society

Like Douglas Rushkoff, I've been an enthusiastic supporter of digital technology for more than 20 years and, also like Rushkoff, I've had some second thoughts as to whether--at least for some people--immersion in technology is doing more harm than good.

Rushkoff is the co-host and co-writer of TV movie "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier," which premiers on PBS Frontline Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. The show was produced, co-written and co-hosted by Rachel Dretzin, who also produced "Growing Up Online," a show that aired on Frontline in 2007.

The new program … Read more

Another famous apple has been in the news this week. A 1752 manuscript revealing how Sir Isaac Newton formulated the theory of gravity is now online for people to view and read.

A conversation between Newton and scholar William Stukeley about Newton's life, notably his alleged encounter with a falling apple, prompted Stukeley to write Newton's 1752 biography "Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life." Experts carefully transformed the delicate 250-year-old book into an electronic version that now is on display at Britain's Royal Society Web site.

The online interactive manuscript can be viewed in full 3D or as a Microsoft Silverlight presentation where you can turn each page, zoom in or out, and magnify any section. Some of the passages beautifully handwritten by Stukeley can be a bit difficult to read, but floating commentaries along the way do a fine job of explaining key sections. The interactive 3D effect is nicely done--you do feel as if the actual manuscript is sitting in front of you.… Read more

I know there is a fondness for games among many readers, so here is today's. What is your No. 1 word of the last decade? Might it be "divorce" or "Warcraft" or perhaps even "pants," "Rush," or "Miley"?

This question is especially timely today because the American Dialect Society, which studies the stumbling attempts of English to take hold in America, has declared that the one most important, significant, rousingly symbolic word of the last decade is "Google."

According to CBSNews.com, "Google" beat out … Read more

IBM researchers have cooked up a quick medical diagnostic testing system based on a silicon chip that can get by on a small sample and test for multiple diseases.

The breakthrough to be announced Tuesday means that physicians can test a patient immediately following a heart attack to improve survival rates. The test checks for disease markers, proteins that can be detected in blood using "capillary action force." In a nutshell, capillary forces refer to the tendency of a liquid to rise in narrow tubes or be drawn into a small opening.

The IBM Research-Zurich findings will be … Read more

Social networking is on the rise, both on and off the job, leaving companies uncertain how to monitor their use by employees, reports new survey.

More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.

Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee's actions off the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures … Read more

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all.

These groups even want compensation for iTunes' 30-second song samples.

At a time when many iTunes shoppers are still fuming over Apple's first-ever increase in song prices, the demands by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), and other performing-rights groups, would likely lead to more price hikes at iTunes. For many, … Read more

Geoengineering is not a last resort, but the next necessary step to recalibrate the Earth's climate unless carbon emissions are significantly reduced in the near future, the Royal Society, the U.K.'s national academy of sciences, announced Tuesday.

"It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases," John Shepherd, chair of the Royal Society's geoengineering study and a professor of Earth system science at the … Read more

In my local Starbucks, there's a bald man who wears the same pristine white Prince tennis shoes every day. He is always perched on a stool, his PC open in front of him, typing away with the middle finger of each hand. He has one of those Bluetooth thingies in his ear and he's often talking as he's typing. This somewhat peculiar gentleman is, indeed, running his business from Starbucks.

One might wonder whether he's just getting the slightly better end of this deal. I have never seen him eat there. Perhaps he orders one or … Read more

John Quincy Adams might not be re-tweeting Ashton Kutcher and Shaq anytime soon, but he does have a Twitter account now. The Massachusetts Historical Society has launched a Twitter account, @JQAdams_MHS, and will officially start tweeting Adams' personal diary entries on Wednesday.

Adams died in 1848, right around the time that people first started flooding the San Francisco Bay Area in search of quick money. Except then it was in the form of gold, not venture dollars from Sand Hill Road.

As an Associated Press article explained, "a high school student touring the sixth U.S. president's archives … Read more