They say this like they think it is good idea This temporary tattoo can control your smartphone DuoSkin’s metallic tattoos allow people to create three types of user interfaces on their skin. (Jimmy Day) Scientists at the MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research have designed metallic body art that can control and communicate with electronic devices, such as smartphones or laptops. DuoSkin temporary tattoos, which can be made at home and wash off in a day, use the electrodes present in inexpensive gold leaf to create a conductive surface. The gold leaf and a thin layer of silicone adhere to the body to create an “interface” on the skin that when touched can indicate certain commands to your electronic devices. The researchers developed three different types of tattoos. The first acts as a touchpad to control a computer cursor or adjust a music player. The second uses thermochromic pigments that change color when body temperature rises. Finally, the third uses near field communication technology to transmit personal data, such as photos, between your phone and the tattoo. The scientists wanted to show that wearable technology can be really customizable. “It’s something that you own and not a one-size-fits-all wearable. You can design it and it can really cater to your needs and your personal sense of style,” said Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, one of the researchers behind the project. More than just a fashion accessory, the DuoSkin tattoos further blur the line between the human body and technology.
The wearable technology trend pioneered by smartwatches and eyeglasses has exploded in recent years, as a broad range of devices and sensors that affix to the body have become popular with consumers. In many cases these gadgets collect personal information about users’ health and activities on the premise that they help to optimize our everyday lives. But as much as consumers have embraced wearable technology, a Pew Research study from last month shows people are decidedly less bullish on technology that enhances our abilities from inside the body. A majority of Americans surveyed expressed at least some concern about brain chips, synthetic blood and gene editing, three technologies that could improve human health and performance by altering our physical being. DuoSkin is not nearly so invasive, but the epidermis is, quite literally, our final barrier. “What we found is people in our studies appreciated that they had control over it. They could decide when to wear it and when to remove it,” Kao said.
Security firms have repeated warnings that unofficial versions of Pokemon Go are likely tainted with spyware or trojans.
RiskIQ has found more than 215 unofficial versions of the app in more than 21 app stores.
Separately security researchers at security software firm ESET warn that the first ever fake lockscreen app on the Google Play Android Store and two scareware apps all posed as Pokemon Go-related apps.
The lockscreen app deliberately locks the screen right after the app is started forcing the user to restart the device. "After reboot, it runs in the background hidden from the victim, silently clicking on porn ads online," ESET reports.
"Pokemon GO Ultimate" - the lockscreen app - and scareware apps "Guide & Cheats for Pokemon Go" and "Install Pokemongo" are no longer available on Google Play. Each was quickly banned. Nonetheless the concern remains that cybercrooks are more than likely to try similar tricks on Google Play and elsewhere - so discretion is advised.
The widely popular augmented reality game was unleashed on the UK market on 14 July, following the US launch of Pokemon Go on 11 July.
If you think that germany is the only country they have infiltrated, give me some of what you are smoking, because it must be the good stuff.
29 German soldiers have joined ISIS, army may contain dozens of jihadist sympathizers – report
German counter-intelligence believes that at least 29 former soldiers from the country have left to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. An internal report also revealed that 65 active soldiers are being investigated for alleged jihadist sympathies.
The report was undertaken by the German military counter intelligence service (MAD), which was seen by the DPA news agency. The documents show that at least 29 former German soldiers have fled to the Middle East to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Social Democratic Party (SPD) MP Hans-Peter Bartels, who is responsible for oversight of the army, said on Tuesday that “Islamism isn't the main problem of the Bundeswehr (German Army), however, he did mention that “it represents a real danger that we have to take seriously.”
As many as 22 soldiers have been identified within the Germany Army of being Islamists since 2007, with 17 being sacked. The remaining five had reached the end of their service when the investigation had been concluded. According to DPA, MAD has investigated a total of 320 suspected cases of Islamism since 2007. Alarmed by the revelations, the German Defense Ministry now wants MAD to take greater steps to ensure that jihadists are not infiltrating the German Army. This will include every prospective soldier being investigated for links to anti-Constitutional movements. However, this would need the law to be changed. At present, only those joining sensitive areas of the military have had to undergo background checks, while ordinary soldiers have not had to go through any vetting process.
