a terabyte is not just a terabyte:

"At first glance it seems excessive that Google would charge you $256/year for an extra 1TB of storage when raw 1TB drives run ~$60-80 on Amazon today.
But you need to keep in mind a lot of extra factors:
Redundancy. You’ll need at least two drives to match google’s data safety. Probably more like three with offsite rotation.
Energy. Those Amazon drives are bare. Spin them for a year and see what it costs you on your electricity bill. Not to mention that i5 machine you have wrapped around it.
Bandwidth. Data’s gotta hit the platters, and that will go over wires Google pays for. Both ways.
Humans. Maintaining all of Google’s servers and hard drives takes world-leading sysadmin skills and raw headcount. Part of that $256/year are humans watching monitors at 3:30 in the morning on your behalf."

"The idea that technology will pave the road to prosperity has been promoted through both boom and bust. Today we are told that universal broadband access, high-tech jobs, and cutting-edge science will pull us out of our current economic downturn and move us toward social and economic equality. In Digital Dead End, Virginia Eubanks argues that to believe this is to engage in a kind of magical thinking: a technological utopia will come about simply because we want it to. This vision of the miraculous power of high-tech development is driven by flawed assumptions about race, class, and gender. The realities of the information age are more complicated, particularly for poor and working-class women and families."

"The CardTalk gave us an effective means of playing a speaking record at a cost that would enable mass distribution in the villages. In years to come many tens of thousands would form the main tool used by Operation Mobilisation and other Christian organisations. One missionary working with the blind found the CardTalks ideal, and distributed them to Hindu and Muslim homes throughout India resulting in a number of people coming to the Lord.

"World Literature Crusade, with their 'Every Home Crusade' program faced the challenge that many thousands of homes in India, especially among the tribals, had no one who could read their literature. Permission was given for them to use our CardTalk design, but to have them made commercially, along with records in some hundred or more languages. In this way at least half a million more cardtalks were distributed."

Digital technologies and on-line platforms are essential to the way we work and live. Interestingly, they are defined by algorithms which are not neutral. Kevin discusses how they define new social norms and how our culture is affected by the possibilities embedded in the software we use.

The Kinected Conference by MIT Media Lab uses all kinds of tricks to help improve people's focus and discussions through video conferencing. For instance, if you are faced with a few people around a table on the screen, the Kinect can pick up which person is talking and blur the other faces out, keeping focus on the speaker (demonstrated above). It also times how long someone has been speaking (useful for timed presentations), freeze frame if you want to do something else but make it look like you are listening, and use augmented reality for making projects.

It's done by using C++ software and openFrameworks library, plus two networked locations with video screens, the Kinect, calibrated microphones, and a lot of algorithms (see the map plan). Check out the video below and convince yourself that you don't wish you could use this at work.

Alan Turing is one of the most important scientists who ever lived. He set in motion the digital revolution and his World War II code breaking helped save two million lives. Yet few people alive today have ever heard his name or know his story. A documentary film is being developed to change this. 100 years after his birth, an international production team is set to take viewers on a journey to rediscover the man and the mystery.

Alan Turing was a flamboyant Technicolor genius yet instead of accolades and respect, he faced prosecution by the British government because he was gay. In 1954, Turing committed suicide at age 41 after being forced to undergo hormone therapy to “fix” his sexual orientation. He left behind a lasting legacy and lingering questions about what else he might have accomplished if society had embraced his unique genius instead of rejecting it.

Research and development for this feature-length drama documentary is underway; with plans to reach many millions of viewers around the world online and through broadcast and theatrical release of the film.

“The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral,” he said in an interview in 1990. “Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, ‘I built a cathedral.’

“Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, ‘Well, who built the cathedral?’ Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.”

A range of the historical maps of ARPANET, the Internet, Usenet, and other computer networks, tracing how these pioneering networks grew and developed.

The networked exchange of knowledge and the free access to information and educational resources are important prerequisites for the future of democracy, culture, and society. The Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 has been investigating key questions of information societies since the early 1990s and has built an international competence platform for the critical use of information and communication technologies.

holy crap found a beta of that "discursive sphere" search engine

Videos of projects from ITPs Big Screens class. Looks like fun, but most only half-interesting computer art.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) is a method of displaying information (generally text or images) in which the text is displayed word-by-word in a fixed focal position. Aside from a basic reading aid, RSVP is being researched as a tool to increase individual reading rates. RSVP is also being utilized for research in the fields of Visual Impairment, Dyslexia, perceptual and cognitive psychology. RSVP is available in software on multiple platforms and in many different languages worldwide.

Speeder Reader couples the notion of dynamic typography with the notion of the car as interface. A speed-reading protocol called RSVP (for Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) allows people to learn to read up to 2000 words per minute. This is because it flashes words or short phrases onto the screen in front of you, affixed in one spot; you don't have to move your eyes around a page to read.

