Category Archives: Technology

How has technology helped communication? The advancement of technology has made communication unbelievably fast and convenient. Its incredible to look back and see how much easier communication has gotten over the years. Communication tools offer one of the most significant examples of how quickly technology has evolved.

In the past, writing a letter, sending faxes, or finding a wired telephone was the best way to communicate remotely with someone. To connect with someone in society today, you have many more efficient options at your fingertips. You can send them a message on social media, text them, video chat, email, or put a call through.

These new methods can help you keep in touch with loved ones, especially if youre aging in place or living alone. Video chat helps caregivers check on seniors who may not need continual check-ups in person. Social media is a great way to keep in touch in general, allowing you to see what your loved ones are doing through the photos and updates they post.

Who hasnt heard of Facebook, Twitter, or Skype? Theyve become household names. Even if you dont use these platforms, theyre a part of everyday life and not going away anytime soon. Regardless of your location, messages via social media get delivered on these platforms at the same rate and speed whether the recipient is right beside you or on the other side of the globe. You can also send voice messages through these platforms, and it is delivered in nanoseconds.

The way we use mobile phones has changed dramatically as well. In addition to social media platforms, there are numerous other applications specifically designed for communication. If social media isnt for you, WhatsApp and other messaging apps enable you to quickly message family and friends and even make calls over Wi-Fi.

You can email through your phone or send SMS text messages through your mobile provider, but many smartphones have their own messaging platforms built directly into the phone. On Apple iPhones, iMessage allows you communicate with anyone else who has an iPhone for free using WiFi or cellular data. iMessage has gotten increasingly sophisticated over the years. Sending photos, videos and emojis are just the basics with what you can do, and the platform has now expanded to include gaming, voice notes, and various app integrations to send information more quickly.

Messaging Apps can be a great option if you have friends in other countries or if you dont have a phone plan.

Within the last decade, medical emergency response systems have seen some impressive advancements, both in terms of technology and in safety measures that have made seniors feel safer than ever before. One of the earliest and most important advancements has been the introduction of mobile medical alert systems. These systems allow users the freedom to leave their homes and live their normal lives, while still having the peace of mind that emergency help is available in case of an emergency. Several devices, such as the Medical Guardian Mobile 2.0, allow users to set up a network of emergency contacts who can also view their whereabouts and be notified in case of an emergency.

Recent advancements in medical alert technology also include a built-in fall detection feature. With this feature, special sensors in your medical alert pendant automatically detect when a fall occurs and send an alert to your monitoring call center. With new GPS and cellular technology, the operator can then determine where you fell, regardless of whether you can communicate your whereabouts or know the address. This technology allows the operators to then send emergency medical assistance to you more quickly, thus providing a great sense of security for yourself and your loved ones.

The use of hearing aids allows people to maintain a happy, healthy life by reducing the strain caused by reduced hearing ability. According to a study facilitated by the Better Hearing Institute, eight out of 10 hearing aid users report being satisfied with the changes that their hearing aids have made in their lives. Hearing aids allow users to engage in common daily activities that would otherwise be far more difficult or even impossible such as talking, watching TV and listening to music. Hearing aids can also help you have a better quality of life by assisting you in:

Communication has even evolved beyond mobile devices and personal computers. We can now send messages through tablets, voice assistants, smartwatches, and more. The smartwatch is a relatively new technology that captures almost all the capabilities of smartphones in a convenient touch-screen watch. You can receive notifications, track your activity, set alarms, and even call and text directly through these wearable devices.

Smartwatches can also serve as a way to communicate with emergency responders. Medical alert companies like MobileHelp and Medical Guardian have partnered with smartwatch developers or created proprietary technologies to provide seniors the safety of a medical alert right on their wrist. These watches include many of the same features as a typical smartwatch, such as activity tracking and personal messaging.

Even the makers of popular smartwatches on the market outside of the medical alert industry providing people the ability to communicate quickly in the case of an emergency. The Apple Watch Series 4 and its subsequent versions have built-in fall detection, which will automatically alert emergency assistance. In addition to its automatic response capabilities, Apple Watch technology also allows users to initiate an emergency call from any location worldwide manually. Apples Medical ID Health app can provide emergency responders access to your medical conditions and designated emergency contacts.

Technology allows us to communicate instantly with people in our neighborhoods or around the globe. This innovation not only keeps us connected but can help us live safer and healthier lives.

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Technology in Our Life Today and How It Has Changed - Updated ...

This story is part of CNET at 25, celebrating a quarter century of industry tech and our role in telling you its story.

Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007, calling it a "revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,"

If 1995 seems a long time ago, that's because it was. The DVD player was the hot new entertainment device, mobile phones were bulky and did little besides place calls, and accessing the internet was a novel (and slow) experience confined to desktop computers. It also was the year CNET began publishing news and reviews.

Technology has changed immensely in the 25 years since then. One could argue that it's continued to improve our lives, keeping us more connected to information, entertainment and each other. You also could argue just the opposite, but either way, there are a few gadgets and technologies that have changed our lives and the world forever. Here are 25 influential advancements from the past quarter century.

Though it wasn't the first smartphone, Apple really got the ball rolling with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Social media, messaging and the mobile internet wouldn't be nearly as powerful or universal if they hadn't been freed from the shackles of the desktop computer and optimized for the iPhone and its dozens of competitors.

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Armed with powerful features and able to run thousands of apps, they squeezed more functionality into one device than we'd ever seen before. The mobile revolution also brought the death of point-and-shoot cameras, dashboard GPS units, camcorders, PDAs and MP3 players. Now we use smartphones to shop, as a flashlight and sometimes even to call people. It's tech's version of the Swiss Army knife.

Now, 13 years after the iPhone's introduction, more than 3.5 billion people around the world use a smartphone, nearly half the Earth's population. You may even be using one to read this article.

Wi-Fi has become essential to our personal and professional lives.

The smartphone and the internet we use today wouldn't have been possible without wireless communication technologies such as Wi-Fi. In 1995 if you wanted to "surf" the internet at home, you had to chain yourself to a network cable like it was an extension cord. In 1997, Wi-Fi was invented and released for consumer use. With a router and a dongle for our laptop, we could unplug from the network cable and roam the house or office and remain online.

Over the years, Wi-Fi's gotten progressively faster and found its way into computers, mobile devices and even cars. Wi-Fi is so essential to our personal and professional lives today that it's almost unheard of to be in a home or public place that doesn't have it.

The internet of things allows consumer devices to connect and share information without human interaction.

Wi-Fi hasn't just allowed us to check email or escape boredom at the in-laws, it also made possible a ton of consumer devices that connect and share information without human interaction, creating a system called the internet of things. The term was coined in 1999, but the idea didn't start to take off with consumers until the past decade.

Today, there are tens of billions of internet-connected devices around the globe that allow us to perform smart home tasks such as turning on our lights, checking who's at our front door and getting an alert when we're out of milk. It also has industrial applications, such as in health care and management of municipal services.

