The online virtual reality experience that almost every tech giant today wishes to commercially exploit may not catch onIn the 1992 sci-fi dystopia Snow Crash, the author Neal Stephenson imagined a bleak 21st century where the collapse of the global economy had seen governments fall and their power replaced by a few giant businesses. The book is notable for prescience, anticipating the adoption of what was then seen as outlandish technologies like the wireless internet, cryptocurrencies and smartphones, as well as the rise of the gig economy. But it is the book’s prophetic vision of “the metaverse” that has revived interest in the work.That is because Stephenson described the online virtual reality experience that almost every tech giant today wishes to commercially exploit. Last October, Microsoft announced that users of its Teams online meetings app would be able to turn themselves into avatars – the term Stephenson popularised in Snow Crash – to encourage users into virtual interaction. Days later Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, rebranded his company as Meta, with a focus on the potential for virtual worlds. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2022-02-07 19:11:48 UTC ]
Moves to oust the company’s leadership team of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg suddenly look a lot more serious as its legal position becomes more perilous So far, the public and political reaction in the US to Facebook’s grave misdeeds has been surprisingly muted. That’s about to change.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-12-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sequel to the Canadian author’s bestselling feminist dystopia will be published around the world in September 2019Margaret Atwood has announced a sequel to her bestselling feminist dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, titled The Testaments. It will be published in September 2019.“Dear Readers,”... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-11-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new book festival for fans of fantasy, science fiction and horror is launching in Edinburgh next summer featuring authors including Scottish sci-fi writer Ken MacLeod and The Bone Season's Samantha Shannon. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-11-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon Publishing’s science fiction and fantasy imprint 47North has signed the recent winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award, Anne Charnock, for a further novel, set in the “disturbing near-future”. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-10-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This week: inside the golden age of science fiction, plus the epic drama of our atmosphere. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new book looks at four men who are largely responsible for the genre of science fiction as we know it today. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2018-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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FutureBook is partnering with social reading app The Pigeonhole to run a short story competition exploring the future of the book. The winning author is to be hosted at the FutureBook Conference, 30th November. Judges will be Molly Flatt, author and associate editor of FutureBook; Anna Jean... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-09-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, published a roughly 3,300-word blog post cataloging the steps the company has taken to prevent a repeat of the 2016 manipulation. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2018-09-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Just days after his op-ed in The Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg has published another lengthy note titled 'Preparing for Elections,' this time via Facebook. In it the Facebook CEO describes his platform's removal of fake accounts ahead of electio... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2018-09-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell story on Tuesday about what reporters Kirsten Grind and Deepa Seetharaman call “the messy, expensive split between Facebook and WhatsApp’s founders.” The dishy piece makes for great reading. (Do the multi-billionaire founders of global communications... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2018-06-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon Publishing’s science fiction and fantasy imprint, 47North, has signed a new series of books from author James Maxwell. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-05-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Four Tor authors—Charlie Jane Anders, Seth Dickinson, S.L. Huang, and V.E. Schwab—discuss identity, characters, and worldbuilding in science fiction and fantasy. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-05-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The novelist Margaret Atwood recently caused a stir when, during an interview with Variety, she said that the 9/11 hijackers “got the idea” to fly planes into buildings from watching “Star Wars.” Atwood, the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and other dystopian classics, did not have the facts... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-05-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mark Zuckerberg is over it. Yes, Facebook allowed the data of more than 80 million users to land in the hands of a partisan political consulting firm during an obscenely contentious presidential election, but that's all in the distant past. You know,... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2018-05-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The 25-year-old imprint at Penguin Random House’s DK division has adopted a hybrid publishing model to evolve along with the video game industry. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-04-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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OUP president Niko Pfund told PW that after Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill, it became clear that Siva Vaidhyanathan's book, originall scheduled for fall, "needed to be part of the conversation" now taking place. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-04-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After two days of testimony on Capitol Hill, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know: He’s sorry — really, really sorry — about that Cambridge Analytica thing, and he’s open to some degree of internet regulation. Is he really sorry? If contrition is measured in a willingness to put on a suit... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In an interview released for the first time today, the Facebook CEO discussed privacy with Freaknonomics Radio last summer. It was a simpler time. Last summer, months before Mark Zuckerberg was feeling the intense pressure of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, the Facebook CEO said he knew... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2018-04-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mark Zuckerberg's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad 2018 keeps getting worse. As people have begun downloading their Facebook data, they've found something unsettling: videos they recorded, but never published on the site. Recently, a Select/All... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2018-03-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Federal Trade Commission confirmed Monday that it opened an investigation of Facebook and the Senate Judiciary Committee called on the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify as scrutiny mounts over the social media giant’s handling of user data. The unfolding crisis at... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-03-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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