“We are blessed to be living in an age when we have a global communications network in which idiots, assholes, and total and complete wastes of fucking human life alike can come together to give instant feedback in an unfettered and unmonitored online environment,” Mylenek said. “What better way to take advantage of this incredible [...]

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Imagine if the current crop of public figures had grown up during the Facebook era. We might have photos of John McCain in Florida slurping body shots off his stripper girlfriend. Barack Obama rolling a joint on a beach in Hawaii. George W. Bush passed out at a Yale frat party, 40-ounce beer bottles duct-taped [...]

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So there was an earthquake today near LA, and twitter proved its usefulness, yet again. Within seconds of the earthquake hitting, people were already tweeting about it. If you look at the graph, you see that NBC San Diego reported the news right around the time when the majority of the people had [...]

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As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
But others say the Internet has created a new kind of [...]

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A growing group of multitaskers are texting on the go, trying to manipulate the small keypads of a mobile phone or personal digital assistant while ambulatory. They obliviously ram into walls and doorways or fall down stairs. Out on the streets, they bump into lampposts, parked cars, garbage cans and other stationary objects.
Texting-on-the-go is just [...]

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Often, we learn about risks and remedies by relying on the media to interpret medical research and other data that purport to tell what is bad (or good) for us.
The incessant dire warnings – about trace chemicals in the water supply, carbon monoxide in our homes, pesticides used in agriculture and even plasticizers in rubber [...]

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ONLINE databases of scientific journals have made life easier for scientists as well as publishers. No more ambling down to the library, searching through the musty stacks and queuing up for the photocopier. Instead, a few clicks of a mouse can bring forth the desired papers and maybe others that the reader did not know [...]

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mouse potato
Someone who spends all their time on the computer surfing the net or playing games. Similar to couch potato.
You spent seven hours on the internet creating meanings for words on urban dictionary? Wow, You’re such a mouse potato
⇒ Urban Dictionary: mouse potato (via .)

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We are “infovores.” The human eye makes three fixations a second on the world around it, and not at random. Our gaze is drawn to items we suspect have something new to tell us — posters, signs, windows, vistas, busy streets. Confined to a featureless physician’s examination room, we desperately seek a magazine, lest we [...]

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I couldn’t believe it myself at first. An umbrella use for defense? Mary Poppins meets Chuck Norris?
⇒ Unbreakable Fighting Umbrella Splits Watermelons, Defends Presidents

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When amputee athletes compete against able-bodied athletes, they’re called courageous. But when they nearly win, as a South African sprinter did earlier this year while trying to qualify for that country’s Olympic team, they are accused of cheating. It’s a hypocrisy that doesn’t sit well with MIT professor and double amputee Hugh Herr.
⇒ Running Strong

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For each of the four countries, knocking oil off its pedestal is no longer a theoretical proposition but a reality in the making. But despite the lip service our own politicians pay to the need to reduce our oil dependence, none of the solutions offered by Iran, Brazil, China and Israel are even under consideration [...]

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I’m not sure how many of you read magazines like Wired, but, you may have heard of something called the long tail. In short, it tells of how the previous paradigm of big hits (top 40 radio, major movie corporations and such) will decline in their influence, due to ubiquitous technology and decreased overhead. [...]

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An interesting read on how Google and the internet in general is changing the way we think, and read.  How this instant extended brain is destroying our ability to think independently and to read longer form writing.  A little long, but still quite good.
⇒ Is Google Making Us Stupid? (via honeyee)

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