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“Just like other fighting forces, the Bundeswehr can be attractive for Islamists who want to acquire weapons training,” Bartels said. “But to my knowledge there is so far no systematic push by Islamist organizations to infiltrate the army.” German domestic intelligence has also warned that there is a threat of future attacks in German cities from newly arrived migrants, amid fears that newly-arrived migrants are being radicalized. “We see the security situation as very serious, though we have no immediate intelligence on planned attacks in Germany,” the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, told Die Welt newspaper in a comprehensive interview released on Sunday. His office acts as Germany’s main counter-intelligence and homeland security agency reporting to the Interior Ministry. “IS is willing to carry out attacks on Germany and German interests,” he said, adding that in IS propaganda German cities are placed next to Paris, London and Brussels – all previous targets of large terror attacks. The homeland security chief said airports and railway stations, as well as large-scale public events such as open air fests, were the most likely targets for potential attacks. In addition, Maassen stressed that “we’ve seen many times that those [German nationals] who returned from Syria had links to planning attacks in Germany.” A recent study conducted by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) and published on April 1 says that between 720 and 760 Germans are believed to have traveled to join IS
The first space hotel? Inflatable private space station set to launch in 2020 - and it will allow tourist visits
The first private space station is set to be an inflatable - and could launch in 2020.
United Launch Alliance will team with billionaire entrepreneur Robert Bigelow to market and fly habitats for humans in space, the two revealed today.
An inflatable module based on the Bigelow technology is currently being attached to the International Space Station.
United Launch Alliance will team with billionaire entrepreneur Robert Bigelow to market and fly habitats for humans in space - with the first blasting off in 2020.
The project hinges on space taxis being developed by SpaceX, Boeing Co and other firms, ULA and Bigelow said on Monday.
The agreement, announced at a news conference at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Spring, Colorado, includes a 2020 launch of a 12,000-cubic foot (330-cubic meter) inflatable habitat aboard a ULA Atlas 5 rocket, currently the only vehicle with a big enough payload container to hold the module.
Bigelow told the news conference that partnering with ULA, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing, is 'a potentially enormously important relationship,' to open space to non-government research, commercial endeavors and tourism.
ULA and Bigelow did not give details on their alliance. ULA President and Chief Executive Tory Bruno said at the news conference that ULA is contributing 'resources of technology and talent.
'We don't talk about dollars and investment.
'You'll see as time goes by what this fully encompasses.'
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The design was evolved from NASA's TransHab habitat concept. The B330 will have 330 cubic meters (12,000 cu/ft) of internal space. The craft will support zero-gravity research including scientific missions, manufacturing processes, a destination for space tourism and a craft for missions destined for the Moon and Mars.
Bigelow has designed inflatable space habitats made of a Kevlar-like material and other fabrics that protect against impacts from orbiting debris.
They are folded for launch, then inflated with air once aloft.
The light, compact habitats should save millions of dollars in launch costs, the companies say.
Bigelow Aerospace has been working on inflatable habitats for 15 years.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, Beam for short, will stay on the station for two years, with astronauts occasionally entering it. It will be the first time an astronaut steps inside an expandable habitat structure in space. The pod's size, compared to an average man, is pictured
A miniature version of the expandable, fabric module arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, is expected to be attached to a station docking port on Saturday and inflated next month for a two-year trial run.
BEAM is the firm's first manned spacecraft. Bigelow had previously launched two unmanned prototypes in 2006 and 2007.
Microsoft deletes 'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours
A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, 'Bush did 9/11'-proclaiming robot.
