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Search engines 'rewire our memory'. Internet search engines have changed the way that memory works, researchers have claimed.

This presentation is designed to highlight key shifts in our use of technology and explain what this means for businesses today.  

The presentation draws upon cyberpsychology in particular to explain people's attitudes towards and motives for using new digital tools, technologies and platforms especially facebook and other social media.

I was reading an article about the FutureEverything gathering which started today in Manchester and happened to notice a nice story which explores the idea of map making in reverse.

According to the article a visual artist called Rosie Farrell decided to enter a competition held by Fab Lab which challenged anyone with a good idea to use the company’s equipment to make a prototype product.  

Last night I attended a talk entitled ‘The Art of Maps’ held at the British Library as part of the ‘Magnificent Maps. Power Propaganda and Art’ exhibition.  I went along mainly because I really like maps (geeky I know) and was interested in understanding more about the relationship between cartography and art and the interplay between the two.

I had a play with an iPad a week or so ago whilst visiting a friend. Before I’d actually had the opportunity to try it out I have to confess that I’d been a bit sceptical, I mean how much demand will there be for a device which seemed to me to have such limited use.

(Original article appears in the Telegraph here)

The news that China’s parents are resorting to electro-shock therapy in an attempt to ‘cure’ their children of internet addiction is nothing short of terrifying. According to The Sunday Times: “Chinese teenagers hooked on the internet are being subjected to electro-shock therapy at a clinic that claims they will be “reborn” free of the obsession.”

(Original article appears in the Telegraph here)

Baroness Greenfield’s been at it again: in this month’s Wired article entitled, ‘Did video games make bankers more reckless?’

Rather bizarrely, Greenfield’s hypothetical argument boils down to the premise that the current generation of bankers grew up playing videogames and that videogames make you reckless.

(Original article appears in the Telegraph here)

I’m a very casual gamer, with a preference for instantly gratifying ‘beat ‘em ups’ like the Tekken and Soul Calibur series or first person shooters like Time Crisis, but I love Sackboy, the hero of PS3’s highly successful user generated platform game Little Big Planet.

‘Sackboy’ from Little Big Planet  Photo: littlebigplanet.com

(Original article appears in the Telegraph here)

We’ve all heard stories of employees who leave derisory Tweets about their client’s hometown or teenagers who slate their job on Facebook and get fired. We are more open, expressive and less inhibited when we communicate online, often forgetting that anyone could be reading.

(Original article appears in the Telegraph here)

Seemingly every month a new study emerges claiming that social networking is bad for us or our children. Rather unsurprisingly, given the perpetual desire of some parts of the media to demonise technology, results from contradictory studies don’t make headline news. And that’s a real shame. The internet provides us with a new and unique environment in which to interact, engage, learn and relate; this is complex and there is still much to learn.