“The internet is forever.” So goes a saying regarding the impossibility of removing material – such as stolen photographs – permanently from the web. Yet paradoxically the vast and growing digital sphere…
Eyes are the windows to the soul, and perhaps an extra pair of hands too.
arosoft/Shutterstock
Eye tracking devices sound a lot more like expensive pieces of scientific research equipment than joysticks – yet if the latest announcements about the latest Assassin’s Creed game are anything to go by…
Whether as “Tech City” or “Silicon Roundabout”, the cluster of digital start-ups centred around Old Street in East London is well known. The extensive network of similar start-up clusters in cities outside…
Late to the party, but not necessarily with nothing to bring.
Andrew Cunningham
Maha Shaikh, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
A new arrival into an extremely competitive market, the first Ubuntu-powered phone has finally gone on sale in Europe – two years after a failed attempt to generate crowdfunding nevertheless raised US$12m…
Google rarely demonstrates the transparency it requires of its users.
Chris Ison/PA
After the European Court of Justice ruled that there was a “right to be forgotten” from Google’s search results, Google’s Advisory Council embarked on a roadshow aimed at debating the issue. While this…
Life online can continue even after the real life version ends.
scyther5/Shutterstock
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. So said Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years. Now that we spend so much time online, our digital…
The email address as we know it was born when Ray Tomlinson introduced the “@” sign in 1977, since which email has continually grown in popularity as a communication tool for work and pleasure – until…
Future technology won’t just be a gadget we use, it will re-structure our societies.
Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock
Throughout history, whenever new technologies have emerged that change our means of production and ability to communicate they have tended to transform society. The rapid technological development of the…
Facebook knows what you’re doing. What you’re watching. How you’re feeling.
Khakimullin Aleksandr/Shutterstock/Wired
Did you recently buy a Samsung smart TV? If you are worried about privacy, you may be wondering how smart that decision was following the manufacturer’s warnings that its voice-activated televisions may…
News that the Conservative Party has been spending more than £100,000 a month on Facebook advertising has its supporters and rivals all wondering if this is money well spent. It seems like a lot of money…
You never know what you’ll find when you rifle through a box of war diaries.
PA
Digital networks and databases appear to crush historical distance. Archives of war increasingly come to us. A simple YouTube search throws up a chaotic mix of official and unauthorised, user-generated…
The Earth recently entered a new epoch – the Anthropocene. Since the dawn of modern mechanised industry and the use of fossil fuels, the story goes that human beings have become the dominant force for…
Microsoft’s part in a US$70m investment in CyanogenMod has raised many eyebrows: why is Microsoft investing in a popular version of the Android mobile phone operating system, when it has its own competing…
Checking social networks is a morning ritual for many, and when that routine is disrupted – as it was recently when Facebook’s servers went down – its absence can come as a surprise. But what also becomes…
Are they really worth the cost?
EPA/Vincent Jannink
Apple has reported the largest quarterly profit ever made by a public company. This is largely thanks to record iPhone sales of 74.5m units over the Christmas period. With prices starting at US$649 for…
The longing of many debtors.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA Archive
Despite its role in bringing on the financial crisis, debt continues to plague many of us the world over (just ask the Greeks). In the UK the appetite for debt is undiminished, with the run up to Christmas…
When we think about income and wealth inequalities we are tempted to lay blame on the old way of doing things. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty picks out inherited money as a driver…
The UK government has been ranked first in the world for its transparency and the ease of accessing government information by the World Wide Web Foundation’s OpenData barometer. The report echoes the Open…