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Showing posts from February, 2018

Anthill 22: Sex (Sex, Criminology & Technology)

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Anthill 22: Sex shutterstock.com. Annabel Bligh , The Conversation ; Gemma Ware , The Conversation ; Josephine Lethbridge , The Conversation ; Michael Parker , The Conversation , and Will de Freitas , The Conversation In this episode of The Anthill podcast, we’re talking about sex. It dominates the media we consume and our thoughts. But is technology changing sex? And how is the social role of sex evolving? We talked to a futurologist, a sex robot expert, sex researchers, historians and some criminologists. New technologies are often quickly deployed to serve our human need for love, sex and intimacy. But will robots become a normal part of people’s sex lives? Michael Parker takes a look at where advances in computing and artificial intelligence might lead us in our search for love. He spoke to Kate Devlin, a senior lecturer in computing and sex robot researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London and Trudy Barber from the University of
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Smartphone data tracking is more than creepy – here's why you should be worried Shutterstock Vivian Ng , University of Essex and Catherine Kent , University of Essex Smartphones rule our lives. Having information at our fingertips is the height of convenience. They tell us all sorts of things, but the information we see and receive on our smartphones is just a fraction of the data they generate. By tracking and monitoring our behaviour and activities, smartphones build a digital profile of shockingly intimate information about our personal lives. These records aren’t just a log of our activities. The digital profiles they create are traded between companies and used to make inferences and decisions that affect the opportunities open to us and our lives. What’s more, this typically happens without our knowledge, consent or control. New and sophisticated methods built into smartphones make it easy to track and monitor our behaviou