Speeder Reader gives you a gas pedal to control your rate of speed-reading and a steering wheel to navigate between streams of text. You can also jump forward or backwards in the text (by sentence, paragraph, or chapter).

In Western culture, the act of driving is very personally empowering (just like reading!). By combining the driving interface with dynamic text, we're offering a model of reading as a medium that gets you places. Here's a preprint of the Computers and Graphics journal paper that goes into more detail on the design and technology behind Speeder Reader.

SPEEDER READER credits
Maribeth Back, Jonathan Cohen, Rich Gold

Stumbled upon this kind-of-great glossary totally randomly in a google search for the definition of 'production values':

"Computer-mediated communications, being a field based on modern computer technology, is one laden with obscure technical terms and arcane jargon. This glossary is provided in an attempt to define some of the more commonly used terms and concepts. Please note that most words are described in very general terms for brevity, and special cases and exceptions are largely omitted. Acronyms are pronounced as individual letters unless otherwise indicated. Some of these terms are also trademarks (proprietary intellectual property) of large us computer firms, though the words may be in common usage.

For much more complete, and thus much more precise, definitions of these and other computer-related concepts I refer you to The Jargon File. (Raymond, 1996.) In addition to technical accuracy this comprehensive dictionary of computer-related slang also provides a wealth of entertaining historical background to - and fascinating insight into - the mysterious world of computer nerd culture."

"biases in computer systems can be difficult to identify let alone remedy because of the way the technology engages and extenuates them. Computer systems, for instance, are compar- atively inexpensive to disseminate, and thus, once developed, a biased system has the potential for widespread impact. If the system becomes a standard in the field, the bias becomes pervasive. If the system is complex, and most are, biases can remain hidden in the code, difficult to pinpoint or explicate, and not necessarily disclosed to users or their clients. Further- more, unlike in our dealings with biased individuals with whom a potential victim can negotiate, biased systems offer no equivalent means for appeal."

Increasing use of computers and networks in business, government, recreation, and almost all aspects of daily life has led to a proliferation of online sensitive data, i.e., data that, if used improperly, can harm the data subjects. As a result, concern about the ownership, control, privacy, and accuracy of these data has become a top priority. This project focuses on both the technical challenges of handling sensitive data and the policy and legal issues facing data subjects, data owners, and data users.

The PORTIA goals are (1) to design and develop a next generation of technology for handling sensitive information that is qualitatively better than the current generation's and (2) to create an effective conceptual framework for policy making and philosophical inquiry into the rights and responsibilities of data subjects, data owners, and data users.

Maintaining an orderly, peaceful, safe, and productive society will increasingly depend on maintaining trust in information systems. However, trust cannot be realized by technology alone. The notion of trust extends far beyond the narrow technical realms of information security. Engineering trustworthy systems requires an understanding of human psychology. It requires effective public policies and laws and must work within those policies and laws. It requires the right business models and incentives. And often, one needs all of these elements working in harmony. But the reality we witness today is different. Engineers work primarily with technical specifications to build information systems, and their success is often measured by purely technical metrics. This approach, by itself, does not address the broader issues that contribute to trust. To build a successful technology-enabled society, the entire cyber security paradigm must be re-examined and integrated with broader issues.

CRISSP combines security technology strengths with experts in psychology, law, public policy, and business from NYU. The goal of this center is to build new approaches to security and privacy that recognize that technology alone cannot provide the information security and privacy needed in today’s interconnected world. The center is founded by Anindya Ghose (NYU Stern), Ramesh Karri (NYU Poly), Nasir Memon (NYU Poly), Helen Nissenbaum (NYU Steinhardt), and Rae Zimmerman (NYU Wagner).

Online behavioral advertising (OBA) refers to the practice of tracking users across web sites in order to infer user interests and preferences. These interests and preferences are then used for selecting ads to present to the user. There is great concern that behavioral advertising in its present form infringes on user privacy. The resulting public debate -- which includes consumer advocacy organizations, professional associations, and government agencies -- is premised on the notion that OBA and privacy are inherently in conflict.

Adnostic is a practical architecture that enables targeting without compromising user privacy. Behavioral profiling and targeting in Adnostic takes place in the user's browser. The ad network remains agnostic to the user's interests.

Custom software recreates various Sol LeWitt drawings. The software also posts instructions on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Human workers execute the drawings online based on the instructions from the program. The workers are paid 5¢ for each drawing. The software then assembles the drawings in a grid. The computer generated drawings, and the grids filled in by anonymous workers are displayed side by side.

