Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts ”” like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East ”” even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents.

“From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” said Bill Herr, who as a lawyer at a major chemical company used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.”

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When Jim Elliston, a former nondenominational pastor, decided to start a technology company in 2007, he turned to a customer he knew best””the church””to win initial business.

Mr. Elliston says his firm, Clover Sites Inc., of Newbury Park, Calif., has since sold its website templates and Web-hosting services to more than 4,500 churches in the U.S. He also counts those institutions’ members among his company’s clientele, crediting referrals for providing a steady stream of leads.

He started out promoting his business by placing an ad in a booklet for an annual church-leader conference. From there, he says the business started growing through word of mouth. Some 95% of his business now comes from churches.

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In 2007 software was released which could intercept bits of data used by websites to identify a user from anyone on the same public Wi-Fi network. Session tokens, as these bits are called, are generated after a login, in which a secure connection is used just long enough to allow the entry of a username and password before the web browser is redirected back to an unsecured version of the website. By grabbing hold of these, impostors were able to “sidejack” a Gmail account or other services that his victim had accessed. With access to email, an attacker could visit popular sites, reset a user’s password and use email to retrieve login information. Following a flurry of sidejacking activity Google began the process, which ended up taking several years, of tweaking most of its services to provide SSL/TLS as an option (though not a requirement).

A smattering of technical know-how was needed to sidejack””and the sidejacker had to be in close proximity of a sufficient number of users to make it worthwhile. Two developments have changed that equation. First, the release of a proof-of-concept plug-in for the Firefox browser, called Firesheep, made worldwide headlines last October. With a couple of clicks, even the most unsophisticated user could take over the identity of anybody else on the same network that happened to be browsing any of a few dozen popular websites. (Mr [Charles] Schumer fingered Firesheep in his public appearance.) Second, the growth of smartphones and tablets with Wi-Fi connectivity””along with the spread of free networks in America””dramatically increased the number of proximate targets. A few years ago a sidejacker (or “sniffer”) might have had access to a handful of laptops from which to siphon data; now hundreds of smartphones and slates can be logged on to such networks at any given time.

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Future historians will long puzzle over how the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, in protest over the confiscation of his fruit stand, managed to trigger popular uprisings across the Arab/Muslim world. We know the big causes ”” tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment and social media. But since being in Egypt, I’ve been putting together my own back-of-the-envelope guess list of what I’d call the “not-so-obvious forces” that fed this mass revolt. Here it is….

THE BEIJING OLYMPICS China and Egypt were both great civilizations subjected to imperialism and were both dirt poor back in the 1950s, with China even poorer than Egypt, Edward Goldberg, who teaches business strategy, wrote in The Globalist. But, today, China has built the world’s second-largest economy, and Egypt is still living on foreign aid. What do you think young Egyptians thought when they watched the dazzling opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics? China’s Olympics were another wake-up call ”” “in a way that America or the West could never be” ”” telling young Egyptians that something was very wrong with their country, argued Goldberg….

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The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

If I tell Watson a joke, will it get it? Could it tell me one?
One of the things we programmed it to do was recognize what humans would consider puns. It looks for word associations, for synonymy, for “sounds like.” But does the computer appreciate the humor? No, it doesn’t.

So no chance Watson could be an artist or poet either?
Actually, it could be programmed to have those features. You could train Watson to recognize modern art or classical art, symmetry, shape and color. You could tell it, This is good art, this is bad art. But again, that’s all.

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Morgan Stanley, the world’s top merger adviser, experienced a “very sensitive” break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc.’s computers more than a year ago, according to leaked e-mails from a cyber-security company working for the bank.

The e-mails from the Sacramento, California-based computer security firm HBGary Inc., which identify the first financial institution targeted in the series of attacks, said the bank considered details of the intrusion a closely guarded secret.

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Con artists are targeting women on Facebook in what’s becoming an all-too-common ruse: They steal photos of soldiers to set up profiles, profess their love and devotion in sappy messages — and then ask their victims to cut a check.

Army Sgt. James Hursey, 26, discharged and sent home from war in Iraq to nurse a back injury, found a page with his photos on Facebook — on a profile that wasn’t his. It was fake, set up by someone claiming to be an active-duty soldier looking for love.