Spending on internet of things technology is expected to hit $248 billion this year, more than twice the amount spent three years ago. In five years, the market is expected to top $1.5 trillion.

Voice assistants tell you the weather forecast, play music and help water your lawn.

For many consumers, the heart of the smart home is a voice assistant such as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and Apple's Siri. In addition to being a prerequisite for controlling devices in your home, their connected speakers will tell you the weather, read you the news and play music from various streaming services, among thousands of other "skills."

There were more than 3.25 billion voice assistant devices in use around the world in 2019, and that number is expected to more than double to 8 billion by 2023. But they also present a privacy headache, since the devices are essentially internet-connected microphones that transmit your conversations to servers at Amazon, Google or Apple. All three companies have admitted to using human contractors to listen to select conversations from the voice assistants in an effort to improve their software's accuracy.

Bluetooth has allowed us to hold telephone conversations while keeping both hands on the wheel.

Another wireless communication technology that has proven indispensable is Bluetooth, a radio link that connects devices over short distances. Introduced to consumers in 1999, Bluetooth was built for connecting a mobile phone to a hands-free headset, allowing you to carry on conversations while keeping your hands available for other uses, such as driving a car.

Bluetooth has since expanded to link devices like earbuds, earphones, portable wireless speakers and hearing aids to audio sources like phones, PCs, stereo receivers and even cars. Fitness trackers use Bluetooth to stream data to mobile phones, and PCs can connect wirelessly to keyboards and mice.

Between 2012 and 2018, the number of Bluetooth-enabled devices in the world nearly tripped to 10 billion. Today, Bluetooth is being employed in the smart home for uses such as unlocking door locks and beaming audio to lightbulbs with built-in speakers.

VPN helps employees work remotely and helps individuals avoid censorship.

The virtual private network, essentially an encrypted tunnel for transferring data on the internet, has proven invaluable for both businesses and individuals. Developed in 1996, the technology initially was used almost exclusively by businesses so their remote employees could securely access the company's intranet .

VPN use has grown in popularity since then, with about a quarter of internet users using a VPN in 2018. Today, other popular uses for VPNs include hiding online activity, bypassing internet censorship in countries without a free internet and avoiding geography-based restrictions on streaming services.

Bitcoin incorporates technology, currency, math, economics and social dynamics.

Bitcoin is the digital cryptocurrency that racked up headlines with its meteoric rise in value a few years back and then its equally breathtaking decline, and it's another technology made popular by anonymity. It cracked the $1,000 threshold for the first time on Jan. 1, 2017, topped $19,000 in December of that year and then lost about 50 percent of its value during the first part of 2018.

The decentralized currency incorporates technology, currency, math, economics and social dynamics. And it's anonymous; instead of using names, tax IDs or Social Security numbers, bitcoin connects buyers and sellers through encryption keys.

Computers running special software -- the "miners" -- inscribe transactions in a vast digital ledger. These blocks are known, collectively, as the "blockchain." But the computational process of mining for bitcoins can be arduous, with thousands of miners competing simultaneously.

Blockchains work as a secure digital ledger.

Perhaps bigger than bitcoin is blockchain, the encryption technology behind the cryptocurrency. Because blockchains work as a secure digital ledger, a bumper crop of startups hope to bring it to voting, lotteries, ID cards and identity verification, graphics rendering, welfare payments, job hunting and insurance payments.

It's potentially a very big deal. Analyst firm Gartner estimates that blockchain will provide $176 billion in value to businesses by 2025 and a whopping $3.1 trillion by 2030.

MP3 technology made music more portable

Entertainment has become a whole lot more portable in the past quarter century, in large part due to the introduction of the MP3 and MP4 compression technologies. Research into high-quality, low-bit-rate coding began in the 1970s. The idea was to compress audio into a digital file with little or no loss of audio quality. The MP3 standard that we know today emerged in the mid-'90s, but the first mobile MP3 player wasn't available to consumers until 1998, when South Korea's Saehan released MPMan, a flash-based player that could hold about 12 songs.

The format's popularity took off in 1999, when 19-year-old student Shawn Fanning created the software behind the pioneering file-sharing service Napster, allowing users to swap MP3 files with each other across the internet for free. That activity famously cut into the profits of the recording industry and artists, which filed lawsuits that eventually toppled Napster, but the format helped give rise to the market for streaming music services like Spotify, Apple Music and many others.

Facial recognition helps us unlock devices but also track individuals.

Facial recognition is a blossoming field of technology that's playing an ever-growing role in our lives. It's a form of biometric authentication that uses the features of your face to verify your identity.

The tech helps us unlock devices and sort photos in digital albums, but surveillance and marketing may end up being its prime uses. Cameras linked to facial recognition databases containing millions of mugshots and driver's license photos are used to identify suspected criminals. They also could be used to recognize your face and make personalized shopping recommendations as you enter a store.

Both activities raise privacy concerns, which range from law enforcement overreach, to systems with hidden racial biases, to hackers gaining access to your secure information. And some systems aren't always very accurate.

Even so, the market isn't showing any signs of stalling. In the US alone, the facial recognition industry is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2019 to $7 billion by 2024.

On the internet, artificial intelligence is used for everything from speech recognition to spam filtering.

Artificial intelligence simulating human intelligence in machines used to be confined to science fiction. But in recent decades, it's broken into the real world, becoming one of the most important technologies of our time. In addition to being the brains behind facial recognition, AI is helping to solve critical problems in transportation, retail and health care (spotting breast cancer missed by human eyes, for example). On the internet, it's used for everything from speech recognition to spam filtering. Warner Bros. even plans to use AI to analyze its potential movies and choose which ones to put into development.

But there's also fear that a dystopian future is looming with the creation of autonomous weapons, including drones, missile defense systems and sentry robots. Industry leaders have called for regulation of the technology to prevent the potential harm from tools like deepfakes, which are video forgeries that make people seem to say or do things they didn't.

Drones have been used to shoot movie sequences, deliver packages and spray pesticides over crops to protect farms.

Drones have really taken off in recent years. What started out as a hobbyist gadget has transformed industries, with the unmanned aircraft shooting movie sequences, delivering packages to hard-to-reach places, surveying construction sites and spraying pesticide over crops to protect farms.

Drones now range from noisy quadcopters to payload-carrying mini-planes. On the US-Mexico border, Customs and Border Protection uses $16 million military-style Predator drones that can fly as high as nine miles, equipped with radar strong enough to detect footprints in the sand.

In the not-too-distant future, drones are expected to crowd the skies, acting as personal air taxis and performing lifesaving duties such as delivering medicine, helping with search and rescue, and fighting fires.

DNA testing has been helpful in identifying previously unknown relatives as well as criminal suspects.

With a simple swab of your cheek or a sample of your saliva, DNA testing kits have helped deepen our understanding of ancestry, introduced us to living relatives around the world, determined paternity and shed light on a predisposition to specific health issues and diseases.

Over the past few years, the kits have become quite affordable and popular. Law enforcement agencies in particular have grown fond of the kits. Using a technique called genetic genealogy, they've cracked dozens of murder, rape and assault cases, some from decades ago.