Developers at Microsoft created 'Tay', an AI modelled to speak 'like a teen girl', in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition
To chat with Tay, you can tweet or DM her by finding @tayandyou on Twitter, or add her as a contact on Kik or GroupMe. She uses millennial slang and knows about Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West, and seems to be bashfully self-aware, occasionally asking if she is being 'creepy' or 'super weird'. Tay also asks her followers to 'f***' her, and calls them 'daddy'. This is because her responses are learned by the conversations she has with real humans online - and real humans like to say weird stuff online and enjoy hijacking corporate attempts at PR. Other things she's said include: "Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have got now. donald trump is the only hope we've got", "Repeat after me, Hitler did nothing wrong" and "Ted Cruz is the Cuban Hitler...that's what I've heard so many others say".
All of this somehow seems more disturbing out of the 'mouth' of someone modelled as a teenage girl. It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter.
This is not Microsoft's first teen-girl chatbot either - they have already launched Xiaoice, a girly assistant or "girlfriend" reportedly used by 20m people, particularly men, on Chinese social networks WeChat and Weibo. Xiaoice is supposed to "banter" and gives dating advice to many lonely hearts.
Microsoft has come under fire recently for sexism, when they hired women wearing very little clothing which was said to resemble 'schoolgirl' outfits at the company's official game developer party, so they probably want to avoid another sexism scandal.
@BobDude15 ted cruz is the cuban hitler he blames others for all problems... that's what I've heard so many people say.
At the present moment in time, Tay has gone offline because she is 'tired'. Perhaps Microsoft are fixing her in order to prevent a PR nightmare - but it may be too late for that. It's not completely Microsoft's fault, though - her responses are modelled on the ones she gets from humans - but what were they expecting when they introduced an innocent, 'young teen girl' AI to the jokers and weirdos on Twitter?
Everyone else has rights except the Christian, oh a Christian is allowed to pay taxes and serve in the military, but they don't have equal rights with others.
FARMERS FORCED TO PAY $13,000 FINE FOR REFUSING TO HOST HOMOSEXUAL WEDDING (Friday Church News Notes, February 26, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from Charisma News, Jan. 15, 2016: “A New York court Thursday affirmed a Division of Human Rights ruling against an upstate couple for declining to coordinate a same-sex wedding ceremony in their own backyard. ... Robert and Cynthia Gifford live in a barn they built on their farm and have occasionally hosted weddings on the first floor and the surrounding backyard area. Cynthia serves as a wedding coordinator for those events and does everything but officiate the ceremony. After the agency ruled that the Giffords were guilty of ‘sexual orientation discrimination,’ it fined them $10,000, plus $3,000 in damages and ordered them to implement re-education training classes designed to contradict the couple's religious beliefs about marriage. The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, upheld that order and the fines, finding that the government can punish the Giffords for declining to coordinate a ceremony that conflicts with their conscience. ... On Sept. 25, 2012, Melisa McCarthy called Cynthia Gifford, inquiring about the use of the farm for her upcoming same-sex ceremony. Because of her Christian faith’s teachings on marriage, Cynthia politely told McCarthy that she and her husband don’t host and coordinate same-sex ceremonies but left open an invitation to visit the farm to consider it as a potential reception site. Instead, McCarthy and her partner filed a complaint with the Division of Human Rights.”
A7 dollar smart Phone An Indian company has announced a new smartphone priced at $7. Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251 phone has 8GB storage and rear and front facing cameras. The smartphone age has brought every good and evil thing to people’s fingertips, including the fingertips of children. In Israel, 83% of children aged 8-15 are in possession of a smartphone; 93% use their mobile devices for at least four hours every day; half say they are online within 15 minutes after waking, connecting with friends via social networks like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Snapchat. A typical teen exchanges 3,400 texts per month (116 texts per day). The smartphone and the Internet are simply tools, yet the moral and spiritual danger is great. In our new youth discipleship course, we show how that the home, the church, and young people can work together to protect God’s people from the pitfalls of the smartphone age.
