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Why You Mourned The NASA Opportunity Like A Lost Pet

       "The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube cannot speak. In the event that the Weighted Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice." -- GLaDOS, Portal   On February 12th, 2019, NASA reported its Opportunity rover mission to Mars was no longer functioning. After its fifteen years of service, a considerable extension past the original 90-day mission it was designed for, it was trapped in a Martian dust storm in June of 2018 and entered a special hibernation mode, hoping to recover when natural winds blew the dust off its solar panels. That salvation didn't come, and after NASA mission control's repeated attempts to raise a signal from the power-drained rover, NASA declared Opportunity dead.  So far, so typical.  Opportunity was only the fifth of six robotic expeditions made to Mars, each time increasing in functionality as technology progresses. The 1971 Soviet "Mars 3" rover stopped communicating only 20 seconds after…
Score: 1.22

Twitch and Live Streaming are the Future of Media and Here's Why TV Should Be Scared

Sometime in the 1950s, a new form of media emerged when families bought a peculiar new device in the living rooms. Called the “television,” it used parts of theater and vaudeville, creating this interesting form of entertainment that was in the moment. It found a following despite what traditional theater said about the medium and is now the established powerhouse we see today.    Fast-forward almost 70 years later, and we might be seeing something very similar. The only difference is it’s a highly evolved version, one that can give the viewer a control it has not had in decades. It also engages audiences at a level it has never had before, and one broadcast or cable TV has never been able to give them.    All the Content Right Now One of the advantages live streaming gets over current forms of content is in the level of engagement between the people who make them and the viewers. The content producers are making it whenever they want, which makes for a fanbase that watches their content…
Score: 1.06

Social Media Optimization - The Other Digital Marketing

  Hi, I'm Penguin Pete Trbovich, and you overthink SEO.  You overthink SEO because everybody has told you that Search Engine Optimization is the only kind of marketing in the entire universe. SEOSEOSEO! Just churn out text copy for the Great Lord Google, because Google gobbles keywords like a goblin.  Seriously, why do we even make media visible to human beings? Why do we even have an Internet? They should just have it set up where every morning we all take a bucket of keywords and walk it to Google headquarters and dump it into their volcano, and later they mail us a postcard with our organic search stats for the day. The humans in this equation are superfluous.    It's not like there's an alternative way to get visitors to your website. Not like people click links shared to them by trusted peers, confidants, family, influencers, and the occasional hashtag. Oh wait, there is a way to do this!    SMO - Social Media Optimization!  Now you have SEO on your eCommerce website squared away, from my…
Score: 1.42

It Is Indeed Time To Police Social Media

    It is time we faced the music, Internet fans: We broke everything. Social Media was a mistake. None of us are close to understanding how or why, but apparently we have created a monster.    Social media seemed harmless enough when it came along.  Social media was nothing but an extension of the exact same Internet we'd had for decades. Believe it or not, there is very little difference between modern Reddit and Usenet circa 1990. There's also very little difference between modern Twitter and an AOL chat room decades ago. Even before the now long-forgotten shared virtual network Second Life (bet you forgot that one!) wasn't that different from a MUD (multi-user dimension) towards the end of the 20th century, only with better graphics.  So WHY has social media been at the forefront of what we can only assume will be the human race's downfall? What is so dangerous about the idea of letting everyone communicate all over the world instantly? Apparently, social and anthropological science has been…
Score: 1.19

Seeking Online Eden : The Quest For An Intelligent Discussion Community

    This is Diogenes the Cynic. He is known for having roamed the world, lantern aloft, on a lifelong quest for just one honest man. (Spoilers: He never did find one by his definition.) Besides that, he was one of those classical philosophers and public intellectuals whose standard delivery represented our modern concept of "performance art" or "stand-up comedy." He was a tart social critic and overall sourpuss. He is, however, credited with helping to found the seeds of stoicism, one of the most enduring schools of Greek philosophy.  He is one of my heroes.  Like Diogenes, I too have been on a lifelong quest to seek something out. This thing I seek is something we all assume exist, all agree would be a nice thing to have, until we think it over. That thing I have fruitlessly sought is "an intelligent Internet discussion community."  Let's flashback right quick: The original purpose of the Internet was to support communication, to the goal of exchanging information, ideas, and media. When…
Score: 1.36