Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 46
Posts 1 - 10

«Achtung, unterschätzen wir die Senioren nicht»

("Attention, let's not underestimate the elderly")

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 2.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone, threat
Summary | More and more rural post offices are being closed due to restructuring. Online post office services should pick up the slack but it is questionable whether elderly people will be able to adapt to virtual post offices with chatbots. The chief of the Swiss Post, Susanne Ruoff, urges us not to underestimate the elderly. Many of them are online with smartphones and computers nowadays.
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Lehrer entlasten.

(Relieving teachers.)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 18.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | digitized education, school, smartphone
Summary | There are many ways that countries all over the world are relieving teachers. In Finland, students with good grades tutor other fellow students with poorer grades. Technology could also help in this endeavor: students in Nigeria study in with their smartphones and only spend a few hours a day in a classroom. Digitized education could cut down the need for teaching staff by half.
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Die Stadt auf dem Handy

(The city on the smartphone)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 12.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | smartphone, youth
Summary | A new tourist guide is available for St.Gallen. It is online on www.wohin.sg and optimized for mobile use with a smartphone. This decision was made with a young usership in mind. The website offers curated restaurant, club, and shop recommendations to tourists in St.Gallen. It is available in Standard German and English, as well as the local Swiss German variety.
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Die Welt mit jungen Augen sehen

(See the world with young eyes)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | smartphone, threat, youth
Summary | More and more fiction is not targeted at one age group in particular. It is debatable whether that means that the youth today is smarter than ever of whether our currents population consists various generations of eternal teenagers. Novels about young people have always embodies the hope for the future as well as anxieties about current developments like the question, what will happen to our society when smartphones replace all social contacts?
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Als die Server zusammenbrechen, fliessen die Tränen

(As the servers break down, the tears start )

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | game, smartphone, threat, virtual reality
Summary | Pokémon Go is a hugely popular smartphone video game that lets players catch virtual Pokémons in their real surroundings by means of augmented reality. A huge public Pokémon Go event was held in Chicago with 20'000 attendees. At some point the inevitable happemned, the servers collapsed and the app would not work any more. Many players became very upset and Pokémon Go reimbursed all attendees who paid to be at the event with a rare Pokémon.
Image Description | An image of a park with Pokémon, a screenshot of a Pokémon Go map, and a hand holding a smartphone with Pokémon Go open on the screen.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone

Emoji

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, marketing, smartphone
Summary | Nobody can imagine smartphone communication nowadays without emojis. Now there is an animated film starring emojis. The critics are not praising it. Apparently, the characters are quite one-dimensional (which makes sense however since they are emojis) and the product placement advertising tech firms in the movie is too frequent and obvious.
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Generation Blödphone?

(Generation Dumbphone?)

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Newspaper | Der Bund
Date | 11.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | addiction, research/study, smartphone, threat, youth
Summary | A US study has conducted surveys among teenagers asking them how often they go out without their parents, whether they date or have had sex, how much they sleep , etc. The results show that teenagers go out/date less, sleep less, and have sex later in life since the advent of smartphones. Swiss media psychologist Gregor Waller criticizes the study because it bases its conclusions on mere correlation. It leaves out other important developments in the US since 2007 like the financial crisis. An equivalent Swiss study does not show similar results. Most Swiss teenagers continue to have a rich social life despite smartphones. Only about 10% of Swiss teenagers are at risk of smartphone addiction.
Image Description | Graphs showing results of the US study and a portrait of the interviewee (Swiss psychologist Gregor Waller).
Image Tags | chart, male(s)

Ignoranz ist Stärke

(Ignorance is strength)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 3.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, privacy, smartphone, social media, threat
Summary | Kellyanne Conways term "alternative facts" remind of Orwell's fictional language Newspeak which also changes meanings by renaming. Many facts of contemporary life (especially under the Trump administration) remind of dystopian novels "1984" by G. Orwell and "Brave New World" by A. Huxley. We all carry smartphones with us at all times with which we can send information but which also receive and document information about us like our location, who else is in that location, our communications, purchases, and so on. Privacy has become impossible in the digital age.
Image Description | Images and videos of the film "1984" and George Orwell as well as the news clip where Kellyanne Conway mentions "alternative facts".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), TV

Junge schreiben - mehr als je zuvor

(Youths write - more than ever)

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 29.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | code-switching, language threat, research/study, school, smartphone, social media, spelling, texting, word/writing, youth
Summary | There is a public hysteria about how youths are no longer capable of spelling correctly or writing appropriately and skillfully. All this is seen to be caused by new media such as smartphones. BUt young people today write far more than previous generations did: they post on social media and text every day. The only difference is that this writing culture is very informal and colloquial. Researchers however assume that one cannot simply state that this spoils their writing skills generally, most students are easily capable of code-switching from informal registers to a formal register appropriate for school.
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Der Computer lernt Mundart

(The computer learns Swiss German)

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 29.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | smartphone, translation
Summary | The SBB app should be updated so the users can just speak their destinations and they will verbally receive the transport information. The developers say that the voice recognition software should be able to understand most dialects of Swiss German despite never having been enhanced with a Swiss German vocabulary. Lots of it is similar enough to German so that the software can detect the connection or it otherwise reports words that it does not understand so that they can be manually entered. Users should be pleased because it is just nicer when one does not have to speak Standard German to one's smartphone.
Image Description | Image of a hand holding a smartphone.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone

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