Oil paintings ordered over the internet, inkjet on paper, 18 feet by 8 feet

Almost two thirds of the world’s oil paintings are produced cheaply in China and a large number of these are sold over the internet, raising questions of reproduction, authorship and copyright. These commissioned paintings represent a variety of experiments; painted feedback loops, open-ended instructional paintings, and paintings corrupted by digital transmission errors. They investigate the system in which these paintings are created, and more importantly directly address some of the individual painters’ aesthetics and ideas. This series of commissioned paintings blurs the boundaries between human creativity and machine-like, systematic intelligence.

Glasses were built to allow the user to see this 'hidden world' using a consumer Head-Mounted Display with an attached webcam. Video processing software was written to track printed markers, and to use those as a reference to bring a 3D object into the scene with correct positioning and rotation.

"Noam Galai took a few photos of himself in 2006 and uploaded them to his Flickr. A few people liked those photos, but he didn't think of it. Over time, he began to see his photos popping up all over magazines, the internet and as street art. Then it began appearing on commodities (clothes, books, etc.). Now, it's being used as a symbol of protest in Iran. The crazy part is that nobody asked his permission.

Fstoppers are responsible for this great video narrative, titled The Stolen Scream, which details Galai's story, and the process of watching himself become an anonymous global icon with no control over how his image is used (in one case, the photo was attributed to someone else entirely). He even mentions that when he tried to register the photo with sites like Getty Images, they told him the image would never sell.

All in all though, it's a great story about the dissemination of digital media over the Internet and the inevitable conflict between those who create it and those who use it"

"The Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing (LIINC) was founded in September 2000 by Paul Sajda. The mission of LIINC is to study fundamental processing strategies and representations used by biological vision systems and apply these to develop artificial vision systems capable of sophisticated and adaptive image and scene analysis. Our laboratory pursues both basic and applied neuroscience research projects, with emphasis in the following:

Network models for visual processing
Neuroimaging
Statistical representation of natural signals
Machine Learning"

More on Neuromatters
"The human brain reacts to images of interest at a pace that is far faster than a person can consciously register. Researchers at Columbia University have developed a technology, “Cortically Coupled Computer Vision (C3Vision)”, that takes advantage of this near-subconscious ability and pairs it with the processing power and efficiency of computers for rapid identification of images that the brain finds relevant.

C3Vision relies on a suite of patented machine learning algorithms which are trained to recognize what is of interest to a human viewer in a given context. Wearing an electroencephalography (EEG) cap with electrodes that capture electrical activity of the brain, a person is shown a sequence of images at a rapid pace. Each time an image of interest is displayed, the brain emits a distinctive electrical signal which is captured and decoded by the technology. Based on the strength of these neural responses, images are ranked. Over time, the technology learns what types of images are of interest to the viewer, and can eventually identify such images on its own.

“Computer vision systems are good at crunching through lots of data, but rather poor at characterizing images and scenes based on abstract and subjective concepts such as ‘that’s interesting’ or ‘I like that’ ,” said Paul Sajda, PhD, Director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and of Radiology at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Columbia University Medical Center, respectively. “In contrast, the human visual system is exceedingly good at abstract and subjective scene analysis and image understanding, though would obviously be overwhelmed by having to analyze information from millions of images.

With a combined $4.6 million of support from DARPA Neuromatters and Columbia are collaborating on the development of an integrated image triage system based on the C3Vision technology. The system will be used and evaluated in operational environments by government image analysts to examine vast areas of satellite imagery for specific physical characteristics. The system may also extend to video surveillance and security, where the aim is to identify suspicious activity."

Neuromatters is a neurotechnology research & development company designing and building neural signal processing and brain-computer interface systems for capturing and decoding brain activity. Founded by recognized neuroengineering and machine learning experts, Neuromatters' goal is to evolve brain-computer interface systems into application areas where information overload is prevalent.

"Baidu is Google's competitor in China, and is the 6th most popular site in the world.

Origin of the name "Baidu": 'Baidu' was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. '...hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.' Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal."

Response by Jack Dorsey to Verifone's accusation that Square readers are insecure: "Today one of our competitors alleged that the Square card reader is insecure. This is not a fair or accurate claim and it overlooks all of the protections already built into your credit card. Any technology—an encrypted card reader, phone camera, or plain old pen and paper—can be used to “skim” or copy numbers from a credit card. The waiter you hand your credit card to at a restaurant, for example, could easily steal your card details if he wanted to—no technology required. If you provide your credit card to someone who intends to steal from you, they already have everything they need: the information on the front of your card."

The Met has created its first app, to accompany the guitar show. It is embarking on the daunting task of wiring its huge building for Wi-Fi, he said, so that patrons will eventually be able to read and watch videos about art museumwide on their phones and tablet computers. And it is venturing as never before into the rapidly evolving field of what museum administrators call “visitor engagement”: a social science aimed at trying to reach every patron, from the first-timer to the seasoned scholar.