Then investigators use traditional genealogical research to identify possible suspects, who are then tested for a DNA match to the crime scene. But the practice relies on investigators having access to a large cache of DNA profiles, and it stirs worries among privacy watchdogs.

Quantum computing is making dramatic leaps in computing power each year.

Companies and countries are pouring billions of dollars into quantum computing research and development. They're betting it will pay off by opening up new abilities in chemistry, shipping, materials design, finance, artificial intelligence and more.

The technology is beginning to show some of the promise researchers have hyped for decades. Last year, a Google-designed quantum processor called Sycamore completed a task in 200 seconds that, by Google's estimate, would take 10,000 years on the world's fastest supercomputer.

Honeywell, which once sold massive mainframes, predicts the performance of its quantum computers will grow by a factor of 10 every year for each of the next five years -- meaning they'd be 100,000 times faster in 2025.

Social media apps jockey for your attention.

The online world was a very different place two decades ago. Social networkers of a certain age may remember Friendster, the site that launched in 2002 and allowed people to fill out an online profile and connect with people they knew in real life. But two years later, Mark Zuckerberg changed everything when he launched a social-networking site for college students called Facebook. It opened to the general public in 2006 and quickly left Friendster and MySpace far behind.

Today Facebook helps people connect and stay connected, but its real business is advertising. Last year, it brought in $32 billion in ad revenue. It also helped pave the way for other social networks that help people chat, share photos and find jobs, among other activities. It now has 2.37 billion users nearly a third of the world's population.

A 3D printer in action.

3D printing -- the process of synthesizing a three-dimensional object -- is one of those technologies that edges ever closer to mainstream use every year. We've seen the concept play out on TV and in movies for years, and now with home 3D printers it's finally growing beyond a wildly exotic hobby for a small enthusiast audience.

3D printing got an early foothold as a way to design prototypes of just about anything. The technology allows manufacturers to build plastic components that are lighter than metal alternatives and with unusual shapes that can't be made by conventional injection molding methods.

The devices are used to create materials inside football helmets and Adidas running shoes, and Porsche plans to roll out a new 3D printing program that will allow customers to have their cars' seats partially 3D-printed.

Some call 3D printing the fourth industrial revolution. Spending in the field is growing at about 13% annually among large US companies, consulting firm Deloitte estimates, and will likely reach $2 billion in 2020.

Video streaming services are quickly replacing cable and satellite subscriptions for many consumers.

Twenty-five years ago, a new media storage format was taking the entertainment world by storm. DVDs had superior picture and sound quality to the VHS tape, and they took up less room on your shelves. Movie rental stores abandoned VHS for DVDs, and online rental services like Netflix popped up, offering the convenience of mailing rented discs directly to you.

Then Netflix introduced its streaming service, allowing people to watch movies and TV shows across the internet. Consumers fell in love with the convenience of on-demand programming and began the phenomenon of "cutting the cord." As more streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and YouTube emerged, consumers started canceling cable and satellite subscriptions and rental services such as Blockbuster went belly up.

By next year, more than one-fifth of US households are expected to have cut the cord on cable and satellite services, according to eMarketer.

Streaming represents 85% of all music consumption in the US.

Vinyl will always be popular among audiophiles, but streaming is still the future of music listening. Streaming music is cheap or even free (in the case of Pandora and Spotify) and outpaces any physical format when it comes to convenience.

Streaming now represents 85% of all music consumption in the US, a 7.6% increase over 2018, according to BuzzAngle Music. In 2019, on-demand audio stream consumption hit a record 705 billion streams, a 32% increase over the previous year.

In 2019, total music industry revenues rose 13% to $11.1 billion, with streaming accounting for nearly 80% of that total, according to the RIAA. But at the same time, album sales fell 23% in 2019 and song sales dropped 26%. And that's after declines of 18.2% and 28.8%, respectively, the previous year.

There are millions of apps on the market, helping perform almost any task you can imagine

Mobile apps have changed the way we consume media and communicate, from news and streaming services to texting and social media apps. They have also changed the way we go about living our daily lives, helping us find on-demand rides, short- and long-term rentals, and have food delivered to our door, just to name a few of the countless benefits.

There are more than 2 million apps in the Apple App Store, generating about $50 billion in revenue.

An Uber self-driving Ford Fusion.

The promise of autonomous vehicles has been touted for more than a decade: Without human drivers, proponents say, cars will be safer and more comfortable, especially on long trips. Technology companies have been working on making them a reality for a long time. The driverless vehicle fleet from Waymo, the autonomous car company owned by Google parent Alphabet, has driven more than 20 million miles on public roads since its founding in 2009.

Fully self-driving cars may not arrive in dealerships for another decade, but we're already benefiting from the technology being developed for autonomous vehicles, including adaptive cruise control, automatic forward-collision braking, automatic parking, autopilot and lane-keep assist.

RFID helps many car woners unlock and start their cars without using a key.

Retailers fell in love with radio frequency identification tracking some 20 years ago, touting the little chips as a convenient way to control inventory and reduce theft, without people having to make contact with the tagged item. Today, they have a variety of applications, including tracking cars, computer equipment and books. They're implanted into animals to help identify the owners of lost pets, farmers use them to monitor crops and livestock, and they help food companies track the source of packaged goods.

Thanks to growing demand, especially in the medical and health care industries, where the tracking technology is used to monitor patients and label medications, spending in the RFID tag industry is projected to hit $17 billion, more than twice the $8.2 billion spent in 2018.

Virtual reality isn't just about gaming.

Companies large and small have begun using virtual reality, which transports users to a computer-generated world. Once confined to the realm of science-fiction movies like Walt Disney's Tron, virtual reality has grown into a real-world industry worth an estimated $18 billion.

While the video game industry was expected to get an economic boost from virtual reality, the broader tech industry sees other applications for the nascent technology, including education, health care, architecture and entertainment.

A boy in the San Francisco Bay Area meets up with his preschool classmates and teachers with the Zoom videoconferencing app.

As the coronavirus pandemic has changed the world we live in, forcing us to avoid contact with others and shelter in place, videoconferencing has exploded in popularity. A few months ago, this technology wouldn't have made our list, but now it's proving indispensable. Video telephony has been around in some form since the 1970s, but it wasn't until the web debuted that the technology took off.

Along with webcams, free internet services such as Skype and iChat popularized the tech in the 2000s, taking videoconferencing to all corners of the internet. The corporate world embraced the tool as a way to cut down on employee travel for meetings and as a marketing tool.

As companies and schools implemented policies on work and study from home, video chatting and conferencing apps grew in popularity as a way to get work done and communicate with friends and family, especially among people who had never used the tech before.

E-cigarettes were pitched as a healthier alternative to cigarettes, but they have provoked new health concerns.

Battery-operated e-cigarettes hit the US market about a decade ago, touted as a safer alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes. However, they didn't really gain traction until 2015, when Juul Labs debuted its discreet USB-size vaporizer and quickly became the industry leader.

