Science Blog: Drawing Is Better Than Writing For Memory Retention. “Older adults who take up drawing could enhance their memory, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Waterloo found that even if people weren’t good at it, drawing, as a method to help retain new information, was better than re-writing notes, visualization exercises or passively looking at images.”
Research & Opinion
Born to Be 3D: Born-Digital Data Stewardship (Library of Congress)
Library of Congress: Born to Be 3D: Born-Digital Data Stewardship. “On November 2, the Library hosted a forum on born-digital, three-dimensional data stewardship. Born-digital 3D materials constitute important cultural documentation, facilitate scientific research, and such assets are entering cultural heritage collections. Yet, preservation approaches and stewardship requirements are not yet mainstream or standardized for born-digital 3D materials.”
Phys .org: I used facial recognition technology on birds
Phys .org: I used facial recognition technology on birds. “As a birder, I had heard that if you paid careful attention to the head feathers on the downy woodpeckers that visited your bird feeders, you could begin to recognize individual birds. This intrigued me. I even went so far as to try sketching birds at my own feeders and had found this to be true, up to a point. In the meantime, in my day job as a computer scientist, I knew that other researchers had used machine learning techniques to recognize individual faces in digital images with a high degree of accuracy. These projects got me thinking about ways to combine my hobby with my day job. Would it be possible to apply those techniques to identify individual birds?”
TechCrunch: The nation-state of the internet
TechCrunch: The nation-state of the internet. “The internet is a community, but can it be a nation-state? It’s a question that I have been pondering on and off this year, what with the rise of digital nomads and the deeply libertarian ethos baked into parts of the blockchain community. It’s clearly on a lot of other people’s minds as well: when we interviewed Matt Howard of Norwest on Equity a few weeks back, he noted (unprompted) that Uber is one of the few companies that could reach ‘nation-state’ status when it IPOs. Clearly, the internet is home to many, diverse communities of similar-minded people, but how do those communities transmute from disparate bands into a nation-state?”
FAQ: Do you think that an increase in algorithms is leading to a decline in human judgement? (Online Journalism Blog)
Online Journalism Blog: FAQ: Do you think that an increase in algorithms is leading to a decline in human judgement?. “The latest in my series of FAQ posts follows on from the last one, in response to a question from an MA student at City University who posed the question ‘Do you think that an increase in algorithmic input is leading to a decline in human judgement?’. Here’s my response.”
CNET: Congress should dig in on Google’s China and data issues, not just bias
CNET: Congress should dig in on Google’s China and data issues, not just bias. “In his first congressional hearing, later this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai will take the hot seat on Capitol Hill, where’s he expected to be grilled by lawmakers. The question is will they use their time to actually query one of the most powerful companies on the planet about some of the big issues — like data privacy, China and censorship — facing Google.”
Nieman Lab: Few people are actually trapped in filter bubbles. Why do they like to say that they are?
Nieman Lab: Few people are actually trapped in filter bubbles. Why do they like to say that they are?. “We’re not trapped in filter bubbles, but we like to act as if we are. Few people are in complete filter bubbles in which they only consume, say, Fox News, Matt Grossmann writes in a new report for Knight (and there’s a summary version of it on Medium here). But the ‘popular story of how media bubbles allegedly undermine democracy’ is one that people actually seem to enjoy clinging to.”
