Reflections on Digital Media & Culture

Children have been known to run up huge debts on their parents’ credit cards (Guardian). Neither parent nor child realized that the modest one-off cost of the game is supplemented by subsequent purchases of game components and privileges. There’s an issue here of game publishers unfairly, though perhaps inadvertently, benefiting from the tendency amongst  children to … Continue reading »

As we ponder the ethics of Google’s tax minimisation tactics, it’s worth reflecting on how dependent the academic community has become on Google Scholar, now a major gateway through which to access academic publications. “Pros and cons“ can stand for pro-ducers and con-sumers (as well as “for and against”). After all, academic researchers are in the … Continue reading »

The book The New Digital Age by Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt and director of Google Ideas Jared Cohen was published this week. I’ve been reading the Kindle edition. As with other books of this genre, there’s much we’ve read before, but it’s of interest who is saying it. Google is after all a major … Continue reading »

This is the end of International Brain Awareness Week. Brain studies have a high profile at the moment. The US Obama administration just announced the release of funds for the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative: “These technologies will open new doors to explore how the brain records, processes, uses, stores, and retrieves vast … Continue reading »

Machines that don’t work invariably put people in a bad mood. But the relationship between machines, mood and failure provides many sources of interest. “Mood machine” is not just an appealing alliteration. Type it into your search engine. There’s something intriguing about a machine that claims to put you in the mood (especially a good … Continue reading »

My ability to concentrate on any task is limited, no matter how much I enjoy that task. Eventually I reach a point where my performance is severely hampered, things take longer than usual, and I make mistakes, become inefficient, less creative, and easily distracted. Sound familiar? To concentrate on a task you need to block … Continue reading »

It’s depressing when spoilsports sully the open and aspirational ethos of the Internet with anxieties and obsessions about cyber wars (CNN). Two weeks ago the Independent.ie reported, “North Korea has blamed South Korea and the United States for cyber attacks that temporarily shut down websites at a time of heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear … Continue reading »

How does the space you are in affect the way you feel? We’ve just published an article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (Online First edition) outlining our results from a study using head-mounted EEG (electroencephalography) technology worn by people walking about outdoors in Edinburgh. We think this is a first. Such studies usually take place … Continue reading »

Watching blockbuster CGI animated features is a good way to keep abreast of advances in digital effects — and philosophy. I can’t help noticing that each movie becomes more gravity-defying than the last, and with 3D, the characters come right at you. In titles such as How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda and … Continue reading »

Tour de Schadenfreude. Yet another celebrity suffers disgrace. Cyclist Lance Armstrong at last admits to winning all those Tour de France titles while taking performance enhancing drugs. Interest in this celebrity’s confession was massive. Around 28 million people watched the tv interview in which he admitted guilt. Tweets and joke websites pile on the derision. Social media and prosumer culture … Continue reading »

Over 40 million Facebook status updates are posted across the world every day. Status updates are simply short messages you post on your Facebook website prompted by a random question such as “What are you doing today?” “What’s going on?” or “How are you feeling?” Your Facebook friends get to read your status updates. Facebook … Continue reading »

As for all the arts, it’s easy enough to indicate how important interpretation is in architecture. Designers interpret the clients’ and users’ requirements, the brief, the regulations, and the site. They also interpret buildings and texts about architecture, not to mention drawings, instructions, illustrations, and photographs. In keeping with the conceits of this proud art … Continue reading »

There’s a scene in the CGI animated Christmas film The Polar Express where the little hero boy who is skeptical of Santa’s existence has to make a verbal declaration that he truly believes … in Santa of course. That’s a relatively easy call if Santa is staring you in the face, and you’re at the … Continue reading »

Steampunk is an aesthetic movement that visualises the future as predicted during the Industrial Revolution … or as we imagine it might have been predicted. Think of flying to the moon in a space vehicle clad in steel plates and sliding windows held together by heavy bolts and rivets, and propelled by the properties of … Continue reading »

NASA successfully landed its latest robotic vehicle on Mars 6 August, 2012, which is also the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I found that fact while browsing the Internet on the theme of curiosity. The coincidence works best if you go with Greenwich Mean Time rather than Pacific Daylight Time … another Internet-discovered factlet. … Continue reading »

I’ve been reading the latest book by eminent neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran and trying to get my head into the way of thinking of brain researchers. It’s a pop-science book. So it contains nothing technically or biochemically challenging. A large section of the book is dedicated to why we like art, and particular works of art. … Continue reading »