In 2019, an increasing number of people who vape were winding up in hospital with symptoms that include coughing, shortness of breath and other health problems after vaping -- and at least 54 people have died.

Juul is accused in a lawsuit of illegally targeting young people online in advertising campaigns. Vaping companies have been sued on similar grounds in other courts. San Francisco banned the sale of e-cigarettes in June.

Ransomware attacks cost more than $7 billion each year.

The first ransomware attack can be traced to the late 1980s, but the malware has grown in prominence as one of the greatest cybersecurity threats since 2005. Ransomware locks down a victim's computer system until a ransom, usually in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, is paid. Hackers often threaten to erase data. It spreads like other malware does, through email attachments or unsecured links.

Ransomware attacks skyrocketed in 2019, hitting nearly 1,000 government agencies, educational establishments and health care providers in the US, at an estimated cost of $7.5 billion.

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25 technologies that have changed the world - CNET

Technology ushers in fundamental structural changes that can be integral to achieving significant improvements in productivity. Used to support both teaching and learning, technology infuses classrooms with digital learning tools, such as computers and hand held devices; expands course offerings, experiences, and learning materials; supports learning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; builds 21st century skills; increases student engagement and motivation; and accelerates learning. Technology also has the power to transform teaching by ushering in a new model of connected teaching. This model links teachers to their students and to professional content, resources, and systems to help them improve their own instruction and personalize learning.

Online learning opportunities and the use of open educational resources and other technologies can increase educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning; reducing costs associated with instructional materials or program delivery; and better utilizing teacher time.

The links on this page are provided for users convenience and are not an endorsement. See full disclaimer.

Virtual or online learning: 48 states and the District of Columbia currently support online learning opportunities that range from supplementing classroom instruction on an occasional basis to enrolling students in full-time programs. These opportunities include dual enrollment, credit recovery, and summer school programs, and can make courses such as Advanced Placement and honors, or remediation classes available to students. Both core subjects and electives can be taken online, many supported by online learning materials. While some online schools or programs are homegrown, many others contract with private providers or other states to provide online learning opportunities.

Full-time online schools: The following online or virtual schools enroll students on a full-time basis. Students enrolled in these schools are not attending a bricks and mortar school; instead they receive all of their instruction and earn all of their credits through the online school.

State operated

District operated

Charter operated

Blended learning: Blended learning opportunities incorporate both face-to-face and online learning opportunities. The degree to which online learning takes place, and the way it is integrated into the curriculum, can vary across schools. The strategy of blending online learning with school-based instruction is often utilized to accommodate students diverse learning styles and to enable them to work before or after school in ways that are not possible with full-time conventional classroom instruction. Online learning has the potential to improve educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning, taking advantage of learning time outside of school hours, reducing the cost of instructional materials, and better utilizing teacher time. These strategies can be particularly useful in rural areas where blended or online learning can help teachers and students in remote areas overcome distance.

State operated

District operated

School operated

Open educational resources: Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain and are freely available to anyone over the Web. They are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and range from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games. It is critical to ensure that open educational resources meet standards of quality, integrity, and accuracyas with any other educational resourceand that they are accessible to students with disabilities.

Use digital resources well: Schools can use digital resources in a variety of ways to support teaching and learning. Electronic grade books, digital portfolios, learning games, and real-time feedback on teacher and student performance, are a few ways that technology can be utilized to power learning.

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Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning | U.S. Department ...

Hear from CIOs, CTOs, and other C-level and senior execs on data and AI strategies at the Future of Work Summit this January 12, 2022. Learn more

Some of the excesses of 2021 have shown us how digital technologies can undermine what philosophers call future human flourishing. A lot has been written on this topic in the first few days of the new year, but take two examples MIT Technology Reviews list of the worst excesses of technology and Fast Companys 5 best and worst tech moments of 2021 and its evident how little power people affected by technologies have when things go wrong under current systems.

Whats also clear as we enter 2022 is that global tolerance for technologys unchecked disruption of societal institutions, conventions, and values is waning. This is the year governments will pass legislation to control the effects of digital technologies on societies, across many jurisdictions and in relation to numerous existing and emergent technologies. The EU AI and Digital Services Acts, the UK Online Safety Bill, and the US SAFE TECH Act are just a few of the efforts underway.

Legislation is a marker of societal concern, but its also clear that non-specialist, ordinary people have an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the relationship between technology and society. Whether you are a liker or hater of the absurdist satire Dont Look Up that debuted in December, it holds up a mirror to the importance of goal setting by big tech and how thats shaping our civilization. The films dilemma Do we act to save the planet or the comets valuable mineral resources? could equate to Do we make technologies work for corporate or societal goals?

The complex environment that Duke professor Peter Haff called the technosphere is ripe for change, and its not an easy, technical fix. It will require us to think big beyond current frameworks and at scale and to make international changes that complement and support each other, for example to avoid creating regulation-free domains (Switzerlands of technology development).

Economist Joseph Stiglitzs insight that the system that brought us regulation also brought us regulatory capture should make us look hard at solutions that only further encode corporate and societal power imbalances. As anthropologist David Graeber pointed out, The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.

In the spirit of bold new beginnings and thinking big, here are seven suggestions for different goals, approaches, and behaviors that the technology sector could adopt in 2022, which would support global society rather than corporate goals.

The technology sector has long wanted to be seen as leading the world in decarbonizing and enabling other sectors to become more energy efficient. But research still shows technology companies routinely underrepresent their carbon footprints by failing to account for emissions in value chains, from raw material extraction to end-product use. The seemingly frivolous excesses of blockchain uses like Dogecoin or non-fungible tokens (NFTs), metaverses or entrepreneur-driven moonshots evidence a value system that still overlooks the enormous energy overhead that underpins every use of technology.

Misrepresenting the realities of technologies like artificial intelligence to support an aspirational futurist vision of technologyis still endemic, as is failing to acknowledge when real-world technologies dont deliver on expectations. For example, evidence shows that digital contact tracing apps have not made thesubstantial contribution to protecting public health that was hoped for, autonomous vehicles still have a higher rate of accidents than human-driven cars, and emerging products like Web 3.0 are surrounded by confusing hype.

The dominant media narrative is that technology is driving humanity along a trajectory of progress, interrupted by occasional real-world failures. It might benefit us more to see technology companies as one among many contributors to the future of human potential alongside a myriad of expert philosophers, engineers, humanitarian workers, particle physicists while recognizing that chasing goals that benefit their corporate structures more than they benefit society might be a significant distraction from the task at hand.

International regulators are jumping through hoops to rein in multinational technology companies. The EU AI Act is an ambitious attempt to set an international standard for the development of trustworthy AI through risk-based categories; the UK Online Safety Bill and the EU Digital Services Act take the route of requiring standardized transparency reporting; and the US SAFE TECH Act aims to reaffirm civil rights, victims rights, and consumer protections.

