Sample Clips
Five Interviews: Attention, Media, Information Overload, and the Web
Clay Shiry, pt 1: The New Luddism
Clay Shiry, pt 2: The Newspaper's Late Discovery of Civic Function
Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications program at New York University and is the author, most recently, of Here Comes Everybody, about how new means of communication are changing the social environment. CJR's Russ Juskalian recently spoke with Shirky about knowledge, the Internet, and why we shouldn't worry about information overload.
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Michael Posner: How Attention Networks Work
Cognitive neuroscientist Michael Posner is an internationally recognized expert on attentional networks and cognition. CJR contributor Russ Juskalian recently talked to Posner about attention, cognition, and how media consumption affects both.
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Gary Marcus: Attention and the Brain
Gary Marcus is a professor of psychology at New York University, where he studies developmental cognitive neuroscience. In his latest book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, he writes about the clumsy way in which our brains evolved. CJR's Russ Juskalian recently talked with Marcus about the brain, and what information overload might mean for cognitive development.
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David Shenk: Data Smog
Journalist David Shenk has been writing about the topic of information overload for over a decade. In his 1997 book Data Smog, Shenk was one of the first to identify the problem, explore it in detail, and propose some possible solutions. CJR's Russ Juskalian recently talked with Shenk about information overload and its ramifications for journalism.
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Maggie Jackson: The Erosion of Attention
Journalist Maggie Jackson is the author of 2008's Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. She recently talked with Russ Juskalian about the dangers of the divided attention span and how we might combat information overload.
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Pixels Are Like Cupcakes. Let Me Explain.
It happens to all of us: the moment when one finds out that more megapixels and better photographs aren't always the same thing. To be disabused of the Megapixel Myth--this decade's analog of the Megahertz Myth--can lead to an existential buyer's crisis in miniature.
Disbelief, at first, gives way to a sort of embarrassing self-questioning: You mean, 15 megapixels isn't three times better than 5 megapixels? This year's model isn't better than last year's? I spent all that money upgrading--for nothing?
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Vintage Lenses on Digital Cameras
All Shawn McCully wanted was a lens for his digital single-lens reflex camera. Little did he know, he was searching for the holy grail of amateur photography -- and hoping to do it on the cheap.
"I just wanted to be able to shoot family and friends indoors without a flash," he said. He also wanted his digital Canon 40D to take photos with a buttery smooth background and only the tiniest area in focus.
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Carl Zimmer Uses E. Coli as Telescope on Life
In February 1982, physicians in Medford, Oregon encountered an unknown pathogen that waged a sort of intelligent biochemical warfare against our bodies. After being ingested, the rod-shaped bacteria--small enough to fit 500 of them side-by-side across the diameter of a single period in twelve-point font--were able to monitor their surroundings for human hormones to determine where they were inside their victims. When they received the signal that they had reached the intestines, the rods sprouted tails that operated as proton-powered outboard motors, swam towards one another, and constructed their nano-weapons: syringes small enough to pierce human cells and deliver injections of treacherous chemical instructions.
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The True Color of "Green-Collar" Jobs
When John Edwards bowed out of the Democratic primary in January, the presidential race lost its most vocal supporter of so called green-collar jobs. His former opponents have carried the mantle forward, however-Senator Hillary Clinton in particular, who introduced an amendment to the 2007 energy bill, calling for green-collar job training.
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Watson's Remarks Continue to Spur Argument
The debate about the relationship between intelligence and race rages on in the wake of some controversial remarks made by Dr. James Watson, published in the Sunday Times of London in October. Strangely absent in these arguments, which are based on I.Q. research, is a discussion of what the "Intelligence Quotient" is supposed to measure.
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Video search engines help users sort through clips
The Internet is teeming with so much video that searching through it is becoming one of the biggest challenges on the Web.
Video search engines such as Blinkx and EveryZing are among those racing search giant Google to try to solve the problem. Both use speech-to-text and other technologies to make video clips easier to search and view. There's a lot at stake. The video advertising market is projected to grow to $4.3 billion by 2011, up from $410 million in 2006, researcher eMarketer says.
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Hackers upgrading Apple TV's capabilities
Weeks after Apple released its newest media device, Apple TV, rogue programmers have unlocked features the computer maker didn't include.
Unveiled in January, Apple TV wirelessly connects video and music from a computer's iTunes library to the bigger screen and better speakers of new widescreen TVs.
But across the Internet, including on discussion boards hosted by Apple, tech analysts and consumers have complained about the $299 device's limitations
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Two new releases offer economic theories, plain and simple
Did the legalization of abortion, in the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, result in a plummeting U.S. violent-crime rate nearly 20 years later?
In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt, aka the "rogue economist," and journalist Stephen Dubner argued "yes." They used economic theory and statistical analysis to make their case. Shortly afterward, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published a paper claiming to disprove the theory.
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