Many people probably saw the news that Facebook allegedly privileges left-leaning stories in its trending news section, a story broken by Gizmodo at the beginning of this month. The BBC builds on this report to explore how what we see online (and the various ways in which this get tailored more and more specifically to us) affects our behavior. “[I]t …
Tag Archives: big data
Web Roundup: How Do You Feel Today?
New Facebook reactions, the expansion of “like” options to include “love,” “sad” and “angry” emoticons (among others), is just one way affect has collided with technology this month. Zuckerberg and co. collaborated with the Greater Good Science Center team to produce “scientifically faithful” icons. No longer must you experience your feelings bounded within the body; instead, Facebook …
Web Roundup: Assorted stories
It’s been a very busy week, and I imagine everyone has been reading a lot about Charleston, SCOTUS, the ISIS attacks, and Greece. This web roundup isn’t going to be about any of those things, per se, instead it’s an attempt to fill you in on this month’s interesting stories that you might have missed.
In one quick follow-up to …
Open access, open data, open science…what does “openness” mean in the first place?
Recently, the research community has been flooded with encouragement to make things “open,” meaning: freely and easily accessible, in a variety of ways, and to a great variety of audiences. This impetus to be open has taken the form of debates over “Open Source” software licensing, “Open Access” to the published results of research[i], …
Web Roundup: The Body and Big Data
This month’s web roundup will take a brief look at the body in the face of big data. You may have heard that a panel from the recent Theorizing the Web conference held in Brooklyn featured a dynamic talk by sociologist Dr. Janet Vertesi on pregnancy and big data. When Dr. Vertesi found out she was pregnant, she sought …
Making up “persons” in personalized medicine with metabolomics
Imagine a world where you can walk into a hospital, submit a urine and blood sample, and be told 20 minutes later that you not only have a particular type of ear infection, but also a 50% chance of developing diabetes in the next ten years. Such is the promise of “personalized medicine,” in which the development of molecular diagnostics …