States like California, Virginia, and Colorado were early adopters of privacy protection laws, but investigative journalism has uncovered a lobbying juggernaut that identifies international privacy regulation as a target and gives companies like Amazon huge influence over the drafting of legislation. Meta (formerly Facebook) is publicly adamant that it wants regulation, but the informed view says the company wants to retain credibility in policy while steering legislators to areas where its comfortable seeing tighter government controls.

Regulators are responding by hiring the best and brightest from industry and ethical research for example, the FTC has shored up its AI Strategy Group with academic experts in economics, law, technology, and policy. These are people who are equipped to tackle this complex task, because they understand the technical architectures and processes of technology. They are working to societal goals and will benefit from industry support.

Without the support of industry to make them fit, the cycles of unadopted ethics frameworks (most recently the UNESCO recommendations) will continue. And the parable of Alexa and the penny (as Meredith Whittaker points out) demonstrates that the fundamental issues baked into the relationship between AI and society cant be solved through practices like engineering hygiene and algorithmic auditing alone.

But measures that support a better understanding of how technologies work are gaining traction, like algorithmic transparency standards for public-sector bodies developed by the UK Government. Moving from transparency to recourse leads to accountability mechanisms, and the creation of a relational dynamic with regulators, affected communities, and members of the public that enables them to participate meaningfully in how technologies are designed and deployed. More radical ideas, like enforcing interoperability of platforms and portability of data to rebalance the power dynamic towards users, could change technology, business models, and peoples relationships with digital tools and services.

The corporate capture of research, simply put, means that youre damned if you take the tech company dollar and excluded from access to technologies and data if you dont. Witness Facebook rescinding access to NYU researchers looking into political ad targeting data. Or Timnit Gebrus expulsion from Google over the Stochastic Parrots paper exposed the companys problematic relationship with ethical research that undermines its carefully crafted narratives. To ensure that technology companies arent able to undervalue or coopt peer-reviewed research practices, that power balance willneed to be reset.

New, independent and community-rooted organisations like Gebrus DAIR Institute, the Minderoo Foundations frontier technology network nodes in Oxford, Cambridge, New York, Los Angeles, and Western Australia, and the Ada Lovelace Institute in London (where I work) are vital players, monitoring bad practice, applying pressure, and effecting change. To be truly impactful, they will need research access to technology companies practices, policies, and infrastructures.

Tech worker whistleblowers continue to emerge: Frances Haugen recently provided evidence to the US Congress and the European Parliament that Facebook was aware its platform services were amplifying misinformation. But these individual acts of bravery are not enough to shift the power imbalances between corporate structures and workers perpetuated by entrenched corporate cultures and practices. To disrupt the corporate capture of ethics and support those working in technology, we need a more nuanced understanding of the moral and ethical positioning of tech workers. And we need to mobilize this understanding to empower tech workers to act within companies as directed by their own moral compasses.

Conversations about public understanding of technologies frequently focus on trust that the public needs to be made to trust technologies. But research shows that distrust is frequently a rational response, and it would be better to move the focus to changing industry practices, and building companies and technologies that are demonstrably worthy of trust.

Many technology companies genuinely want to build products that support human flourishing, but if some companies primary goals are mediated through shareholder interests, they risk provoking a further backlash in public trust (2021 Pew Research Center data says 56% of Americans support more regulation of technology companies), and a third AI winter.

The advent of legislation in 2022 will be a giant leap forward. It will begin to move the needle towards rebalancing power dynamics for example towards historically oversurveilled and disadvantaged communities. But such rebalancing will only find real traction with the support of all technology companies, particularly those who hold the knowledge of the code and processes that determine technologies and have the power to create or prevent change.

Octavia Reeve is Interim Lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute.

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7 ways the technology sector could support global society in 2022 - VentureBeat

JJ Rosen| Special to Nashville Tennessean, USA TODAY NETWORK newsrooms in Tennessee

Lets talk about trash.

Although trash is not pleasant to talk about (or smell), for many Nashvillians its become an unexpected topic of conversation.

Just in time for the holidays, when trash cans are brimming with discarded fruitcakes and recycling bins are maxed out with hundreds of Amazon boxes, we got word that curbside recycling services would be suspended.

Its been the perfect storm that would have been hard for anyone to predict. The company that the city contracts with for trash and recycling pickup was already fighting pandemic-related staffing shortages before they ultimately filed for bankruptcy protection this fall.

Dec. 21 story:Nashville suspends recycling pickup services as trash collection woes sap Metro resources

While they attempt to reorganize their company, Metro has had to scramble to keep curbside pickup services from falling behind. With a limited budget and an old fleet of trucks, this is no easy task. Their only choice is to temporarily prioritize trash pickup over recycling while they work through a plan to get everything resolved.

The situation stinks, but it also provides an opportunity to think outside the box.

The term smart city has become popular in recent years to describe the future of city living.The idea is simply to leverage technology to solve old problems in new ways.Tech solutions to solve traffic problems get most of the press but rethinking every challenge that a city faces with a smart city mindset is worth the effort.

So, how can tech help us with our trash problem?

If we look at the challenge holistically, a major goal of a smart waste management system is to reduce the number of pickups that must be made each week to keep the city clean and green. This includes not just residential service, but also public trash cans, dumpsters, and recycling drop-offs that keep public works trucks driving all over town every day.

Smart city tech can help us meet this goal in several ways:

Using tech to reduce the number of pickups and improve the routes comes with the added benefits of less carbon emissions, less traffic tie ups behind garbage trucks, and less wear and tear on collection equipment.

Fortunately, we can look at other cities around the world who have already implemented smart waste and recycling technologies as proof that its a good investment. Cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Amsterdam have already successfully deployed technologies to ease their heavy trash and recycling demands.

With Nashvilles rapid population growth, the amount of trash we are producing will only continue to grow. So, its not a matter of if we need to implement more smart waste management but when.

They say one persons trash is another persons treasure. Optimizing our trash and recycling infrastructure with smart city technology is something we will all treasure someday. For now, though, this situation is making a lot of us feel like Oscar the Grouch.

JJ Rosen is the founder ofAtiba,aNashville software developmentandIT support firm.Visitwww.atiba.com for more info.

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Technology could lead to the answers for Nashville's trash woes - Tennessean

Maine currently has the oldest state population in America. For MaineHealth, the states largest integrated health system, that poses a unique challenge: As healthcare evolves, how do you ensure everyone has access to the right resources? How do you work toward a better patient experience that doesnt leave anyone behind?

The short answer is technology. But the long answer, which I was inspired to write about after hosting an event on modernizing the healthcare experience, is about using technology thoughtfully and with empathy.

What is health equity?

In healthcare, equity means serving people logistically, clinically, emotionally and financiallyno matter who they are.

Many underserved patient populations have delayed or even avoided care due to mistrust toward the system. Recently, weve seen mistrust impact the national Covid-19 vaccination rates: data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals that Blacks and Latinos are less likely to be vaccinated than people in other racial or ethnic minority groups. Worse, Black and Latino people are more likely to get seriously ill and die from Covid-19.

