Magnonic Holographic Memory Device

Your Mind is Belong to Us

Researchers demonstrate holographic memory device
phys.org, Feb 2014


and on that note:

Scientists develop thought-controlled gene switch
BBC News - Nov 2014

Self-deceived individuals deceive others better
phys.org, Aug 2014

"These findings suggest that people don't always reward the most accomplished individual but rather the most self-deceived."

Over confident people can fool others into believing they are more talented than they actually are, a study has found.

These 'self-deceived' individuals could be more likely to get promotions and reach influential positions in banks and other organisations. And these people are more likely to overestimate other people's abilities and take greater risks, possibly creating problems for their organisations.

-from Newcastle University and the University of Exeter 

As The Meatbody Fails

Wikipedia accuses PR firm of posting biased entries for cash
Steve Dent, engadget, 11-2013

Wikipedia has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Texas publicity firm Wiki-PR over its alleged practices:

Sockpuppeting - posting articles for pay that make its clients look good. ... 300 phoney accounts to create articles that appear to be from unbiased sources.

Meatpuppetry - using false identities to advocate certain positions in its user discussion forums.

China's internet vigilantes and the 'human flesh search engine'
BBC News, Jan 2014

[the human flesh search engine is basically a kind of blackmarket google that uses large amounts of real people instead of an algorithm in order to find things, like other people, for example]

Astronomological

Some people think astrology is a science – here's why
Jul 02 2014, phys.org

["Astrology" vs. "Horoscopes", essentially]

According to the Wellcome Trust Monitor Survey, 21% of adults in Britain read their horoscopes "often" or "fairly often".

From the Wellcome Trust Monitor survey, we know that less than 10% [of the British] think horoscopes are "very" or "quite" scientific. And a similar proportion thinks the same across the European Union as a whole.

However, if we ask people whether they think astrology is scientific, we see a different picture. In a Eurobarometer survey of attitudes towards science and technology, a randomly selected half of respondents were asked how scientific they thought astrology was. The other half were asked the same question about horoscopes.

The results shows a surprising disparity in opinion. More than 25% think that astrology is "very scientific" compared to only 7% for horoscopes. 

In research I carried out a few years ago, I tested the hypothesis that people get confused between astrology and astronomy, and it is this that could account for widespread apparent belief in the scientific status of astrology. Even well-respected national newspapers have been known to make this mistake.

My survey also asked people how scientific they believed various activities to be. One of these was astronomy. Using a statistical technique known as regression analysis, I discovered, after adjusting for age, gender and education, that people who were particularly likely to think that astronomy was very scientific were also very likely to think the same about astrology. This points to semantic confusion about these terms among the general public.

This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives). 
http://theconversation.com/au

On Swarm Computation and the Analog

[while listening to a lecture at the Santa Fe Institute, on complexity and collective decision-making.]

Perhaps it is not that swarms perform computation by their own kinematics. It is instead that we can finally analyze their behavior using computational analogies.

On the Craft of Memetic Infection

a screenshot of predictive analytics, USA, circa 2013

Yahoo! —which, according to the American author and marketer Ryan Holiday, tests more than 45,000 combinations of headlines and images every five minutes on its home page.

What is the real cost of your online attention?
Tom Chatfield, Aeon MAgazine, 2013

If you’re using a free online service, the adage goes, you are the product. It’s an arresting line, but one that deserves putting more precisely: it’s not you, but your behavioural data and the quantifiable facts of your engagement that are constantly blended for sale, with the aggregate of every single interaction (yours included) becoming a mechanism for ever-more-finely tuning the business of attracting and retaining users.

When a Rose is no longer a Rose

("Rose" is her real name)

Google+ abandons need to use real names
phys.org, July 2014

Google+ apologized Tuesday and stopped requiring people to use their real names while mingling in the online social network, as it looks to gain ground on market leader Facebook.