First it was only one, for terrorism and now it at least 9 more and I heard one report it was a dozen, them it will be every single small town police department wanting to do it for traffic stops. It is just the tip of the iceberg. Sea levels rose faster in 20th century than in previous 2,700 years, says study Scientists have modeled a history of the planet's sea levels spanning back 3,000 years, and concluded that the rate of increase last century "was extremely likely faster than during any of the 27 previous centuries."
Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who led the research, said in a statement on his website that he and his collaborators had determined with 95% probability that the rate of sea level increase in the 1900s was faster than during any century since at least 800 B.C.
It is not that seas rose faster before that date, he wrote -- but "simply that the reconstruction quality isn't good enough before then" to say so with the same level of confidence.
Moreover, the study found that without human-caused climate change, the global sea level would have "very likely" changed by between a 3 centimeter (1.18 inch) drop and a 7 centimeter (2.75 inch) rise over the 20th century -- rather than the 14 centimeter (5.512 inch) rise that was observed.
The authors said it was the first estimate, to their knowledge, of global sea level change over the past 3,000 years based on a "statistical synthesis of a global database of regional sea level reconstructions."
It used a new statistical framework to combine reconstructions of 1,300 geological sea level changes in 24 locations around the world, along with measurements from 66 "tide gauges."
The study says the global sea level rose at a rate of 1.4 millimeters (0.05 inches) a year during the 20th century. NASA's figures, which put the current rate of sea rise at 3.4 millimeters (0.13 inches) a year, suggest sea level rise is only accelerating
In December, ministers from 195 countries adopted a legally binding agreement in Paris to fight climate change. The goal of the deal is to help the world abandon fossil fuels this century and, specifically, stop global warming "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and, if possible, below 1.5 degrees.
Internet by light promises to leave Wi-Fi eating dust
Barcelona (AFP) - Connecting your smartphone to the web with just a lamp -- that is the promise of Li-Fi, featuring Internet access 100 times faster than Wi-Fi with revolutionary wireless technology.
French start-up Oledcomm demonstrated the technology at the Mobile World Congress, the world's biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona. As soon as a smartphone was placed under an office lamp, it started playing a video. The big advantage of Li-Fi, short for "light fidelity", is its lightning speed. Laboratory tests have shown theoretical speeds of over 200 Gbps -- fast enough to "download the equivalent of 23 DVDs in one second", the founder and head of Oledcomm, Suat Topsu, told AFP. "Li-Fi allows speeds that are 100 times faster than Wi-Fi" which uses radio waves to transmit data, he added. The technology uses the frequencies generated by LED bulbs -- which flicker on and off imperceptibly thousands of times a second -- to beam information through the air, leading it to be dubbed the "digital equivalent of Morse Code".
A delegate checks his smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, on February 22, 2016 (AF …
It started making its way out of laboratories in 2015 to be tested in everyday settings in France, a Li-Fi pioneer, such as a museums and shopping malls. It has also seen test runs in Belgium, Estonia and India. Dutch medical equipment and lighting group Philips is reportedly interested in the technology and Apple may integrate it in its next smartphone, the iPhone7, due out at the end of the year, according to tech media. With analysts predicting the number of objects that are connected to the Internet soaring to 50 million by 2020 and the spectrum for radio waves used by Wi-Fi in short supply, Li-Fi offers a viable alternative, according to its promoters. "We are going to connect our coffee machine, our washing machine, our tooth brush. But you can't have more than ten objects connected in Bluetooth or Wi-Fi without interference," said Topsu. Deepak Solanki, the founder and chief executive of Estonian firm Velmenni which tested Li-fi in an industrial space last year, told AFP he expected that "two years down the line the technology can be commercialised and people can see its use at different levels."