Military officials say they’ve seen hundreds of similar cases in the past several years. Some of the impersonators have even used photos of soldiers who have died overseas.

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HOMILETICS: Do you feel that you’re an outsider peering through the window at the church, or that you’re positioned within the church context and thus able to critique it?

MILLER: A little bit of both. My degree is in theology. The reason why I didn’t go into full- time ministry is that I found that the people who were going into ministry had a subculture that really wasn’t connected to the outer culture. And I was more interested in finding practical bridges between the two, because I found a lot more truth in the business world, and a lot more of the principles of change being expressed in the business world than in the church world. So I could almost go from one world to the other with the values I had as a believer and still be able to distill the essential elements of change and truth in the business world and then import them back into the church in practical ways.

HOMILETICS: So are we looking at a church in crisis?

MILLER: Major crisis. The decline of some segments of the church is well documented. Now even the Willow Creeks, Saddlebacks and other event-driven churches are starting to feel the stress fractures of their model.

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Google Inc., long considered the gold standard of Internet search, is changing the secret formula it uses to rank Web pages as it struggles to combat websites that have been able to game its system.

The Internet giant, which handles nearly two-thirds of the world’s Web searches, has been under fire recently over the quality of its results. Google said it changed its mathematical formula late Thursday in order to better weed out “low-quality” sites that offer users little value. Some such sites offer just enough content to appear in search results and lure users to pages loaded with advertisements.

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The popular revolts shaking the Arab world have begun to shift the balance of power in the region, bolstering Iran’s position while weakening and unnerving its rival, Saudi Arabia, regional experts said.

While it is far too soon to write the final chapter on the uprisings’ impact, Iran has already benefited from the ouster or undermining of Arab leaders who were its strong adversaries and has begun to project its growing influence, the analysts said. This week Iran sent two warships through the Suez Canal for the first time since its revolution in 1979, and Egypt’s new military leaders allowed them to pass.

Saudi Arabia, an American ally and a Sunni nation that jousts with Shiite Iran for regional influence, has been shaken. King Abdullah on Wednesday signaled his concern by announcing a $10 billion increase in welfare spending to help young people marry, buy homes and open businesses, a gesture seen as trying to head off the kind of unrest that fueled protests around the region.

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In London, The Times opened its story by claiming: “Roman Catholic bishops have approved a new iPhone and iPad app that allows users to make confession with a virtual ‘priest’ over the Internet.”

The Economic Times report was even more blunt. The headline noted, “No time to visit church? Confess via iPhone.” Then the opening lines went further still, stating: “Users of iPhone can now perform contrition and other religious rituals without visiting church, thanks to a new online application.”

The problem is that these statements were just plain wrong. There is no such thing as a “virtual” priest or a “virtual” sacrament. How could electronic devices allow believers to “perform … other religious rituals”?

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[Assistant Chief Hamilton County Juvenile Prosecutor Dotty] Smith is part of a group that makes presentations at schools to students and parents about the dangers in cyberspace and how to be aware and deal with them.

“The principals tell us to scare them to death,” Smith said of her audiences.

The biggest problem, Smith said, is many parents are ignorant of the access their children have – via cell phones, computers, Internet-connected gaming systems – to strangers.

Parents are “not aware of what some of these devices can do,” she said. “It’s about good choices with the huge (array) of technology choices we have out there.”

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Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills.

“I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people ”” particularly the younger generation.

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You may think the only people capable of snooping on your Internet activity are government intelligence agents or possibly a talented teenage hacker holed up in his parents’ basement. But some simple software lets just about anyone sitting next to you at your local coffee shop watch you browse the Web and even assume your identity online.

“Like it or not, we are now living in a cyberpunk novel,” said Darren Kitchen, a systems administrator for an aerospace company in Richmond, Calif., and the host of Hak5, a video podcast about computer hacking and security. “When people find out how trivial and easy it is to see and even modify what you do online, they are shocked.”

Until recently, only determined and knowledgeable hackers with fancy tools and lots of time on their hands could spy while you used your laptop or smartphone at Wi-Fi hot spots. But a free program called Firesheep, released in October, has made it simple to see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and then log on as them at the sites they visited.

