Facebook at 15 Needs to Grow Up
Fifteen years ago, Facebook was born in a dorm room at Harvard. Unheralded and little noticed at first, Mark Zuckerberg's baby took over the campus with surprising rapidity. First Harvard, then the Ivy League, then high schools, and by September 2006, the world. Now...
Gaming for Geezers: Why Play Games?
The internet is quite a boon to us older users. The net makes shopping and banking lots easy, effortlessly connects us to family and friends, provides an instant wealth of knowledge about whatever we may be interested in, and delivers wonderful entertainment. But many...
The Mickey Mouse Business of Copyright
The Walt Disney Company is celebrating the 90th birthday of the world's most famous rodent, Mickey Mouse(TM), with a TV special and an exhibit at a Manhattan gallery. Ever since he was first dreamed up by Uncle Walt nearly a century ago, his firm has been able to...
2018 Election Security Update
The headlines say it all: First from ABC News: Fewer than half of US states have undergone federal election security reviews ahead of midterms With only a week left before the 2018 midterm elections, fewer than half of U.S. states have submitted to a Department of...
Intellectual Property vs. the Internet
In the future, September 11 may have another depressing association with infamy and loss. For on Tuesday, September 11, 2018, the European Parliament voted to wreck the internet. They authorized sweeping but ludicrously naive changes to how the net must fundamentally...
Robots and Emotional Manipulation
Our relationships with robots will be as complicated as our relationships with any beings possessing a certain amount of intelligence and free will. Like cats or small children, perhaps, though it is sincerely to be hoped that the machines will be far more obedient...