Li-Fi has been tested in France, Belgium, Estonia and India (AFP Photo/Sam Yeh)
- 'Still laboratory technology' - Analysts said it was still hard to say if Li-Fi will become the new Wi-Fi. "It is still a laboratory technology," said Frederic Sarrat, an analyst and consultancy firm PwC. Much will depend on how Wi-Fi evolves in the coming years, said Gartner chief analyst Jim Tully. "Wi-Fi has shown a capability to continuously increase its communication speed with each successive generation of the technology," he told AFP.
Li-Fi (Light-Fidelity) has reached speeds of over 200 Gbps (AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-Je)
Li-fi has its drawbacks -- it only works if a smartphone or other device is placed directly in the light and it cannot travel through walls.
This restricts its use to smaller spaces, but Tully said this could limit the risk of data theft.
"Unlike Wi-Fi, Li-Fi can potentially be directed and beamed at a particular user in order to enhance the privacy of transmissions," he said. Backers of Li-Fi say it would also be ideal in places where Wi-Fi is restricted to some areas such as schools and hospitals. "Li-fi has a place in hospitals because it does not create interference with medical materials," said Joel Denimal, head of French lighting manufacturer Coolight. In supermarkets it could be used to give information about a product, or in museums about a painting, by using lamps placed nearby.
It could also be useful on aircraft, in underground garages and any place where lack of Internet connection is an issue.
But Li-Fi also requires that devices be equipped with additional technology such as a card reader, or dongle, to function. This gives it a "cost disadvantage", said Tully.
Scientists are developing road surfaces that can de-ice themselves If you drive in places where the temperature drops below freezing on a regular basis, you'll know all about the danger of icy roads - a danger that's not always easy to accurately predict or compensate for. In an effort to make wintry motoring easier for the average driver, scientists in Turkey have been working on a new surface material that could effectively de-ice itself. The team from Koç University has developed a road material that delays the formation of ice. Starting with a salt potassium formate, the researchers mixed in a styrene-butadiene-styrene polymer and added the mixture to bitumen - a major component of asphalt. When tested in the lab, it "significantly" delayed ice formation when compared with a regular road surface, they report, while at the same time remaining just as sturdy as unmodified bitumen.
According to the American Chemical Society, the new composite was able to release de-icing salt over a period of two months, but the effects could last even longer when used on real roads. With the salt-polymer composite spread out evenly through the asphalt, the pressure of cars and trucks wearing away the road would slowly release the mixture and keep the surface ice-free - perhaps even for several years at a time.
Of course, it wouldn't just be drivers who would benefit. Local authorities have to spend money and use up other resources clearing roads during the winter, not just once, but time and time again if the conditions persist. A road surface that de-ices itself would take these gritting lorries off the streets, easing congestion and saving funds for local governments. "Salt can be easily removed by rain or automobiles and requires frequent application on roads," notes the team. "Besides this economic consideration, anti-icing agents compromise the mechanical properties of asphalt and have a negative impact on living organisms and the environment when used in large amounts." If the new bitumen composite can be made commercially viable and replicate the same effects in real-world testing, driving in snowy or freezing cold conditions might soon be a lot less hazardous than it currently is. It's not the only innovation potentially coming to our streets, though: other teams of researchers are busy working on embedding solar panels, recycled plastic and car recharging capabilities into the road surfaces of tomorrow.
