The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published the 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Technology on her terms in France in 2024. The report examines the impact of technology on girls' education opportunities and future technological development. It highlights ICT's potential to overcome educational barriers …
A rianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, cofounders of Huffington Post, sold the popular American website to Internet services and media company, AOL, in March for US $315 million, prompting a group of bloggers to file a $105-million lawsuit against Huffington Post and AOL. The suit is led by Jonathan Tasini, …
THE “about us” section of http://mother-earth-journal. com describes it rather modestly as a citizen journalist project in the US. The content on the site can scarcely be called modest. For one, a rather nononsense home page has articles on mercury toxins, a feature on the Gulf of Mexico, a year …
Calls in Canada for trials of a contentious treatment for multiple sclerosis illustrate how social media can affect research priorities, say Roger Chafe and his colleagues. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7344/full/472410a.html
This first ever report on the energy choices made by IT companies like Akamai, Amazon.com , Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo highlights the need for greater transparency from global IT brands on the energy and carbon footprint of their Internet infrastructure. "How dirty is your data?" …
Imagine being able to access a book anywhere in the world. And not just books but documents, treaties and papers on any subject, in any language, in any corner of the world—all at the click of the mouse. That may be the ultimate fantasy of the bibliophile, the scholar, the …
Facebook-inspired protests in Azerbaijan are turning into a cat-andmouse game. On March 14, the police blocked access to the university in the country’s capital Baku, but there were no protesters. This, after a protest day on March 11—called by Facebook users—never materialised because key leaders were arrested. Uzeyir Mammadli, an …
Scientists have pieced together remains of Xray equipment dating shortly after the discovery of the rays in 1895. Researchers from the same Dutch town where the system was originally built used it to produce striking images that belie its simplicity and age. The team said the images required a radiation …
The microblogging site Twitter has become the setting for a battle of wits between the police and residents of Rio de Janeiro evading a drunk-driving campaign, Operation Lei Seca. Anyone who has had too many beers but wants to drive home can turn to a page on Twitter where citizens …
This report analyzes how the humanitarian community and the emerging volunteer and technical communities worked together in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and recommends ways to improve coordination between these two groups in future emergencies.
Governments and corporations are eager to control the Net. Surveillance of netizens is commonplace whether in democracies or in totalitarian regimes. What does the loss of Internet freedom mean? Down To Earth finds out. As the Internet becomes the public square and the marketplace of our world, it is increasingly …
Ideas and ideologies, images and reports of events, both minor and cataclysmic, fly on the Internet, swirling through cyberspace, gathering resonance, metamorphosing and touching millions of lives in different ways. Many of the ideas—and visuals—could be banal (as they very often are), some dangerous, others bringing promise of change. Some …
Our world is increasingly held together by the network of digital communications networks we call the Internet. Business, government, politics, science and the arts have all been fundamentally transformed by the fact that everyone’s connected to everyone else, everywhere, and no one needs to get permission to collaborate, trade, or …
One day there will be thousands of volunteers out there patrolling the Internet in Russia. That is the dream of a new organisation launched in the first week of February, the League of Internet Safety. The league brings together the three major mobile service providers: Mobile TeleSystems, VimpelCom, and Megafon, …
As global distaste for fossil fuels grows and climate change becomes a household phrase, nuclear energy has new supporters. The site nuclearfissionary.com is run by one such group. It claims arguments against nuclear energy were solved decades ago and spews venom on anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace. To be fair, the …
With social media stoking revolt against tyranny in Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, it is difficult to be critical of virtual interactions. But there is a group of writers who play devil’s advocate. Last year, journalist Nick Carr warned us of the socially numbing aspects of the Internet, and Evegeny Moro …
On February 4, the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) doled out its last five batches of IP numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic. Rod Beckstrom, who heads the organisation that designates numbers which give a site its Internet addresses, said, “ICANN cannot give out any …
A Finnish group calling itself the Food Liberation Army has posted a spoof terrorist-style clip on video-sharing website YouTube, with five masked characters threatening to “execute” Ronald McDonald if the fast food giant failed to answer its questions. The group “kidnapped” the McDonald’s mascot from a Helsinki restaurant. “We love …
On January 21, a special ship began laying an undersea fiber-optic cable between Venezuela and Cuba, a connection that will dramatically improve Cuba’s telephone and Internet services. Cuban officials estimate the project carried out by Alcatel-Lucent SA of Paris will cost about US $70 million. Cuba is the only nation …
After the WikiLeak revelation, cyber activists went to town claiming the disclosures as another indicator of internet-fostered democracy. Within days Western governments and their friends in the cyberworld clamped down on WikiLeaks. The not-so-thinly-veiled attacks on the whistle-blowing site and its charismatic founder, Julian Assange, by Western governments was covertly …
JOURNALISM is a serious business. You need to inform the gullible who is taking advantage of them. But let us admit that while reading the morning paper we, at least sometimes, wish journalists had a funny bone. The website www.gobionastick.com does precisely that and in a straight-faced, journalistic manner. An …
