^CategorySocial Media

Global virus and disease spread, coronavirus

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
November 12, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Social Media

Tagged
__featured, Big Data, computer models, COVID-19, Imperial College London, Jay Richards, Media (traditional), Price of Panic (book), Statistical models, Tedros Adhanom, World Health Organization (WHO)}

Did Social Media Panic Drive Up the Damage from COVID-19?

_{Richards: It was, honestly, terrifying to watch important stories and studies get buried in real time on Google searches.} _{News

November 12, 2020

Medicine and Health, Social Media}

Last month, business studies prof Jay Richards, along with co-authors Douglas Axe and William M. Briggs, published a book with some controversial premises: One of them is that many popular COVID-19 fears are the overblown outcome of paying too much attention to social media as opposed to the facts that got lost in the uproar. And that we are paying the price now in human, as well as financial, costs. The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic into a Catastrophe (October 2020) assembles a massive statistical case. But in this interview with Mind Matters News, Richards focuses on how it affected us: What we all thought was happening and why we thought so—a different story…

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett

Date
November 9, 2020

Categorized
Social Media

Tagged
__featured, censorship, Election fraud, Hunter Biden, Mechanical censorship, New York Post, Twitter, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board}

Twitter Twitted Over Clumsy Political Censorship

_{Getting the algorithm to censor users can backfire and sometimes the results are funny} _{Jonathan Bartlett

November 9, 2020

Social Media}

I once wrote an online forum system called Areopagus. It had a simple “bad words” (profanities, etc.) filter. It looked for common bad words and common variations of those words and automatically prevented any post containing those words or their variations from being posted. This is called “mechanical censorship” and, on its own, it is nothing new. Some users came up with cleverer variations of the bad words than the filter was set for and then moderators had to spot and remove the posts. During the recent presidential election campaign, Twitter has taken mechanical censorship to new levels. Instead of censoring ways of speaking, Twitter has decided to censor specific ideas and thoughts. Automatic censorship of ideas is a problematic…

China flag and praying patriot man with crossed hands. Holding cross, hoping and wishing.

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
October 18, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Religion, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
___longform, __featured, Atheism, Bitter Winter (online magazine), Chinese Communist Party (CCP), COVID-19, Falun Gong, internet, Online church services, Religion in China, Religious persecution (China), WeChat, Xi Lian}

How China’s Technocracy Uses the Pandemic to Suppress Religion

_{The pandemic provided a pretext to install surveillance equipment in churches and surveil believers online} _{Heather Zeiger

October 18, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Religion, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy}

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the ways that technology can lead either to greater accessibility or greater oppression. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now using the same technologies that have given many people around the world access to religious materials and church services during the pandemic to forcibly stop religious gatherings and restrict the distribution of religious materials within China. Although the CCP is officially atheist, over 60% of the population adheres to a recognized religion; 30.8% practice Chinese folk religions, 16.6% Buddhism, 7.4% Christianity, 4.2% ethnic religion, and 1.8% Islam. Authentic numbers may be higher, given the risk of punishment for practicing certain religions in China. The Chinese government has persecuted, tortured, and imprisoned Falun Gong members…

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
October 16, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Social Media, Technocracy

Tagged
Adam Garfinkle, Deepfake detection methods, Deepfakes, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)}

Are Deepfakes Too Deep for Us? Or Can We Fight Back?

_{Keeping up with the fakers is becoming more of a challenge} _{News

October 16, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Social Media, Technocracy}

Since 2014, there has been a new twist to misrepresentation in politics: deepfakes—computer-generated images that seem quite real. Adam Garfinkle of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University explains how the technology, generative adversarial networks (GANs), works: A GAN operator pits a generator (G) against a discriminator (D) in a gamelike environment in which G tries to fool D into incorrectly discriminating between fake and real data. The technology works by means of a series of incremental but rapid adjustments that allows D to discriminate data while G tries to fool it. Adam Garfinkle, ““Disinformed”” at Inference Review Once the problem is reduced to a giant calculation, a giant computer learns much more quickly than the rest of us. And it can then…

Analysis of a sample of water from a river or sea, ocean. The scientist in the glove took water in a test tube.