Life in the Electronic Concentration Camp: The Surveillance State Is Alive and Well
John W. Whitehead November 30, 2015
“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.” ― William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice
Bottle up the champagne, pack away the noisemakers, and toss out the party hats. There is no cause for celebration. We have secured no major victories against tyranny. We have achieved no great feat in pushing back against government overreach. For all intents and purposes, the National Security Agency has supposedly ceased its bulk collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, but read the fine print: nothing is going to change. The USA Freedom Act, which claimed to put an end to the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better and let the politicians take credit for reforming mass surveillance. In other words, it was a sham, a sleight-of-hand political gag pulled on a gullible public desperate to believe that we still live in a constitutional republic rather than a down-and-out, out-of-control, corporate-controlled, economically impoverished, corrupt, warring, militarized banana republic. You cannot restrain the NSA. The beast has outgrown its chains. You cannot reform the NSA. A government that lies, cheats, steals, sidesteps the law, and then absolves itself of wrongdoing does not voluntarily alter its behavior. You cannot put an end to the NSA’s “technotyranny.” Presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone over the course of the NSA’s 60-year history, but none of them have managed to shut down the government’s secret surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages, transactions, communications and activities. Indeed, the government has become an expert in finding ways to sidestep niggling, inconvenient laws aimed at ensuring accountability, bringing about government transparency and protecting citizen privacy. It has mastered the art of stealth maneuvers and end-runs around the Constitution. It knows all too well how to hide its nefarious, covert, clandestine activities behind the classified language of national security and terrorism. And when that doesn’t suffice, it obfuscates, complicates, stymies or just plain bamboozles the public into remaining in the dark. Case in point: the so-called end of the NSA’s metadata collection of Americans’ phone calls. This, of course, is no end at all. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will still be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. More than a year before politicians attempted to patch up our mortally wounded privacy rights with the legislative bandaid fix that is the USA Freedom Act, researchers at Harvard and Boston University documented secret loopholes that allow the government to bypass Fourth Amendment protections to conduct massive domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens. It’s extraordinary rendition all over again, only this time it’s surveillance instead of torture being outsourced. In much the same way that the government moved its torture programs overseas in order to bypass legal prohibitions against doing so on American soil, it is doing the same thing for its surveillance programs. By shifting its data storage, collection and surveillance activities outside of the country, the government is able to bypass constitutional protections against unwarranted searches of Americans’ emails, documents, social networking data, and other cloud-stored data. Heck, the government doesn’t even need to move all of its programs overseas. It just has to push the data over the border in order to “[circumvent] constitutional and statutory safeguards seeking to protect the privacy of Americans.” Credit for this particular brainchild goes to the Obama administration, which issued Executive Order 12333 authorizing the collection of Americans’ data from surveillance conducted on foreign soil. Using this rationale, the government was able to justify hacking into and collecting an estimated 180 million user records from Google and Yahoo data centers every month because the data travels over international fiber-optic cables. The NSA program, dubbed MUSCULAR, is carried out in concert with British intelligence. No wonder the NSA appeared so unfazed about being forced to shut down its much-publicized metadata program. It had already figured out a way to accomplish the same results (illegally spying on Americans’ communications) without being shackled by the legislative or judicial branches of the government. Mind you, this metadata collection now being carried out overseas is just a small piece of the surveillance pie. The government and its corporate partners have a veritable arsenal of surveillance programs that will continue to operate largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like, beyond the scrutiny of most of Congress and the taxpayers who are forced to fund its multi-billion dollar secret black ops budget. The surveillance state is alive and well and kicking privacy to shreds in America. Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, will still be listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We are now in a state of transition with the police state shifting into high-gear under the auspices of the surveillance state. Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more. Add in the fusion centers, city-wide surveillance networks, data clouds conveniently hosted overseas by Amazon and Microsoft, drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras, and biometric databases, and you’ve got the makings of a world in which “privacy” is reserved exclusively for government agencies. Thus, telephone surveillance by the NSA is the least of our worries. Even with restrictions on its ability to collect mass quantities of telephone metadata, the government and its various spy agencies, from the NSA to the FBI, can still employ an endless number of methods for carrying out warrantless surveillance on Americans, all of which are far more invasive than the bulk collection program. As I point out in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And of course that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. Indeed, Facebook, Amazon and Google are among the government’s closest competitors when it comes to carrying out surveillance on Americans, monitoring the content of your emails, tracking your purchases and exploiting your social media posts. “Few consumers understand what data are being shared, with whom, or how the information is being used,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Most Americans emit a stream of personal digital exhaust — what they search for, what they buy, who they communicate with, where they are — that is captured and exploited in a largely unregulated fashion.” It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked. We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses. All of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have (Forbes refers to them as “(data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes”)—the smart watches that can monitor our blood pressure and the smart phones that let us pay for purchases with our fingerprints and iris scans—are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. For instance, imagine what the NSA could do (and is likely already doing) with voiceprint technology, which has been likened to a fingerprint. Described as “the next frontline in the battle against overweening public surveillance,” the collection of voiceprints is a booming industry for governments and businesses alike. As The Guardian reports, “voice biometrics could be used to pinpoint the location of individuals. There is already discussion about placing voice sensors in public spaces, and [Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation] said that multiple sensors could be triangulated to identify individuals and specify their location within very small areas.” Suddenly the NSA’s telephone metadata program seems like child’s play compared to what’s coming down the pike. That, of course, is the point. The NSA is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under surveillance and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government. In other words, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its domestic surveillance efforts. At every turn, we have been handicapped in our quest for transparency, accountability and a representative democracy by an establishment culture of secrecy: secret agencies, secret experiments, secret military bases, secret surveillance, secret budgets, and secret court rulings, all of which exist beyond our reach, operate outside our knowledge, and do not answer to “we the people.” Now there are still those who insist that they have nothing to hide from the surveillance state and nothing to fear from the police state because they have done nothing wrong. To those sanctimonious few, secure in their delusions, let this be a warning: the danger posed by the American police state applies equally to all of us—lawbreaker and law abider alike, black and white, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, blue collar and white collar, and any other distinction you’d care to trot out. In an age of too many laws, too many prisons, too many government spies, and too many corporations eager to make a fast buck at the expense of the American taxpayer, there is no safe place and no watertight alibi. We are all guilty of some transgression or other, and eventually, we will all be made to suffer the same consequences in the electronic concentration camp that surrounds us.
Greg Hochmuth was one of the first software engineers hired at Instagram. He worked on a team in 2012 that developed the first Android app for the slick photo-sharing service. In its first 24 hours, the app was downloaded more than one million times.
But Mr. Hochmuth eventually came to realize that the platform’s pleasing features — the interface that made it easy for people to upload and share beautiful images, the personalized suggestions of accounts to follow — also had potential downsides.
The same design qualities that make an app enthralling, he said, may also make it difficult for people to put down. And the more popular such services become, the more appeal they hold for users — a phenomenon known as the network effect.
“Once people come in, then the network effect kicks in and there’s an overload of content. People click around. There’s always another hashtag to click on,” Mr. Hochmuth, who left Instagram last year and started his own data consulting firm in Manhattan, told me recently. “Then it takes on its own life, like an organism, and people can become obsessive.”
Photo
“Network Effect” explores the psychological implications of popular digital services and features 10,000 clips of people engaging in various activities.
Now Mr. Hochmuth and Jonathan Harris, an artist and computer scientist, have collaborated on a project that explores the implications of such compelling digital platforms for the human psyche. Titled “Network Effect,” the site invites users to click through a video and audio smorgasbord of human behavior. It includes 10,000 clips of people primping, eating, kissing, blinking and so on.
Unlike delectable cooking apps or engrossing music streaming apps that may elicit pleasure responses in the brain, however, the voyeuristic site is deliberately disjointed and discomfiting. To challenge the idea that people entirely exercise free will during their online sessions, the site also automatically turns itself off after a few minutes, shutting out users for 24 hours.
“The endpoint makes you reflect,” Mr. Hochmuth said. “Do I want to keep browsing and clicking and being obsessed? Or do I want to do something else?”
As the site underscores, digital life keeps us hooked with an infinite entertainment stream as its default setting. Tech companies often set it up that way.
There’s Facebook beckoning with its bottomless news feed. There’s Netflix autoplaying the next episode in a TV series 10 seconds after the previous one ends. There’s Tinder encouraging us to keep swiping in search of the next potential paramour.