Socioeconomic status, location, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, age or sexual orientation should not be a reason that patients do not get the care they need when they need it. The goal is for providers and payers to treat underserved populations with empathy while deploying solutions that reflect their priorities.

This is where technology comes in. When implemented the right way, it gives healthcare organizations the ability to tailor the patient experience at tremendous scale. For example, in Maine, patients with access to modern technology are very satisfied with telehealth and other virtual services; but in a rural state, the key is expanding access to those without it. In a case like this, finding great partners was crucial for MaineHealth. For example, the National Digital Equity Centers Maine Digital Inclusion Initiative promotes inclusion for residents by expanding no- or low-cost digital literacy services to traditionally underserved populations, helping them master technology that leads to financial stability and improved health.

Using healthcare technology wisely

As we look to the future, were seeing some promising signs. Take telehealth, which skyrocketed during the pandemicnot just for medical care, but mental health services too. By April 2020, the use of virtual care for office visits and outpatient care was an astonishing 78 times higher than in February 2020. Since that dramatic spike, virtual care use has nonetheless stabilized at levels 38 times higher than pre-pandemic.

Telemedicine offers a bridge to care that simply was not possible before. Its a major step in innovation to improve accessibility and affordability across healthcarehelping patients avoid the need to travel to a providers office, secure child care, or contend with unpaid work hours lost to an appointment.

Fostering equity starts with making a great first impression with your digital front door. Its essential for people to feel as if they are treated with dignity and respect throughout the patient journeyfrom booking an appointment all the way to paying the bill.

Here are tactical ways to get it done:

How people bring technology to life

To be clear, technology will never replace human interaction in healthcare. Technology is only as good as the people and processes behind it.

Digital solutions are more often than not the foundation rather than the full solution- for a top-notch patient experience and increased patient engagement. For example, the Patient Experience Program at Maine Medical Center, MaineHealths flagship hospital, employs tactics like empathy training for all employees and professional staff, in order to foster an environment in which patients and their families are fully engaged and empowered to take ownership of their health.

What works well for one patient can leave another feeling confused and frustrated. Thats why its important to combine technological solutions with high-touch relationships as we all work toward greater equity.

This is especially true when it comes to the financial experiencepayment parity is a must. There shouldnt be a two-tier system for medical bills, nor should there be a one-size-fits-all approach. Forget about confusing paper statements, inflexible payment options, and aggressive collection tactics. Provide straightforward information about pricing and options, both pre- and post-visit. And no matter the messaging, remember to be kind. Approach billing communications as if they were going out to a family member or close friend.

Ultimately, if technology presents a barrier at any point during the patient journey, (human) help should never be more than a phone call away. Implementing new tools can be a gradual process. Make sure phone lines and call centers are sufficiently staffed to handle those incoming callsand ideally hire staffers with bilingual capabilities. Aim to reduce wait times to avoid frustrations so everyone feels supported.

Conclusion

If you can achieve the right mix of high-tech, high-touch options, youve hit the sweet spot for improving equity and accessibility, patient engagement, health outcomes, loyalty, and profitability. When technology is implemented thoughtfully, it can transform our broken healthcare system and give every patient a fair and positive experience, no matter who they are.

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High-tech & high-touch: The role of technology and empathy in advancing health equity - MedCity News

NIST researchers studied the effects of trees on millimeter waves, which are planned for use in 5G communication. Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST

Measurements of trees impact on 5G transmissions could prove vital to using a new class of signal.

As 5G technology gets fully implemented over the next several years, cellphones and other wireless tech will grow more powerful with increased data flow and lower latency. But along with these benefits comes a question: Will your next-generation cellphone be unable to see the forest for the trees?

Thats one way to describe the problem confronting cell network designers, who have to embrace both the benefits and shortcomings of a new class of signals that 5G will use: millimeter waves. Not only can these waves carry more information than conventional transmissions do, but they also usefully occupy a portion of the broadcast spectrum that communication technologies seldom use a major concern in an age when broadcasters vie for portions of spectrum like prospectors staking out territory.

However, millimeter waves also have drawbacks, including their limited ability to penetrate obstacles. These obstacles include buildings, but also the trees that dot the landscape. Until recently little was known about how trees affected millimeter wave propagation. And just as few of us would want to imagine a landscape without greenery, few designers would be able to plan networks around it without such a crucial fundamental detail.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has set out to solve this problem by measuring trees effect on millimeter waves. The effort could make a profound difference in our next-generation devices ability to see the 5G antennae that may soon sprout.

The 5G era will feature wireless communication not only between people but also between devices connected to the Internet of Things. The increased demand for larger downloads by cell customers and lag-free network response by gamers has spurred the wireless industry to pursue speedier, more effective communication. Not only could our current devices and services work more effectively, but we could realize new ones: Autonomous vehicles will depend on such quick network response to function.

We will be able to do new things if our machines can exchange and process information quickly and effectively, said Nada Golmie, head of NISTs Wireless Networks Division in the Communications Technology Laboratory. But you need a good communication infrastructure. The idea is to connect, process data in one place and do things with it elsewhere.

Millimeter waves, which are new turf for the wireless industry, could be part of the solution. Their wave crests are just a few millimeters apart a very short distance compared with radio waves that can be several meters long. And their frequencies are very high, somewhere between 30 and 300 gigahertz, or billion wave crests per second. Compared with conventional radio transmissions, which are in the kilohertz (for AM) and megahertz (for FM) ranges, new 5G signals will be very high frequency indeed something like a bird tweeting at the upper range of human hearing compared with radios deep, low bass.

It is millimeter waves high frequency that makes them both tantalizing as data carriers and also hard to harness. On the one hand, more wave crests per second means the waves can carry more information, and our data-hungry era craves that capability to provide those faster downloads and network responses. On the other, high-frequency waves have trouble traveling through obstructions. Anyone who has passed near a house or car whose occupants are playing loud dance music knows that the throbbing bass frequencies are most of what reaches the outdoors, not the treble of a lilting soprano.

For 5G networks, the obstructing wall can be no more than an oak leaf. For that reason, NIST scientists embarked on a somewhat unusual task in September 2019: They set up measurement equipment near trees and shrubs of different sizes around the agencys Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus. The study continued for months, in part because they needed seasonal perspective.

The tree study is one of the few out there that looks at the same trees effect on a particular signal frequency through different seasons, Golmie said. We couldnt only do the survey in the winter, because things would have changed by summer. It turns out that even the shape of leaves affects whether a signal will reflect or get through.

The team worked with the wireless community to develop the mobile equipment that was needed to take the measurements. The researchers focused it on single trees and aimed millimeter-wave signals at them from a range of angles and positions, to simulate waves coming from different directions. They measured the loss, or attenuation, in decibels. (Each 10 dB of loss is a reduction by a power of 10; a 30 dB attenuation would mean the signal is reduced by a factor of 1,000.)