^{Type
post

Author
James C. Patterson II

Date
October 14, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Information Theory, Medicine and Health, Social Media

Tagged
__featured, bias, Bias (in evaluating information), Bias (types listed), Communication, Freedom of speech, Polarization, truth}

Information Today Is Like Water in the Ocean. How Do We Test It?

_{Often, we must sort through many layers of bias in information to get at the facts that matter} _{James C. Patterson II

October 14, 2020

Ethics, Information Theory, Medicine and Health, Social Media}

Examining specific types of bias in our thinking will help us evaluate the information on key issues that inundates us today. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
October 12, 2020

Categorized
Global Technology, Programming, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
__featured, Ai Fen, censorship, China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese Human Rights Defenders (organization), COVID-19, Fang Fang, Gitee, GitHub, Li Wenliang, Microsoft, Peter Hessler, Wuhan, Wuhan Diary (book)}

China: COVID-19’s True History Finds an Unlikely Home — GitHub

_{The Chinese Communist party, rewriting the COVID-19 story with itself as the hero, must reckon with truthful techies} _{Heather Zeiger

October 12, 2020

Global Technology, Programming, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy}

For a brief window of time at the beginning of 2020, China’s internet censors didn’t block stories about Wuhan and COVID-19, the coronavirus. Caixin, a widely-read news magazine, published a multi-page investigative report on everything leading up to the outbreak, including the way in which the provincial authorities in Hubei, of which Wuhan is the capital, suppressed knowledge of the virus. Fang Fang, an award-winning novelist, kept a Wuhan diary online on Weibo, which was recently published as a book in the U.S. (HarperCollins 2020). For that short time, comments on the coronavirus were not being censored (Wired) at WeChat. Many people were thus able to vent their frustrations and pay their respects when 32-year-old ophthalmologist and whistleblower Li Wenliang…

Group of friends using smartphones to communicate in social media. Concept of a generation of millennials who are online all the time. Warm hipster filter.

^{Type
post

Author
James C. Patterson II

Date
October 5, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Data Privacy, Social Media, Surveillance

Tagged
__featured, Facebook, fake news, Filter bubble, Social Dilemma (film)}

The Social Dilemma: You’re Not the Customer, You’re the Product

_{A new Netflix documentary explores the techniques used to explore, then shape and sharpen, our attitudes, values, and beliefs} _{James C. Patterson II

October 5, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Data Privacy, Social Media, Surveillance}

What is truth? This question has likely been pondered by man for as long as man has been able to ponder. How do you know that what you read or hear is true? How do you know that what you think is true? Why is it that people with different worldviews or belief systems can look at the exact same raw objective data and interpret it in radically different ways? The answers to these questions are important to “know”, insofar as anyone can know anything within a reasonable degree of certainty. However, in our society today, it is becoming more and more difficulty to determine what is true––with any degree of certainty. A recent 90-minute Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma,…

sunset on a yurt , in the grassland of Mongolia

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
September 28, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Education, Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
__featured, Bainuu, China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Cultural genocide, Culture, education, Inner Mongolia, Language, Mongolia, Schools, Southern Mongolia, Xi Jinping}

High-Tech Suppression of China’s Mongol Region Provokes Protests

_{But Mongolian protesters against Chinese-dominated schools are threatened with loss of social credit, which means no jobs or loans} _{Heather Zeiger

September 28, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Education, Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy}

China is removing the Mongolian language and culture from the curriculum and textbooks in Inner Mongolia (see outline map), an autonomous region in China. In August, leaked government documents showed that language and literature, civics, and history will be taught in Mandarin rather than Mongolian in schools where Mongolian is the primary language. Additionally, the new textbooks replace stories about historic Mongolian heroes with Chinese ballads and expunge a popular folk verse that expresses pride in the Mongolian culture and language. In response, many parents in Inner Mongolia (called Southern Mongolia locally) have been keeping their children from attending school on September 1. In retaliation, state authorities threaten their jobs and social credit status: Southern Mongolia has quickly become a…

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
September 13, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Religion, Social Media

Tagged
BlessU-2, Buddhism, David O'Hara, Facebook, Japan, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bird, Robots, Virtual Ifta}

Will We Outsource Religion and Spirituality to AI ?

