Author: The Conversation

You might have seen a recent article from The Guardian written by “a robot”. Here’s a sample: I know that my brain is not a “feeling brain”. But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas! Read the whole thing and you may be astonished at how coherent and stylistically consistent it is. The software used to produce it is called a “generative model”, and they have come a long way in the past year or two. But…

There is an urgent need to understand why people troll. Recent estimates show about one in three internet users have experienced online harassment. Across several research studies, I have attempted to construct the psychological profile of those who trolls to harm others. In my most recent study, I wanted to see if trolling could be linked to self-esteem. Do people troll because they have low self-worth? What is trolling? In scientific literature, internet trolling is defined as a malicious online behaviour, characterised by aggressive and deliberate provocation of others. “Trolls” seek to provoke, upset and harm others via inflammatory messages and posts. Trolling can refer to…

To enlarge a phone, or not to enlarge a phone? That is the question. In the world of flagship smartphones, there seems to be one clear trend: bigger is better. Manufacturers are trying to strip away anything that might stand in the way of the largest possible slab of screen. There is also growing demand for thinner phones with diminishing bezels (the area surrounding a screen). This trend has now culminated in the latest innovation in smartphone design, the foldable screen phone. These devices sport thin OLED self illuminating screens that can be folded in half. The newest release is the Samsung Galaxy Z fold 2…

iPhone users are about to receive access to Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 14. It will come with the usual array of shiny new features, but the real game-changer will be missing – at least until January. For the first time, iOS 14 is to require apps to get permission from users before collecting their data – giving users an opt-in to this compromise to their privacy. This caused a major backlash from companies that rely on this data to make money, most notably Facebook. So why did Apple decide to jeopardise the business models of major rivals and their advertisers, and will…

Passwords have been used for thousands of years as a means of identifying ourselves to others and in more recent times, to computers. It’s a simple concept – a shared piece of information, kept secret between individuals and used to “prove” identity. Passwords in an IT context emerged in the 1960s with mainframe computers – large centrally operated computers with remote “terminals” for user access. They’re now used for everything from the PIN we enter at an ATM, to logging in to our computers and various websites. But why do we need to “prove” our identity to the systems we access? And why are…

As we all head back to school during a global pandemic, it’s a good time to ask whether students are learning the skills they need to keep themselves and their communities safe. Over the last decade, scholars, policy makers and citizens have been concerned about whether young people had the key skills they needed to survive and thrive in the digital economy. Canada, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, among others, have developed position papers and programs aimed at promoting digital skills. Coding, in particular, has been promoted as an essential component of public education. Most public schools now teach students…

Passwords, by definition, are secrets. We use them to identify ourselves to systems and gain authorized access to places that other people are denied access to. Every online account is an identity, but only if it is reserved for the exclusive use of its owner. But when it comes to the passwords of children, grown-ups often pull rank, claim ownership and exercise authority without a moment’s hesitation. Breached accounts Over the past decade, there have been almost 10,000 data breaches involving personal information of all kinds, from financial transactions to health data. Data breaches are often enabled by the availability of…

With the vast majority of North America’s thousand-plus fan conventions cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual conventions (called cons) have been a bright spot for fans in an otherwise bleak year. Although organizers have experimented with different ways to run an online convention, none had as high expectations as the San Diego Comic-Con’s Comic-Con@Home. The virtual event, held July 22–26, featured content distributed across several platforms, including video panels, a virtual exhibition hall and a cosplay masquerade on Tumblr. From the beginning, it promised not only to fill the Comic-Con-shaped hole in regular attendees’ summers but also to make a Comic-Con experience accessible to fans…

If thoughts, feelings and other mental activities are nothing more than electrochemical signals flowing around a vast network of brain cells, will connecting these signals with digital electronics allow us to enhance the abilities of our brains? That’s what tech entrepreneur Elon Musk suggested in a recent presentation of the Neuralink device, an innovative brain-machine interface implanted in a pig called Gertrude. But how feasible is his vision? When I raised some brief reservations about the science, Musk dismissed them in a tweet saying: “It is unfortunately common for many in academia to overweight the value of ideas and underweight bringing them to fruition. The idea…

A banknote has been sitting in my wallet for six months now. As time ticks on, it burns an ever greater hole in my pocket. At first, I felt uneasy spending it, following COVID-19 warnings to pay more attention to hand hygiene and the surfaces we all touch on a daily basis. Now I have less and less opportunity to do so. While the World Health Organisation has never advised against using cash, more and more businesses are displaying signs that read “We Only Accept Contactless Payment” next to their registers. A recent global poll conducted by MasterCard – a company with reason to favour…