A new issue of Human Technology is out. Mark Graham (OII): Geography/Internet: Ethereal Alternate Dimensions of Cyberspace or Grounded Augmented Realities? From New Left Review, advances in information technology have generated both delirious boosterism and gloomy prognoses of computer-assisted decline — Rob Lucas engages with the sceptical current exemplified by Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. Why living cells are the future of data processing: Biocomputers make maps, run logic gates, perform binary calculations and more. From Wired, a special series on the patent fix. The costliest battle in the high-tech world: Caleb Hannan goes inside the front lines of the new Cold War. Who's afraid of Second Life? If you want to criticize the digital world, start by criticizing our wishes and desires — and not the technologies we develop to satisfy them. Is it time for a computer industry do-over? Rebecca Boyle on 7 amazing ways nanotechnology is changing the world. It's not just Indians and Taiwanese anymore: Latin Americans may be on the way up in the immigrant-dominated tech world. A conversation with Thomas W. Malone: It's becoming increasingly useful to think of all the people and computers on the planet as a kind of global brain.
