Cyber Prometheus

  Don’t believe that! – Cofacts as a democratic technology to engage with online misinformation Created by Taiwanese tech community g0v, the platform Cofacts promises "to help separate misinformation from fact". It aims to do so in a manner that is transparent and easily accessible to end users and fact checkers alike, inviting everyone to participate in the latter group while providing a simple interface via a bot for the LINE chat app for the former. Can it deliver on this promise and is fact-checking even the right avenue towards effectively combatting misinformation spread in societies that have been described as "post-truth"? Barbara Engelhart  Barbara Engelhart is a graduate student at the University of Vienna and teacher at a technical high-school in Vienna. Her areas of interest include ethics of technology, collective responsibility and anthropology of violence. She is currently finishing her Masters thesis in the field of Linguistics.  Introduction You ope...

  M i nd games Social media is destructive. Here’s why you should care Figure 1 : we're hooked As human beings, we are social creatures who crave connection. As a result, some of us spend a lifetime looking for that special someone who knows us better than we know ourselves. Well, the average internet user spends roughly two hours every day on a platform that seems to do just that, and does not require the effort of making a candle-lit dinner. It is time to unravel the best-kept secrets of social media platforms. Lisa Passov Lisa Passov is a second-year information systems engineering student at the Technion institute of technology and a maths tutor. She is passionate about using her skills and knowledge in technology, humane interaction, and education to improve the world around her.  Mind Games On May 19 th, 2022, my uncle Gennady died. He was 79 years old, and it happened in one second while he was getting ready to pick up his granddaughter from kindergarten. Then, a few m...

  Empower yourself, or else The emergence of a digitally connected world spurred hope for more self-empowerment, self-organization and decentralized political action. Now what we are getting with Metaverse is a streamlined version of more of the same – world-alienation and isolation of everyone who can’t keep up.  Daria Rubisch Philosophy Undergraduate at the University of Vienna. Interested in the good life, philosophically and in practice. They’re also invested in local politics, with a focus on art subsidy. Introduction In a Facebook post from late 2018, Mark Zuckerberg spoke of how recent innovations spark his faith into technology becoming the decentralizing force it once set out to be . In the same breath he talks about learning Mandarin, running an equivalent of 14 marathons and training a smart home AI. ''Giving power back to the people'' is listed alongside his personal self-improvement projects. So if you are wondering how technology is going to empower you, y...