Janet Read, professor of child computer interaction at the University of Central Lancashire, says part of the problem is that many services are based on rigid systems originally built for the workplace. These allow users to play, surf or browse infinitely, giving little encouragement to moderate screen time – whether they are a Facebook-addicted mother or a Minecraft-obsessed child. A more humane approach would be to use artificial intelligence to develop computers that could mimic and reflect the behaviour of children. “Maybe the computer could have a hissy fit, or it could slow down, or stop interacting or be naughty. That kind of interaction could be more helpful to a child’s development because it reflects our own instincts and behaviours.” If the computer decides that 20 minutes is enough, or that we seem too tired to play, it could just shut down – and, in doing so, help us to learn what the right time to switch off feels like.

Read says there is insufficient research in this area, but that computers could be taught to respond to humour and playfulness, or to empathise when a user seems to be struggling. At school, that might mean creating a computer that behaves more like a teacher, adjusting each interaction according to the learning style of the child. Children could be encouraged to share, take turns and resolve arguments. But until there is some kind of maturity in the technology we have all come to rely on, Read acknowledges that parents are in a difficult position. For poorer families, in particular, the phone can provide a lifeline to support and connection when someone is feeling stressed and isolated. “You can’t teach anyone how to parent – they’ve got to figure it out for themselves,” she says.

Cox added that the findings showed that “traditional left-right politics is being flipped on its head, as under-45s back lower taxes and a smaller state, despite overwhelmingly voting Labour in the last election, while Conservative-leaning voters over 65 back higher taxes and spending”.

RT @MarinaHyde: My bit on the week in Brexit (dir. Michael Bay)

@nd_kane @bruces Pretending to be devices is a lovely way of working out boring protocols …

@nd_kane @bruces Pretending to be devices is a lovely way of working out boring protocols …

@barnoid Last year's competition was *amazing*

I wanted to fight @barnoid's mighty chipbot, last year's winner

Accidentally made my best hebocon robot ever (pictured here fighting @diodenschein's robot) but can't be there next…

RT @comuzi_lab: We have been working with the crew at @UAL_CCi @feministintrnet & 40 @UAL students on developing 8 feminist AI 'pro…

And now loads of new animations and John Berger later

And now loads of new animations and John Berger later

Now!

@danbri wrote it up:

My #makevember box for making things

Last #makevember tensorflow cat detector dial (sort of @danbri's idea, thanks Damian for help filming)

#makevember making things concrete

#makevember "intensity" sensor

RT @timkindberg: The UK launch of #RadioBookRwanda. @lilytgreen of @NoBindings takes the stage at @PMStudioUK

What nobody foresaw was that, when trust sinks beneath a certain point, many people may come to view the entire spectacle of politics and public life as a sham. This happens not because trust in general declines, but because key public figures – notably politicians and journalists – are perceived as untrustworthy. It is those figures specifically tasked with representing society, either as elected representatives or as professional reporters, who have lost credibility.
...
What the paper shows is that, where politics comes to be viewed as the domain of “insider” liars, there is a seductive authenticity, even a strange kind of honesty, about the “common knowledge” liar.
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At the same time, and even more corrosively, when elected representatives come to be viewed as “insider liars”, it turns out that other professions whose job it is to report the truth – journalists, experts, officials – also suffer a slump in trust. Indeed, the distinctions between all these fact-peddlers start to look irrelevant in the eyes of those who’ve given up on the establishment altogether. It is this type of all-encompassing disbelief that creates the opportunity for rightwing populism in particular.
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The main feature of the emerging regime is that truth is now assumed to reside in hidden archives of data, rather than in publicly available facts
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For an initial fee in the range of $50,000, SciFutures will take a prompt from a client — say, the Future of Sustainability for Naked Juice, or the Future of Home Improvement for Lowe's — and farm it out to 30 or so writers. Popper and company read the stories, which usually clock in around 1,000 words (he typically pays writers $300 to $500 for each one, though more seasoned writers can command more), and scan them with an eye to intellectual property, novelty, and technology. Then they'll choose five or so and polish them up for delivery to the client, often translating them into graphic novels or other media. If the client is hooked on a specific science fictional idea, SciFutures will help them develop further blueprints, even actual prototypes.

@MrGreenGus Ha, snap!

#Makevember something concrete *and* a terrible mess!

Actually, I’ve always found it weird that it’s called birdwatching, because half if not more of birdwatching is actually birdlistening. I personally think they should just rename it birdnoticing.
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It reminds me of how John Muir described himself not as a naturalist but as a “poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist etc. etc.”
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only in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us.”
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I am not an avatar, a set of preferences, or some smooth cognitive force. I’m lumpy, I’m an animal, I hurt sometimes, and I’m different one day to the next. I hear, I see, and I smell things that hear, see, and smell me.
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As the body disappears, so too does our ability to empathize. Berardi suggests a link between our senses and our ability to make sense
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I’m suggesting that we protect our spaces and our time for non-instrumental, non-commercial activity and thought, for maintenance, for care, for conviviality. And I’m suggesting that we fiercely protect our human animality against all technologies that actively ignore and disdain the body, the bodies of others, and the body of the landscape that we inhabit.

Writing about those other endosymbionts, the free-living bacteria in and on our bodies, she said that “[b]eneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.”

...

You can try and think of your social media profile as a space of exchange, but really, I would liken it more to a hall of mirrors that eventually pushes you to one end of the spectrum or the other.
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Commercial social media have a vested interest in pinning us down, reducing us to lists of preferences, and then augmenting the tendencies of those preferences for a reason, which is to make us as legible as possible to themselves and to advertisers.

RT @the_jennitaur: the very weird talk I just gave at #kikk18 is here:

Perhaps queue psychology has broader implications. We live in an age when we take it for granted that consumers want as much choice as possible. But when we think about how consumer companies and transport groups are increasingly organising their lines, there would seem to be another lesson too: people find it reassuring when there is a sense of fairness, a feeling of progress (however tiny), clear signposts and even a collective spirit of suffering.

RT @davidchatting: Please share this with your friends and family, I'm very happy to answer any questions - it's going to be a fun pro…

used a similar layout for the light sensor

Its taken me a million million years, as I didn't notice I had the wrong resistors.

Analogue Braitenberg vehicle 2c joins its digital friend #makevember

RT @BBCRD: We've built an Alexa skill which allows you to interact with the @BBCRadio3 dramatisation of BS Johnson's experimen…

"Short sellers homing in on the distressed British retail sector"

alright! not very exciting

Stopping when they said stop, pick up when they say pick up, turn when they say turn. You get into a rhythm of that, and you begin to feel almost like an android.”
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Because the logic of the algorithm is largely unknown and constantly changing, drivers are left to speculate about what it is doing and why.
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When players were unsuccessful, their dissatisfaction was directed at the game’s obstacles, not at the capitalist class, which sets the rules.

For a city full of ambiguous restaurants, you can’t fault the name of Just Chips: uncompromisingly accurate, that. This city centre takeaway, just a few doors along from the Hippodrome, does – you guessed it – interpretative pan-Asian cuisine.

For as much as society changed, for as much as sub-groups were empowered, as much as “super-empowered individuals” like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, or the Krupp family garnered influence and even some power, it was a handful of individuals – Alfred postulated 20 or 30 – who made the decision to go to war in 1914.

O_O
really really really weird