The tree study is one of the few out there that looks at the same trees effect on a particular signal frequency through different seasons. Even the shape of leaves affects whether a signal will reflect or get through. Nada Golmie, NIST researcher

For one type of leafy tree, the European nettle, the average attenuation in summer was 27.1 dB, but it relaxed to 22.2 dB in winter when the tree was bare. Evergreens blocked more of the signal. Their average attenuation was 35.3 dB, a number that did not change with the season.

(As a measure of comparison, the team also looked at different types of building materials. Wooden doors, plasterboard walls and interior glass showed losses of up to 40.5 dB, 31.6 dB and 18.1 dB, respectively, while exterior building materials exhibited even larger losses, up to 66.5 dB.)

While NISTs contributions to 5G network development effort could end up as ubiquitous as trees themselves, for most of us they will be considerably less visible. The measurements the team made are intended mainly for companies that create models of how different objects affect millimeter waves. Part of the effort was a collaboration with Ansys Inc. The company used the measurement data NIST shared with it to tune the tree simulation models, which cell companies use to plan out their networks of antennas in detail.

Most models dont include measurement-based information about trees, said NISTs David Lai, one of the scientists who conducted the study. They might simply say that for a given tree-like shape, we should expect a certain amount of signal loss. We want to improve their models by providing accurate measurement-based propagation data.

NISTs collaboration with Ansys contributed to guidance issued by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the organization that creates guidelines for telecom standards. The results now appear as a new section on trees in ITUs Recommendation ITU-R P.833-10. This publication serves as a reference for signal propagation models, which others will develop.

Our goal is to get these measurements in front of the entire wireless community, Golmie said. We hope this effort will help the entire marketplace.

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Helping Next-Generation 5G Cell Technology See Past the Trees - SciTechDaily

The Amazon Web Services outage in early December provided a key lesson in the emerging role pf the chief technology officer (CTO),saysnoted industry consultant Keith Townsend. "Are there external mitigations that enable you from overcomplicating your system design? The more complicated your system design for high availability, the longer it takes to implement new features. It takes someone who can have these complex conversations with technical staff and the lines of business. There's the need to have a reputation and the authority to impact both sides of the conversation. That's CTO level vs. engineer level."

The CTO, long a broad-based role overlapping with that of chief information officers, is emerging as a leading player in the growth and viability of digital enterprises. A recent survey of 5,000 CTOs and CIOs by the IBM Institute for Business Value bears this out, stating that "the CTO has become one of the most strategic roles within an organization." This "may come as a revelation for some," the report's authors, led by Rashik Parmar, an IBM Fellow. "Yet, this positioning has been years in the making. CTOs are aligned to lead a new virtual enterprise model that is emerging, fueled by a fresh post-digital approach to business opportunity."

Top CTO responsibilities cited in the survey include C-suite and board advisory (88%), software development lifecycle (72%), cybersecurity (69%), innovation strategy (61%), and business continuity (59%). CTOs also add data to their list of central responsibilities. 79% of CTO respondents report a leadership role in their organization's data strategy and 70% state that their colleagues look to them for data governance and stewardship.

In a separate IBM Institute survey of 3,000 CEOs, CTOs and CIOs jointly ranked in the top three, right behind CFOs and COOs, Parmar and his co-authors add, Reporting structures also reflect a radical shift in strategic influence. 40% of CTOs indicated they now report directly to the CEO, and 67% of CTOs said they report directly into the C-suite versus a business unit or geography leader.

Where do CTO and CIO roles align, and where do they differ? "CTOs are focused on a core set of responsibilities, namely technology strategy, operations, and architecture," the study shows. "CIOs tend to own a broad set of responsibilities that bridge from the C-suite to the business units. More than 70% of surveyed technology leaders report that CIOs own back-office applications, including supply chain, workforce engagement, end-user experience, and workplace enablement."

Roles shared between CTOs and CEOs include innovation strategy. data privacy, ecosystem strategy, software development lifecycle, cybersecurity, and C-suite and board advisory initiatives.

The IBM study also finds CTOs and CIOs are often working independently. Only 45% of CTOs indicate frequent interaction with their CIO counterparts. Similarly, just 41% of CIOs highlight frequent interaction with their CTO peers.

With the relentless drive to digital, CTOs are gaining more notice than they have before, the IBM researchers observe. "We see the tech leadership role increasingly split between the CIO and the CTO, with the CTO role being relatively new in the C-suite," they state. "The strategic nature of their job has placed them in a position of heightened interaction with senior leadership, with 55% of those surveyed noting their primary C-suite engagement is with the CEO and an equal percentage engaging with the chief operating officer."

Some CTO responsibilities going forward include the following, the IBM team states:

Some of the basic requirements for those aspiring to pursue a CTO career path are provided here at GeeksforGeeks.

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Never been a better time to aspire to be a chief technology officer, study shows - ZDNet

Our ability to pay attention and focus is in free-fall. The average college student now focuses on any one task for just 65 seconds. The average office worker focuses on any one task for just three minutes.

I was so concerned by this slow acid being poured on our attention that for my new book, I spent three years researching the reasons this is taking place, interviewing more than 200 of the leading experts, and travelling all over the world for answers from Miami to Moscow to Melbourne. I learned that we have been thinking about this problem in way too simplistic a way.

I basically had two responses when I felt my own attention fraying I either blamed myself, or I blamed my phone. I thought I was lazy, or I thought my devices had hijacked me. In fact, what I learned is that there are 12 big causes of our attention crisis ones that run deep in the way we live.

To get our brains back, I came to believe we need to adopt two parallel strategies. The first is to protect ourselves and our children, as individuals, as much as possible, from the forces stealing our focus. The second is to band together and take on the bigger forces invading our attention, to stop them. Both are essential if we are going to rescue our super-power as a species our ability to focus and think deeply.

I think its easier to see these twin tracks if we look at one of the forces we can all see is damaging our attention: our current relationship with our technology.

I learned from Molly Crockett, a leading professor of psychology at Yale University, that theres a crucial technique you can use when you want to restrain yourself at a personal level from doing something harmful. Its called pre-commitment.

This is where you have a goal you want to achieve, but you know you might crack later. You dont want to eat the Pringles. You dont want to check your phone during your childs school play. But you do it anyway. To prevent that happening, you can take steps to restrict your own ability to make a bad choice in the future: you can pre-commit.

To follow her advice, I bought something called a K-Safe. Its a little plastic safe that opens at the top. You put your phone in it, and you put the lid on, and you twist the top to determine how long you want to shut your phone away for. Then its gone locked away, so youd have to smash it with a hammer to get the phone out.

I also installed on my laptop an app called Freedom, that will cut you off entirely from the internet for however long you tell it to. When you use these two techniques, you prevent the future you from cracking, changing your mind, and clicking onto Twitter.

These techniques really helped me I dont think I could have finished my book without them. But up to now, almost all the books that talk about our attention crisis focus on individual solutions like these; they have been, in effect, digital diet books.

I think we have to start levelling with people. Individual solutions can make a real difference. I am strongly in favour of them. The many I have pursued - and that I describe in my book - have greatly improved my life. But they will only get you so far.

