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Daily Archives: May 28, 2018

How the Math Men Overthrew the Mad Men

The New Yorker – How the Math Men Overthrew the Mad Men – “The power of Math Men is awesome. Google and Facebook each has a market value exceeding the combined value of the six largest advertising and marketing holding companies. Together, they claim six out of every ten dollars spent on digital advertising, and nine out of ten new digital ad dollars. They have become more dominant in what is estimated to be an up to two-trillion-dollar annual global advertising and marketing business. Facebook alone generates more ad dollars than all of America’s newspapers, and Google has twice the ad revenues of Facebook. In the advertising world, Big Data is the Holy Grail, because it enables marketers to target messages to individuals rather than general groups, creating what’s called addressable advertising. And only the digital giants possess state-of-the-art Big Data. “The game is no longer about sending you a mail order catalogue or even about targeting online advertising,” Shoshana Zuboff, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, wrote on faz.net, in 2016. “The game is selling access to the real-time flow of your daily life—your reality—in order to directly influence and modify your behavior for profit.” Success at this “game” flows to those with the “ability to predict the future—specifically the future of behavior,” Zuboff writes. She dubs this “surveillance capitalism.”

Commentary – Welcome to the ‘New Dark Age.’

OpenDemocracy – “Data is making us dumber. This seeming paradox has been gaining currency, at least in the tech-saturated Global North. We’re increasingly bombarded with advice on how to manage data overload. The English comedian Dave Gorman summed it up in the tongue-in-cheek title of his recent book: “Too much information: Or: Can Everyone Just… Continue Reading

Visualizing the Patterns of Natural Disasters in the United States

Center for Data Innovation: “The New York Times has created several data visualizations that illustrate a pattern of natural disasters occurring in the same locations in the United States. The visualizations use data from the U.S. Small Business Administration to show that areas with 20 percent of the U.S. population have accounted for 90 percent… Continue Reading

FBI Requests We All Reboot our Routers – But Will This Be Enough?

The New York Times – F.B.I.’s Urgent Request: Reboot Your Router to Stop Russia-Linked Malware: “Hoping to thwart a sophisticated malware system linked to Russia that has infected hundreds of thousands of internet routers, the F.B.I. has made an urgent request to anybody with one of the devices: Turn it off, and then turn it… Continue Reading

EU Proposes a Total Ban on Plastic Forks and Other Products

Bloomberg: “The European Commission proposed a total ban on some single-use plastic products and measures to drastically cut the consumption of others, in the latest push by the EU to reduce carbon emissions and marine litter threatening its seas. The ban will apply to plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and sticks for… Continue Reading

The General Data Protection Regulation: What Does It Mean for Libraries Worldwide?

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) – “The European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will take effect May 25, 2018, and is likely to have a significant impact on the way libraries around the globe manage personal data. To help libraries consider what they need to do in response to the GDPR, the Association… Continue Reading

Smart devices in your home have data that may be used by law enforcement

Your Home is Your…Snitch? When your appliances work as police informants – By Daniel Zwerdling – The Marshall Project Justice Lab column examines the science, social science and technology of criminal justice. “Police records in Bentonville, Arkansas show that James Bates called 911 on Sunday morning just before Thanksgiving 2015, and reported chilling news: he’d… Continue Reading

Bringing Wikipedia into the Library

American Libraries Magazine – Bringing Wikipedia into the Library – “Wikipedia might seem like a librarian’s nemesis, but the online encyclopedia, its community, and libraries are increasingly working together to provide free and open information to all.” “Wikipedia contributors and librarians share similar skills: an understanding of quality research materials, an interest in effective citation and… Continue Reading

How Google News Compares to Twitter, Facebook, and RSS for Your News

Gizmodo: “There’s a new news aggregator in town (well, an old one, revamped). The updated, refreshed, and smarter version of Google News is out now on Android, iOS, and the web, so how does this reimagining of the news stack up against the other ways we usually get our headlines—Facebook, Twitter, and RSS? We’ve been… Continue Reading