02-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Allison’s new series about young women off to college looks to repeat the success of another Boom! Studios series. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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