Il Grande Cocomero

Mr. Morozov noted that while “the Internet helped the movement pick a date” for the first protest, most of the movement’s subsequent momentum developed in the public square. Moreover, the new “speak-to-Tweet” service “didn’t help Egyptians communicate with each other. Only people in the West can read” the Tweets.

Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, and is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He is also a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and runs the magazine’s “Net Effect” blog about the Internet’s impact on global politics.

Could games like ‘Guitar Hero’ help cure cancer and end poverty?

We often think of immersive computer and videogames—like “FarmVille,” “Guitar Hero” and “World of Warcraft”—as “escapist,” a kind of passive retreat from reality. Many critics consider such games a mind-numbing waste of time, if not a corrupting influence. But the truth about games is very nearly the opposite. In today’s society, they consistently fulfill genuine human needs that the real world fails to satisfy. More than that, they may prove to be a key resource for solving some of our most pressing real-world problems.

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Prendetevela con Justin Bieber (Per la serie “grandi interrogativi dell’uomo moderno”)

La recensione di Walter Mossberg:

On balance, however, I still prefer the iPad. For one thing, I like getting twice the screen size for a little more money up front—as little as $29 for the no-contract model with cellular capability. For another, the iPad has vastly more apps specifically designed for a tablet versus a smartphone—about 40,000 according to Apple, compared with just a handful for the Tab. And it can run about triple the apps overall, if you count smartphone apps that aren’t optimized for tablets.

Android ha superato Apple.

In the third quarter, devices with the Android operating system were installed in 44% of smartphones, while Apple Inc.’s iPhone came in second place with 23%, according to market research firm, NPD Group. RIM’s BlackBerry trailed behind in third place with 22%. One big caveat: NPD tracks consumer activity, but doesn’t measure corporate cellphone purchases.

“Nobody uses large numbers of adjectives when they think, and I believe that writing which one cannot actually think can very easily look wrong on the page. The real aim, of course, is conciseness. Concise prose knows what it wants to say, and says it. It does not embellish, except occasionally, and then for dramatic effect. It is sparing in its use of metaphor.”

giulialaura

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