Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 10
Posts 1 - 10

Eine Sprache macht noch keinen Terminator

(A language does not make a terminator yet)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, threat
Summary | Recently Facebook had the biggest anxiety about artificial intelligence come true under their watch: two AI robots started talking to one another in a way that their programmers could not understand. They quickly killed the two robots. Elsewhere AI robots have been caught to lie strategically. They have omitted parts of the truth to get what they wanted in a simple negotiation.
Image Description | A Getty image of the terminator.
Image Tags | male(s)

Generation Tinder darf Blut spenden - das wurde Zeit

(Generation Tinder may donate blood - it was time)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 5.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, online dating, threat
Summary | Blood donation criteria have loosened up for the first time in decades. Now men engaging in homosexual encounters are no longer banned for life from donating blood, they just have to wait a year after any "risky sexual contacts" to donate blood. This affects the entire "generation tinder" because all people with more than a total of two sexual partners in their lifetime were banned from donatig blood.
Image Description | Photocase image of a man and woman making out in a jungle.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Ruhe, bitte!

(Silence, please!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 26.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | New technology is likely contributing to insomnia. One third of adults suffer insomnia. All our internet devices make it difficult for us to let go of what is happening in the world because we can access it at all times. Sleep experts advise people who suffer from insomnia to stop looking at notifications before one goes to sleep and to ban all electronic devices from the bedroom.
Image Description | Image of a woman sleeping on a skyscraper and images of men (experts) mentioned in the article.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Der Nächste, bitte!

(Next, please!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 13.7.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | addiction, diversity, gender, online dating, threat
Summary | Online dating is tricky because the apprearance of an abundance of romantic prospects makes us reluctant to stick with one person. Many people get into a state of sexual restlessness that borders on sexual addiction with the help of online dating apps. Many such apps encourage casual sex which bears the risk of sex addiction. One app notorious for being mainly for casual sex is Grindr, a dating app for gay men which is designed. Women on dating apps have the problem that they are most attractive in their early 20s to men of all ages which means that they are less likely to find a partner the older they are.
Image Description | Images of men and women.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Das Monster lebt

(The monster is alive)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of new employees to battle cyberbullying on their platform and to remove offensive material as quickly as possible. But a couple thousand are not very many people to combat wrongdoings of 2 billion users. German politicians are trying to make Facebook comply with local laws about removing illegal content from the internet but Facebook is nowhere near fulfilling those requirements.
Image Description | A photograph of a man holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo and the face of a monster.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone

Kopfschuss: Glatte Eins!

(Shot to the head: A+!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | game, gender, school, threat, youth
Summary | A school in Norway is offering a course in E-sport, i.e. playing online team sports in shooter video games like Counter:Strike. The course is very popular among the male students (only one female student has taken the course) and has shown that students at risk of failing the year tend to do better in school overall when they are in a video game class. They get boosts of self-confidence because they can hold presentations about something they are passionate about. The school wants to reflect their students' reality in their curriculum and video games are a passion of many students and a future job for some of them. Shooter games are less stigmatized in Norway than in Germany.
Image Description | Image of male students playing video games.
Image Tags | game, male(s), school

"Wir wollen die Menschen aus ihrem Zombiesein aufwecken"

("We want to wake people up from their zombie existence")

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 3.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | game, smartphone, threat, virtual reality
Summary | Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game. It is different from virtual reality in that it uses the real topography around the player as the site of the game which is virtually enhanced with Pokémon which can be "caught". It was designed to make people engage with the outside world and each other while playing, to lead people into parks they never went to. The most effective way to do that nowadays is to create an incentive with the smartphone.
Image Description | Getty image of Pokémon Go players at night and a portrait of the interviewee.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Sprich mit dem Bot

(Talk to the bot)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, threat, Twitter
Summary | Most big tech companies seem to agree: chatbots are the future. They mean a move from downloading several apps to using just one app that incorporates services (chatbots) from third parties. These third party services are accessible through a conversational interface: chatting with a bot. Artificial intelligence research is making huge strides but is still faulty as the Tay debacle showed. Microsoft let their AI chatbot Tay loose on Twitter to learn how people actually speak. What Tay learned however was mostly racist and otherwise inappropriate so the experiment was ended prematurely.
Image Description | Reuters image of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Image Tags | male(s)

Da hilft auch das Internet nicht

(The internet won't help with that)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, politics, smartphone, threat
Summary | The access to internet has been declared a basic human right because it was thought that the internet is the only way to access unbiased information that may be censored elsewhere. While it is true that the internet opens up a flood of information unavailable outside of it, it does not guarantee that people become less biased or more tolerant. This is exemplified by the clash of cultures which happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne where foreign refugees sexually harrassed German women publicly despite all having had smartphones and thus access to the internet which could have taught them that this is inappropriate behavior in Germany.
Image Description | Portrait of the author.
Image Tags | male(s)

Sag noch einmal Wasserpistole!

(Say water pistol one more time!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 2.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, politics, threat
Summary | Apple will replace the pistol emoji with a water pistol emoji as a political statement. Apple has been known to take political sides but it is questionable whether censoring guns will help any cause, especially because the bomb, sword, and knife emojis are not being removed.
Image Description | A photoshopped scene from Pulp Fiction showing Samuel L. Jackson pointing a water pistol emoji.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s)

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