_{A philosopher makes the case. But he worries, are we really outsourcing caring about others?} _{News

September 13, 2020

Ethics, Religion, Social Media}

Last Sunday, we looked at the question raised by Professor David O’Hara of Augustana University (South Dakota) as to whether AI could someday have mystical experiences. Of course, a lot depends on whether AI can have any experiences at all. An agnostic himself, O’Hara has also asked us to consider how robot priests will “change human spirituality”: What matters is not whether we have invented true artificial intelligence, but whether we believe we have invented it. If we trust the machine, we might let it function as a mystic or a priest, even if it isn’t one. This raises the interesting question of what to do when someone makes a machine that is actually intended to play the role of…

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
August 26, 2020

Categorized
Data Privacy, Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance

Tagged
___longform, __featured, bias, ByteDance, China, Intercept (publication), Michael Schuman, TikTok, Virtual eugenics, Zhang Yiming}

Why Some Nation States Are Banning TikTok

_{The United States is not alone in questioning the social medium’s allegiance to the Chinese government} _{Heather Zeiger

August 26, 2020

Data Privacy, Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance}

Why is TikTok so controversial? It’s the first Chinese technology company that has reached a billion users outside of China. Its main demographic is Generation Z—teens and twenty-somethings. If you take a look at TikTok videos, most are goofy and irreverent. They’re frenetic shorts of everything from fashion tips to pranks and, of course, (bad) dancing. TikTok’s stated mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy.” What could go wrong? Here’s what. Working with China, as Disney and the NBA can attest, comes with certain strings attached, including acquiescing to the Chinese Communist Party’s rules for acceptable speech. Because ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is a Chinese company (although partly owned by investors from the U.S. and Japan), the Chinese Communist…

senior woman with family photo on tablet pc screen

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
August 12, 2020

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Social Media

Tagged
___longform, Alain Brunet, Albert Tsao, Edvard Moser, Google effect, hippocampus, Jared Cooney Horvath, Matthew Cobb, May-Britt Moser, media, Memory, Memory erasure, Memory formation}

What Neuroscientists Now Know About How Memories Are Born and Die

_{Where, exactly are our memories? Are modern media destroying them? Could we erase them if we wanted to?} _{News

August 12, 2020

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Social Media}

At one time, neuroscientists believed that there must be a “seat” of memory in the brain, something like a room with a door marked Memory. They settled on two structures called hippocampi, on either side of the brain’s base. The illustration shows the the hippocampus of the right hemisphere (public domain). But memories turned out to have no fixed address. Neuroscientist Matthew Cobb, author of The Idea of the Brain (2020, excerpt here), tells us, But the hippocampuses are not the site of memory storage. Rather, these brain regions are the encoders and the routes through which memory formation seems to pass. The memories that are processed by the hippocampuses seem to be distributed across distant regions of the brain.…

Technology addicted family: parents and child use laptop and mobile phones. Modern family values - Mom, dad with daughter obsessed with devices overuse social media, internet addiction concept.

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
August 9, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Religion, Social Media

Tagged
__featured, Alexa, Babylon Bee (satire site), loneliness, New media management}

If New Tech Enhances Our Lives, Why Does It Make Us Crazy?

_{It doesn’t have to. Let’s think this through} _{News

August 9, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Religion, Social Media}

It has never been easier to connect but somehow we don’t. Andrew McDiarmid, author of the blog Thinking and thriving in the digital age, asks us to consider why loneliness (and suicide) have accompanied the rise of new communications technology. And he offers a challenge: Here are just a few questions to ask yourself about each tech tool you have. Is using this tool a wise use of my time? Does it encourage me to think for myself? Does it enable me to use my God-given abilities and spiritual gifts? Does it help me accomplish what God wants me to do? Does using this tech compromise my witness to others by causing me to stumble or get distracted? Does it…

The Atomic Bomb Dome Panorama in Hiroshima and the surounding garden in autumn at sunset on the side of Motoyasu River in Japan, with the Peace Memorial Park

