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US District Judge William Pauley III has ruled it constitutional for federal agencies to use a Facebook friend’s granted access to a suspect’s profile page to gather evidence for prosecution, making our online identities and avatars subject to similar methods of investigation federal agencies normal
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The Havard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysicists has released the largest-ever map of space, locating millions of galaxies, quasars, and black holes. The point of all this—besides tempting us to make a Katamari out of it—is to study the past six billion years of universal growth and find out where
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In the noble pursuit to inject verisimilitude into the virtual, photorealistic videogames have gone at length to perfect face-capturing technology. Now, Disney researches have taken the captured data out of the database and onto silicon, around a head, then onto a robotic body. Science, Space & Robo
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Critical discussions of videogames take place largely on the internet—much of the intellectual runoff filtering into Twitter and Facebook feeds, waiting to be shared. But does our desire to be ‘liked’ and ‘followed’—as critics or artists—come at the expense of honest critical thought? For the New Yo
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The payoff of sex, music, and drugs? The guaranteed satisfaction of more music, sex, and drugs. According to this animated video from AsapSCIENCE, this Epicurean triumvirate stimulates our brains’ supply of a neurochemical called dopamine, which always leaves you wanting more. In the same way that a
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To many educators here and in the UK, consumable digital technology and social media are only distractions, pastimes, ways to escape the monolithic institution of education. But as schools build firewalls around their classrooms, are they depriving their students from learning how to graduate from u
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A new biology textbook called Inquire is being called “the world’s first intelligent textbook.” We’ll take that to mean that all the extra human cognition that goes into reading, interpreting, and teaching—like drawing larger parallels between abstract concepts, reading between the lines—will be spe
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In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World, “Feelies” are augmented movie theaters equipped with technology that manipulates the audience’s sense of touch. A sex scene, for instance, can be felt as much as it can be watched—i.e. the sensation of silken fur on a bearskin rug as lovers copulate on it. No
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Papo & Yo is the forthcoming magical-real, semi-autobiographical adventure puzzler by Vander Caballero, a former EA Montreal developer who broke off to form his own studio called Minority. Here, a cinematic splicing augments the game’s deeply personal narrative: how the young Vander coped with his f
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Spoiler alert: In the end, our best fictions can’t be spoiled, according to a new study in Psychological Science called “Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories.” The results of the experiment, based on the reactions of college students, elucidate why their subjects could greater empathize with a story when th
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Are we most content doing the smallest imaginable tasks? Mobile apps can apparently make even the most insignificant market cog-work into a fun sort of game, especially if you’re getting paid. For a story, this Wall Street Journal columnist became a freelance mobile stock-boy—and liked it. This wee
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Since last year, educators have made efforts to co-opt Minecraft as the champion of videogames as learning tools. But it’s become like trying to get vice to sublimate into utility—to build utopia out of dystopia. This newest article for Slate and Future Tense by Lisa Guernsey, mother of Minecraft-ob