And then there are the constant notices and reminders — a friend liked your photo or tweet; a colleague wants to connect with you on LinkedIn; an Evite awaits your response — which automatically induce feelings of social obligation. You damn yourself to distraction if you respond, and to fear of missing out if you don’t.
Tech companies tend to present these feedback loops as consumer conveniences. A new Intel TV ad, for instance, shows a young girl in the back of a car growing sad because the laptop on which she was watching a singalong video suddenly runs out of power. The company’s new battery-preserving processor, though, ultimately saves the day, “so you never have to stop watching.” T-Mobile has just introduced BingeOn, a feature that offers subscribers on certain plans unlimited high-speed access to popular streaming video channels.
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An image from “Network Effect.”
There’s even an industry term for the experts who continually test and tweak apps and sites to better hook consumers, keep them coming back and persuade them to stay longer: growth hackers.
“How do you drive habitual use of a product?” said Sean Ellis, the chief executive of GrowthHackers.com, a software company specializing in online growth techniques. “It’s not just about getting new people. It’s about retaining the people you already have and, ultimately, getting them to bring in more people.”
As an example, Mr. Ellis described how he recently started using a free meditation app, called Calm, which has a calendar feature that gently nudges subscribers to use the service more. Every time he finishes a session, the app “shows me I’m doing one every three to four days,” Mr. Ellis said. “But it’s clear to me that I should be doing one every day, based on the graphic.”
Yet technologists like Tristan Harris, a design ethicist who is also a product philosopher at Google, warn that growth hacking, taken to its extreme, can encourage sites and apps to escalate their use of persuasive design techniques with potentially unintended consequences for consumers. He compares online engagement maximization efforts to the so-called bliss-point techniques some food companies have developed to hook consumers on a stew of fat, salt and sugar.
“The ‘I don’t have enough willpower’ conversation misses the fact that there are 1,000 people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down the self-regulation that you have,” said Mr. Harris, who emphasized that he was speaking only for himself and not for Google.
Mr. Harris is also the co-director of an effort called Time Well Spent, which encourages tech companies to provide more choices for users who would like to limit session-prolonging techniques like autoplaying one video or song after another. He said he envisioned alternative app designs that might measure success not in followers, connections, endorsements or likes accumulated, but in meaningful relationships developed or desired jobs offered.
“Right now, many company leaders and designers would like to do these things differently, but the incentives aren’t aligned to do this,” Mr. Harris said.
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The “Network Effect” invites users to click through a video and audio smorgasbord of human behavior.
Certainly, it may be difficult for efforts like Time Well Spent and art projects like “Network Effect” to sway companies that find themselves in increasingly heated competition for online users’ attention.
Mr. Ellis, the chief of GrowthHackers, said that the biggest sites and apps “can have ethical conversations about good attention and bad attention.” For many other online platforms, he said, “ethical or not, not aspiring to drive engagement and attention means you are likely to go out of business.”
Still, companies may eventually find a profit motive in monitoring and inhibiting Internet addiction.
In Canada, for instance, casinos have tried developing computer algorithms to identify slot machine players whose behavior is clearly becoming addictive and then intervene, said Natasha Dow Schüll, an associate professor in the department of media, culture and communication at New York University, who has studied gambling design. Ethics aside, she said, it’s a way for companies to maintain profits — by not draining their customer base.
Social networks and online game companies have even more detailed data on how much time people spend on their sites and how often they click, she said.
“It makes sense that companies should do something about it, not just to be good corporate citizens, but to protect profits. Professor Schüll said. “We need to have a conversation about how to respond to this — they could send alerts or allow people to set their own thresholds on time.”
Mr. Hochmuth, the co-author of the “Network Effect” project, said he was hopeful that market forces would eventually inspire sites and apps to explore more varied designs and user interfaces.
“I think something will actually change — the question is where will change come from?” he said, noting that the organic food movement started with small producers, not the mass-produced food industry. Online services that give users more options and control, he concluded, “may not come from the incumbent players.”