^{Type
post

Author
Denise Simon

Date
August 4, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Social Media, Surveillance

Tagged
Arab Spring, Donald Trump, FBI, Geofeedia, Kodak, Law enforcement, Political activism}

Does Government Watch Us on Social Media? Yes… So Does Business

_{They may all be getting to know you way better than you feel comfortable with} _{Denise Simon

August 4, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Social Media, Surveillance}

Discerning public opinion on political and national security issues via social media platforms showed its worth during the Arab Spring of 2010. The protests, which began in Tunisia, spread throughout the Middle East, where social media were the key platform for expressing anger about corruption, poverty, human rights violations, unemployment, and authoritarianism. These protests resulted in changes to leadership and policy in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. They also resulted in immigration issues and sadly, even terror attacks, military conflicts, and civil war. Social media not only enables coordinated action such as rallies, strikes, resistance, riots, and other methods of activism but also provides status reports and communicates outcomes. One research team has developed an AI metric for predicting such events:…

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett

Date
July 27, 2020

Categorized
Data Privacy, Social Media

Tagged
__featured, bitcoin, Blue Checkmark (Twitter), Coindesk, Hackers, OG usernames, Twitter}

What’s the Main Thing We Should Learn from the Big Twitter Hack?

_{Yes, Twitter got control of its platform back but not before its credibility in security matters was significantly weakened} _{Jonathan Bartlett

July 27, 2020

Data Privacy, Social Media}

As we reported at the time, on July 15, hackers gained control of a number of Twitter “Blue Checkmark” accounts. Twitter hands out Blue Checkmarks to accounts that exert heavy influence and have verified identities. That status permits many parody accounts to operate without generating confusion over who is really tweeting, the account or the parody. In any case, on Twitter, the Blue Checkmarks have quite a bit of power. They get access to analytics on their posts so they can measure (and manipulate) their engagement with their followers. Many influencers look for “Blue Checkmark” status to see if an account is worth engaging with. Twitter even allows the “Blue Checkmarks” to filter their conversations so as to limit them…

Grey Wolf (Canis lupus) Between Trees Looks Up and to Right Winter - captive animal

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
June 18, 2020

Categorized
Global Technology, Social Media

Tagged
___longform, __featured, China, COVID-19, Diplomacy, Twitter, Wolf Warriors}

The Age of the Wolf Warrior: China’s Post-Pandemic Strategy

_{The younger diplomats take their cue from a Chinese Rambo-style movie and the rewritten history they learned at school} _{Heather Zeiger

June 18, 2020

Global Technology, Social Media}

While countries around the world have been dealing with the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), China has claimed disputed areas in the South China Sea, taken over the Hong Kong government, and flown planes over Taiwan. One result was a standoff between warships from the U.S., Australia, and China. A 2016 international tribunal in The Hague ruled that China has no legal sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. China, saying that the ruling was void, claims areas that are also claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Japan. The Chinese Liberation Army has also increased the number of troops at its border with India (the Line of Actual Control) disputed since the Sino-Indian war in 1962 (below…

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett

Date
June 15, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Social Media

Tagged
__featured, Android, apple, NDEF, NFC, Nokia, NXP, RFID, Tactile web}

What You Need to Know About The Tactile Web

_{It’s a user-directed integration of technology into life} _{Jonathan Bartlett

June 15, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Social Media}

Many people have heard the term RFID, “radio frequency identifier,” a technology pioneered in the 1980s for creating tracking chips that needn’t be powered to work. This technology has improved quite a bit over the years. The technology area in which RFID originated is called NFC, for “Near-Field Communication.” In themselves, NFC chips are small and unpowered, but they can receive power from nearby devices, thus enabling them to communicate. The amount of work that modern NFC chips can do is amazing. The NXP firm, for instance, manufactures chips that can do full-blown data encryption and signing. These chips are not only powerful, they are also very inexpensive. NFC tags are available as label stickers at prices as low as…

medical statistics and graphic charts with stethoscope

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
May 26, 2020

Categorized
Mathematics, Medicine and Health, Social Media

Tagged
___longform, __featured, 91-DIVOC, COVID-19, Statistics}