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From the BBC introductory blurb:

“Who should be allowed to marry?” It may sound a strange question, but that’s exactly the issue raised by reports that the government is considering allowing gay “weddings” in churches and other places of worship. If that isn’t contentious enough in recent weeks we’ve also had heterosexual couples demanding the right to have civil partnerships, plans to give co-habiting couples the same rights as those who are married and 24 hour Las Vegas style wedding chapels could be coming to a street near you soon. We’ve come a long way from the days of the Biblical understanding of the sacrament of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. But does it matter? Perhaps not if you see marriage as just another contractual arrangement like buying a car or a house. But historically we’ve viewed marriage as uniquely valuable to society….

The programme is chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail), Claire Fox(Institute of Ideas), Kenan Malik (a neurobiologist) and Clifford Longley (a Roman Catholic commentator)

Listen to it all (about 45 minutes).

(There are also four witnesses brought into the conversation whose indentity may be found here).

A first-of-its-kind federal survey of online access found that Americans in lower-income and rural areas often have slower Internet connections than users in wealthier communities.

he data, released Thursday by the Commerce Department, also found that 5 to 10 percent of the nation does not have access to connections that are fast enough to download Web pages, photos and videos.

Compiled in an online map that is searchable by consumers – assuming they have a fast enough broadband connection – the survey seems to confirm that there is a digital divide, something experts had suspected but lacked the data to prove.

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The communication gap that once kept troops from staying looped into the joyful, depressing, prosaic or sordid details of home life has all but disappeared. With advances in cellular technology, wider Internet access and the infectious use of social networking sites like Facebook, troops in combat zones can now communicate with home nearly around the clock.

They can partake in births and birthdays in real time. They can check sports scores, take online college courses and even manage businesses and stock portfolios.

But there is a drawback: they can no longer tune out problems like faulty dishwashers and unpaid electric bills, wayward children and failing relationships, as they once could.

The Pentagon, which for years resisted allowing unfettered Internet access on military computers because of cyber-security concerns, has now embraced the revolution, saying instant communication is a huge morale boost for troops and their families. But military officials quietly acknowledge a downside to the connectivity.

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Note to self: Never play “Jeopardy!” with a supercomputer.

That’s a useful lesson for me or any mortal who has followed the Man vs. Machine faceoff this week on the popular trivia game show, where on Wednesday the second of two exhibition matches sealed the deal: Watson, the IBM-created megabrain, officially buried his flesh-and-blood opponents, veteran “Jeopardy!” champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

Watson’s winning score was $41,413 for the day ($77,147 for both games), while Jennings notched $19,200 ($24,000 overall) and Rutter reached $11,200 ($21,600 overall).

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Epitaphs for the Mubarak government all note that the mobilizing power of the Internet was one of the Egyptian opposition’s most potent weapons. But quickly lost in the swirl of revolution was the government’s ferocious counterattack, a dark achievement that many had thought impossible in the age of global connectedness. In a span of minutes just after midnight on Jan. 28, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global Internet.

The blackout was lifted after just five days, and it did not save President Hosni Mubarak. But it has mesmerized the worldwide technical community and raised concerns that with unrest coursing through the Middle East, other autocratic governments ”” many of them already known to interfere with and filter specific Web sites and e-mails ”” may also possess what is essentially a kill switch for the Internet.

Because the Internet’s legendary robustness and ability to route around blockages are part of its basic design, even the world’s most renowned network and telecommunications engineers have been perplexed that the Mubarak government succeeded in pulling the maneuver off.

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The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late; the first paying passengers won’t be boarding until this fall, if then. Some of the delay stems from the plane’s advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. A two-month machinists strike in 2008 didn’t help.

But much of the blame belongs to the company’s quantum leap in farming out the design and manufacture of crucial components to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, China, and South Korea. Boeing’s dream was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house.

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Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster ”” that is, the rate at which they’re getting faster is increasing.

True? True.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness ”” not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

If you can swallow that idea, and [Raymond] Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there’s no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn’t even take breaks to play Farmville.

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The industrial revolution of the late 18th century made possible the mass production of goods, thereby creating economies of scale which changed the economy””and society””in ways that nobody could have imagined at the time. Now a new manufacturing technology has emerged which does the opposite. Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did.

