Welcome to this week’s Technology Updates, a vibrant mix of hot topics and future trends.

The future is here

Do you have a Facebook account? If so, you may be one of the almost 700,000 people Facebook used as their very own lab rats. Facebook decided to test how negative stories can influence your inclination to write negative posts.

According to the authors of the study: “We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.”

What’s worse is that neither Facebook nor the researchers see anything wrong in conducting a study like this. As it turns out, somewhere in the fine print of the user agreement between you and Facebook you have agreed to be a part of experiments just like this. What can you expect from a service where you willingly give away all of your personal information, for free?

Trending this week…

This week brought some interesting articles and news worth taking note of:

  • Boleto (Brazil’s online payment system) was hacked. The current damage estimate is $3.75 billion dollars.
  • As we reported in the previous issues, Google is complying with the ‘right to forget’ European law. One of the first victims is the BBC. Did we really have to wait until 2014 to live in the year 1984?
  • What is Apple going to do about wearable technology? I recently read an interesting piece about the possibilities. —> http://g3t.ca/DahP5A
  • Microsoft is waging a war on malware. It recently took down several servers distributing the nasty software. Unfortunately, it took down few million other websites right along with it. Oh, well.
  • If you can read this message, it means that Dragonfly didn’t shutdown your electricity provider, yet. Dragonfly is group which hit about 1,000 energy firms in Europe and North America. So, how long can you survive without electricity?
  • Check out even more trending topics here –> http://g3t.ca/MZRLPN

White Papers

You are welcome to browse the archive – http://g3t.ca/vxvS4B . Feel free to send me any white papers you may come across that you would like to add to the archive.