Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 23
Posts 1 - 10

What the Kitty Genovese Killing Can Teach Today's Digital Bystanders

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 4.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, smartphone, threat, video communication
Summary | There are a few services now which allow smartphone users to broadcast videos live, for example on Facebook and on the Perscope app. Multiple people have already livestremed crimes like murder or sexual assault with a live audience watching without anyone having called the police. This is not right even though bystanders are no legally obliged to step in if they see a crime happening in most states.
Image Description | N/A

The Smartphone’s Future: It’s All About the Camera

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | privacy, smartphone, translation, virtual reality
Summary | Now that smartphones are as thin and as fast as possible, they need to develop into another realm. The camera will be used in new ways to, for instance, improve privacy by unlocking your phone by showing your face. Another innovation is the possiblity of taking a picture of a restaurant menu and having it instantly translated. Augmented reality also relies on the camera enabling users to, for instance, project a 3D model of a piece of furniture they want into a picture of their living room to see what it would look like.
Image Description | Illustration showing a smartphone scanning a woman's face.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Why Kids Can't Write

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, punctuation, school, smartphone, social media, spelling, texting, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many students struggle with writing despite various pedagogical models that have been implemented in past years to tackle that perpetual issue. This is all the more suprising considering that today's students may do moret voluntary writing than any generation before it. They text and post on social media a lot but the writing register is different there. The format's main principle is shortness so grammar, spelling, and punctuation take a back seat.
Image Description | GIF of a hand writing and a group of teachers in a workshop.
Image Tags | female(s), gifs, text

Letter of recommendation: Duolingo

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | digitized education, game, smartphone, translation
Summary | Duolingo is a language learning app that is designed like a game and rewards users with points when they finish a lesson. It is similarly limited in its effectiveness, it may familiarize users with a foreign language but it is entirely text-based rather than spoken. It is just a mildly more productive way to waste time on a smartphone.
Image Description | Illustration showing greeting in various languages.
Image Tags | text

New Ways to Help Speed Up Your Travel Planning

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 24.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone
Summary | The travel industry is innovating to accommodate smartphone users. Some hotels have begun making their room locks smartphone-operated, automatic check-in services for your smartphone exist, and Kayak's digital assistant (available through Amazon's artificial intelligence assistant Alexa) lets users book hotel rooms via voice command.
Image Description | Landscape.

Surfing With a New Keyboard

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, GIFs, Google, smartphone, texting, translation, word/writing
Summary | Third party keyboards are now available to download to your smartphone. One of them is Gboard, it is very good at translating your texts in real-time. Some keyboards also offer a search function for emojis or GIFs. The swipe-typing feature is also very popular which allows users to swipe across the letters to enter words rather than type each individual letter.
Image Description | N/A

Planning a Trip With the Help of Google Home

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, misunderstanding, smartphone, translation
Summary | Google's artificial intelligence assistant is getting better every day. It is available on all Android smartphones and on the home speaker. It can find out web search queries, translate phrases, and help book a flight by keeping one updated about changing flight fares. Sometimes one however has to adjust one's syntax so that the AI assistant will correctly decode one's request.
Image Description | The Google home personal (AI) assistant speaker.
Image Tags | Google

Serial Fiction on Tap

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 12.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | smartphone, word/writing
Summary | There is now literature that is customized to be read on a smartphone. It is very similar to 19th century pulp/dime fiction: short episodes ending with cliffhangers. They are also layouted in such a way that they are easy to read on conventional smartphones.
Image Description | N/A

How to Protect Your Privacy as More Apps Harvest Your Data

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 2.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, marketing, privacy, smartphone, threat
Summary | Many smartphone apps can be used for free, or rather one does not have to pay money to use it. However, if the app is not from a non-profit organization, users pay in some other way that may be obscure to them. Usually free for-profit apps collect data abou their users that they can sell to advertisers. The only way to protect oneself from this is to carefully read the terms and conditions, even if they are in legalese. If one does not like the level of privacy provided by an app, the only certain way to avoid data exploitation is not to download the app.
Image Description | Illustration of a hand holding a smartphone where eyes are hidden behind the app icons.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone

The Week in Tech: The Next Big Thing, According to Mark Zuckerberg

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 16.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, research/study, smartphone, texting, virtual reality
Summary | Facebook is already huge: more than three times as many messages are transmitted over Facebook Messenger than SMS messages at its peak. But Facebook is also hugely significant as a video platform and they are investing much of their resources in developing virtual reality. Apparently, Zuckerberg believes that VR is the next big platform after the smartphone. They are even working with anthropologists to make the body language VR avatars more realistic.
Image Description | An image of Zuckerberg doing a presentation with VR goggles projected behind him.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

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