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A quick survey of priests, ministers, rabbis, and one imam made clear that social media were made for religion, in which connection and community are key.

“I love Facebook,” says Pastor Andrena Ingram of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Mount Airy. “You just reach everybody and anybody.” Like many religious congregations, St. Michael’s has a robust website. “When people come to visit us from out of town, very often it’s because they saw the website.”

On Facebook, Ingram posts news and announcements, and coordinates a youth group. She also runs a separate Facebook page “to minister to those both infected and affected with HIV,” connecting her with people as far away as Africa.

“It’s like a cyber-pastorship,” she says.

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With more than 1,100 stores and $17.8 billion in total revenue in 2010, Penney is certainly a major player in American retailing. But Google’s stated goal is to sift through every corner of the Internet and find the most important, relevant Web sites.

Does the collective wisdom of the Web really say that Penney has the most essential site when it comes to dresses? And bedding? And area rugs? And dozens of other words and phrases?

The New York Times asked an expert in online search, Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media in New York, to study this question, as well as Penney’s astoundingly strong search-term performance in recent months. What he found suggests that the digital age’s most mundane act, the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world of “black hat” optimization, the dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating.

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Just in case Catholics are wondering if a new iPhone app might be able to forgive their sins, the Vatican has issued a clarification: No.

“One may not speak in any sense of confessing via iPhone,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, said in a statement on Wednesday (Feb. 9).

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What [Jeopardy] viewers might not realize when they watch the quiz show’s first man vs. machine competition is that they might be catching a glimpse of technology that could radically transform health care delivery within the next decade. The company that revolutionized the personal computer industry in the 20th century has the potential to do the same for health care in the 21st century.

Performing well on Jeopardy and diagnosing sick patients have similar prerequisites: a broad fund of knowledge, ability to process subtlety and ambiguity in natural language, efficient time management, and probabilistic assessment of different possibilities. Like Jeopardy clues, a patient’s symptoms, medical history, physical exam findings and laboratory results present clues that must be synthesized into a differential diagnosis. While computer systems to assist clinical decision-making have existed for decades, adoption of legacy systems has been hindered by rigid algorithms that require translation of natural language into machine language and heavy reliance on user input.

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The miraculously convenient technology of the Internet has created an unprecedented simultaneity of moral functions. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is like an incarnation of Shiva, the Hindu god of creation and destruction. It turns out that what was recently considered a brave new age of information was actually the first spasm in a long process of cultural realignment. We are all used to thinking of Google as though it were synonymous with the word “future.” In 50 years, people will be talking about Google the way we talk about the East India Company. We are still wobbling in the baby steps of the Internet age.

As Evgeny Morozov demonstrates in “The Net Delusion,” his brilliant and courageous book, the Internet’s contradictions and confusions are just becoming visible through the fading mist of Internet euphoria. Morozov is interested in the Internet’s political ramifications. “What if the liberating potential of the Internet also contains the seeds of depoliticization and thus dedemocratization?” he asks. The Net delusion of his title is just that. Contrary to the “cyberutopians,” as he calls them, who consider the Internet a powerful tool of political emancipation, Morozov convincingly argues that, in freedom’s name, the Internet more often than not constricts or even abolishes freedom.

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Roman Catholic bishops have approved a new iPhone and iPad app that allows users to make confession with a virtual “priest” over the internet.

“Confession: A Roman Catholic App”, which went on sale through Apple’s iTunes website for £1.19 last week, offers “a personalised examination of conscience for each user”, according to its makers. It asks penitents to list sins they have committed by misdeed or omission.

Senior Church officials in the US and Britain have approved the app, which they say can be used by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

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… all of this amped-up productivity comes with a growing sense of unease. Too often, people find themselves with little time to concentrate and reflect on their work. Or to be truly present with their friends and family.

There’s a palpable sense “that home has invaded work and work has invaded home and the boundary is likely never to be restored,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “The new gadgetry,” he adds, “has really put this issue into much clearer focus.”

The phenomenon started with the rise of BlackBerrys and has snowballed with the use of more smartphones, social media and tablet computers. Employees are using their smartphones and other devices to connect with corporate e-mail, applications and data wherever they happen to be ”” whether at home, on the go or even on vacation.

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