Today (Oct. 14, 2014) is International Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).Â
In 1833, Lovelace met Charles Babbage for the first time. She was inspired by his Difference Engine, eager to expand upon his ideas. She and Babbage exchanged letters from June 10, 1835 to August 12, 1852. Just to give you a little perspective, it wasn’t until 1834 that the word “scientist†was coined byWilliam Whewell. Ada referred to her work as “poetical science.â€
In October 1842, Luigi Federico Menabrea published an article about Babbage’s Analytical Engine in Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve. Lovelace translated it and added her own notes, about 20,000 words, to the 8,000 word piece. Published in 1843, her notes include a much deeper understanding of the potential for Babbage’s machine, including the suggestion that it was “capable of executing not merely arithmetical calculations, but even all those of analysis.â€
Two independent reports claim that Adobe’s e-book software, “Digital Editions,†logs every document readers add to their local “library,†tracks what happens with those files, and then sends those logs back to the mother-ship, over the Internet, in the clear. In other words, Adobe is not only tracking your reading habits, it’s making it really, really easy for others to do so as well.
Emergent is a real-time rumor tracker. It’s part of a research project with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University that focuses on how unverified information and rumor are reported in the media. It aims to develop and best practices for debunking misinformation…
As a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries, Tom Wheeler played a role in shaping almost every major telecommunications policy and innovation over the last three decades.
Cable and telephone deregulation. Internet service in schools and libraries. C-SPAN.
None of them, though, have generated as much public interest as net neutrality, the policy most likely to define his time as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
In the last few months, Mr. Wheeler’s guidelines for net neutrality, the concept that users should have equal access to any legal online content, have become a lightning rod for criticism. More than 3.7 million comments about the policy have flowed to the commission. Many of them argue that Mr. Wheeler’s plan does not go far enough to protect an open Internet.
