By: Edward C. Baig – usatoday.com – August 12, 2019 Trying to break free of the constant lure of your smartphone could make you feel like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part III”: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Bill Johnson tried taking a break. The 46-year-old sales director from Marion, Iowa, stopped using social media for 30...

By: S. Joshua Swamidass – wsj.com – May 9, 2019 As the technology advances, science and religion should each give the other its due. Science fiction often depicts artificial intelligence as technical minds embodied in humanlike bodies. Think Commander Data of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” In reality, AI is mindless and usually disembodied. Yet it’s still important, and scientists shouldn’t be...

By: Catey Hill – marketwatch.com – May 13, 2019 You’re not going to like this. Millennials spend more time on social media than older generations: People ages 25-34 spend 141 minutes per day on it, versus 105 for the 35-44 set. And that could be hurting both their finances and mental health. Indeed, nearly half of millennials (49%) say that...

By: Our Correspondents – independent.ng – February 17, 2019 For more than 70 years, Wycliffe Bible Translators has worked to give people the Word of God in their own language. It took 67 years to complete the first 500 Bibles, and the second 500 took only 17 years. Now, updated software for smartphones called Paratext Lite will speed up the process even more....

By: Jillian D’Onfro – cnbc.com – December 11, 2018 It was Sundar Pichai’s turn in the congressional hot seat. Google’s CEO testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for 3.5 hours while lawmakers grilled him on a wide range of issues, including potential political bias on the company’s platforms, its plans for a censored search app in China and...

Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is. By: Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Natasha Singer, Michael H. Keller & Aaron Krolik – nytimes.com – December 10, 2018 The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following...

By: David French – nationalreview.com – November 26, 2018 Human nature wins. There was a time, not too long ago, when the American tech billionaires truly believed they could have it all. They believed that they could create platforms for all people, encourage engagement and dialogue, get immensely rich, and change the world in a specific, progressive way. Think back...

By: Kyle Smith – nationalreview.com – November 24, 2018 On Google, I just typed in “top races Republican,” and the word “races” got a squiggly underline suggesting I had misspelled the word. Beneath it ran Google’s helpful correction: “top racist Republican.” With “top races Democrat,” no such veering into the gutter. No squiggly line. The word “racist” did not insinuate...

By: Fred Bauer – nationalreview.com – November 14, 2018 As has become increasingly evident in recent years, the utopian hope of early Internet proponents has, like that of starry-eyed enthusiasts of similar projects, sometimes led to surprising reversals in reality. One of the claims of early Internet culture is that the World Wide Web would help connect diverse communities and...

By: Victor Davis Hanson – nationalreview.com – July 31, 2018 Globalism, the tech boom, illegal immigration, campus radicalism, the new racialism . . . Are they leading us toward an 1861? How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war? Almost every cultural and social institution — universities, the public schools,...