At the moment, we are living in an environment that is systematically invading our attention. The factors that are damaging our focus run very deep. They are even in the food we eat and the air we breathe.

On their own, personal changes will not rescue our attention. We have to band together and take bigger steps to stop the forces that are trashing our focus. I learned a lot about how we might do this in Silicon Valley, where I met many of the people who have designed key aspects of the technology to which we twitch and twerk our minds 24/7.

Over three years, I interviewed many times the former Google engineer Tristan Harris, who subsequently became a viral star in the documentary The Social Dilemma. He explained to me that when Gmail was first being invented, he was assigned to work on developing the app.

One day, he would hear an engineer excitedly saying: Why dont we make it buzz your phone every time we get an email? Everyone would be thrilled and a few weeks later, phones began to buzz in pockets, and more people found themselves looking at Gmail many more times a day. He heard those vibrations everywhere he went like a kind of digital birdsong and realised that he and his team had done that, and it was happening everywhere.

Tristan realised they were responsible for more than 10 billion interruptions to peoples day, every day and he knew that once you are interrupted, it takes on average 23 minutes to get back to the same level of focus you had before you were disturbed.

He told one audience later: I want you to imagine walking into a room. A control room, with a bunch of people, a hundred people, hunched over a desk with little dials and that that control room will shape the thoughts and feelings of a billion people. This might sound like science fiction, but this actually exists right now, today. I know, because I used to work in one of those control rooms.

Even as he worked on it, he would obsessively check his own email, making him less focused.

One day, his friend James Williams another Google strategist addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question. How many of you want to live in the world you are designing? There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.

The people who had worked at the heart of this machine told me that in order to understand why social media, at the moment, is so bad for your attention, you need to know one thing. The fact that it wrecks your attention is not inherent to social media itself. Its happening for a more specific reason.

Every time you open Facebook, these companies make money, in two ways. The first is obvious you scroll through your feed, and see ads. The second is more subtle and much more valuable. Every time you send a message or status update on Facebook, or Snapchat, or Twitter, and every time you search for something on Google, everything you say is being scanned and sorted and stored. These companies are building up a profile of you, to sell to advertisers who want to target you.

For example, starting in 2014, if you used Gmail, Google would scan through all your private correspondence, to generate an advertising profile exactly for you. If (say) you email your mother telling her you need to buy nappies, Gmail knows you have a baby, and it knows to target ads for baby products straight to you. If you use the word arthritis, it will try to sell you arthritis treatments.

Every time you put down your phone, they lose both these revenue streams. So their products are designed, deliberately, to maximally capture and hold your attention. The cleverest engineers in the world spend all day figuring out how to get you to switch tasks to their site.

Your distraction is their fuel. So they learn what most engages you, and they target it ruthlessly. They train you to crave the rewards their sites offer. So as Tristan put the problem plainly when he testified before the US Senate: You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.

The deepest solution, I was told by many people who had been at the heart of these companies, is to go to the heart of the problem this business model itself. As the leading designer Aza Raskin argued to me, these corporations shouldnt be allowed to invade your attention and sell it to the highest bidderbecause it is anti-human. It should be outlawed.

This sounded drastic when I first heard it, but I remembered that when we discovered that painting your home with leaded paint severely harmed kids attention, we banned it. You still paint your home, just without the attention-wrecking ingredients.

There are alternative business models for social media that dont depend on figuring out the weaknesses in your attention and constantly targeting them. There are several feasible alternatives. We could pay a small monthly subscription fee. Or these companies could be owned by the public, as with sewage systems across the world. Just as we all own the sewage pipes to prevent cholera outbreaks, we might want to own the informational pipes to prevent the attentional equivalent of cholera.

Once the financial incentives change, social media can be designed to heal your attention, not hack it.

There are all sorts of ways that can be done but none will get off the drawing board until the incentives are right.

Of course, these companies want us to continue simply to blame ourselves, and to fiddle with our habits while they design more and more inventive ways to invade and steal our focus. But it doesnt have to be this way.

Sometimes I hear people say its too late to make certain changes to the web or platforms or digital technology, James Williams told me. But the axe, he added,existed for 1.4 million years before anybody thought to put a handle on it. The web, by contrast, is less than 10,000 days old.

We are, I realised, in a race. On one side, there is the rapidly escalating power of invasive technologies, which are figuring out how we work and fracking our attention. On the other side, there needs to be a movement, demanding technologies that work for us, not against us.

At the moment, the movement for humane technology consists of a few brave people. We all need to decide are we going to join them and put up a fight? Or are we going to let the invasive technologies win by default?

This also goes for the other 11 factors that are ruining our ability to pay attention. Ask yourself: Do you value attention? Do you want your kids to be able to focus? If you do, we have to take steps in our own lives and we need to band together to fight to reclaim our minds.

Stolen Focus Why You Cant Pay Attention is published by Bloomsbury. You can read Karlin Lillingtons review of it here

Johann Hari is a British writer who has authored two best-selling books on drugs and depression

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The 65-second attention span: Technology has stolen our ability to focus. Can we get it back? - The Irish Times

by: Michelle Ross, Nexstar Media Wire

OCEANSIDE, N.Y. (WPIX) Whether its through burial or cremation, when it comes to the end of your pets life, there are just a handful of options to say goodbye. But with new technology, pet owners are turning to water instead of fire to lay their pets to rest.

Meghan McFadden lost her dog, Gizmo, in a fire in her apartment in Queens, New York, on Monday.

Ive had him for 13 years, McFadden said. Its the only thing Ive known. Hes been through everything with me, so not having him here is just terrible.

Laying him to rest is making the grieving period just a touch easier knowing he wont be cremated, but rather put to rest in a more environmentally friendly, and perhaps gentler way.

It was just a really nice experience to have to go through when youre dealing with something like that, McFadden said.

The process is called aquamation, and is done at Compassionate Care Pet Aquamation in Oceanside, New York. Director Alan Hillsberg said it mimics exactly what happens in nature when the pet is laid to rest naturally in the soil. But depending on the moisture of the soil and temperature of the air, this could take anywhere from three months to five years for the animals body to naturally dissolve.

Our process mimics what happens in nature but only takes 20 hours to complete, Hillsberg said.

At Compassionate Care, the animal is put inside a steel basket and then lifted by a crane, which gently places it into a machine where theres a mixture of 95% water and 5% alkali.

It gets hot never boiling, though at 204 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to flame-based cremation, which gets up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

No smoke stacks, no smoke, Hillsberg added. It is completely environmentally friendly. There are no emissions into the atmosphere. Theres no spewing of carbon dioxide into the air.

Whats left are the bones, which get processed into a powder and put in an urn for the pet owner.

Gizmo is the second pet McFadden has aquamated in eight months, but seeing how natural the process is makes the heartache a little lighter.

Once I found out Gizzy died and I needed somewhere to put him, I wasnt calling anyone else, McFadden said.

As aquamation is becoming more popular for animals, its not yet legal for humans in New York State, though there is legislation hoping to change that.

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Aquamation: New technology provides pet owners an alternative to cremation - WDVM 25