Sean Captain at FastCompany reports that .
The service has unveiled a set of chatbots that users can interact with in order to practice their French, German, or Spanish—with more languages to come. "Practice real Spanish conversations without blushing," is the assurance given to curious users.
In their article, "", Larmuseau et al.
In his article "", Benoît Godin provides a history of the term innovation and its adoption in discourse about technological change.Â
The history of the expression begins as a translation of a Greek term that referred to subversive novelties and was invariably negative in tone. Early Christian authors used the new word, innovo, to refer to regeneration, a return to a better state of affairs from the past, clearly a positive connotation.
Scott earlier talked about simplistic notions of firsts in technology. When was the first computer invented? Depends on what you mean by computer! Anyway, who says the arrival of computers was marked by the invention of any given machine?
The Globe and Mail reports that . Manufacturers have one year to reformulate their products to exclude compounds such as and .
Technology is often linked to efficiency. As in, technology change or technological progress equals greater efficiency. In our courses we try to break students of that assumption, and consider cases where greater efficiency may be harmful or anti-progressive. One of our favourites is Jevon's Paradox, in which an improvement in efficiency can paradoxically lead to an increase in consumption of the resource.
But here's another example. In this case, traffic efficiency was reduced to make streets safer.
, apparently meaning cars with advanced driving assistance technologies such as the Autopilot mode in a Tesla.
According to marked a handful of interesting historical technological achievements:
There have been many reports of drones being shot at by people who believe they are being spied on. An article in Slate by Faine Greenwood explains why
The first reason is that shooting at drones endangers everyone in the vicinity. There is a chance that the drone, if damaged, may collide with someone on the ground. There is also a chance that stray or falling ammunition may hit somebody.
With election day approaching in the US, issues around the mechanics of the voting itself have returned to the limelight. Voters in many states will use a variety of electronic machines—many connected to the Internet—to cast their ballots. In this day when government and private information have been leaking (or leaked) like sieves, this fact gives rise to some trepidation.