Articles by Quinten Plummer

Mainly because of the amount of money they bring in, many people expect celebrities and other prominent figures to have thicker skins than the average Jane or Joe. However -- as evidenced by the numbers of celebrities who've forsaken social media, or who have handed the keys to their accounts to their PR teams -- fame and fortune are not effective defenses against an all-out assault by faceless trolls...

Conspiracy Theories in the Information Age, Part 1 In the past, heightened rhetoric and propaganda were the tools of choice for those looking to convince an electorate to vote them into office, and conspiracy theories were their bane. This election season has seen the rise of a new form of persuasion, one that's unique to the Information Age....

One of the most volatile conspiracy theories in recent times ended with a whimper last month, when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made the terse statement, "President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period." Though birthers may be with us always, it seems that many have turned their attention to other potentially scanda...

Social media has sharpened humans' age-old appetite for public shaming, providing a stage and unlimited seating for a seemingly unending stream of immorality plays. Those who share even the simplest identifying details about themselves are vulnerable to being pushed into the glare of the spotlight The anonymity the Internet provides frees many indi...

A problem once associated mainly with school playgrounds often follows people into adulthood, and the anonymity of the Internet has aided its proliferation. People have been shamed for being overweight, underweight, too conservative, too revealing, too young, too old, too plastic or too real Bullying and harassment are very real problems not only f...

The Growing Scourge of Cyberbullying, Part 1 The digitization of everything has decreased the degrees of separation between everyone. While that interconnectedness has solved many problems, old and new, digitization has worsened one age-old problem: bullying. An online bullying epidemic is now pushing parents, teens, teachers and technology compani...

Smartphones are proliferating among adolescents, and so is cyberbullying. That's particularly worrisome due to its potential contribution to the No. 2 cause of teen death: suicide. About 26.3 percent of the middle- and high-school students who responded to a nine-school survey indicated that they'd been bullied in each of the eight years the poll ...

The Internet of Medical Things, Part 1: A New Concept in Healthcare The Internet of Medical Things, Part 2: Devices and Apps...

The Internet of Medical Things, Part 1: A New Concept in Healthcare Concerns have been multiplying in the United States over the creaks of a medical infrastructure that's bearing the weight of an aging population. Current and upcoming members of the over-65 club are helping to drive a new age in healthcare, in which devices connect patients with ca...

Manufacturers are eager to lay the bricks and help pave the road to better, more personalized healthcare through integration of connected devices in the new Internet of Medical Things Compared to other industries, healthcare has been "inherently conservative and slow" to embrace innovations such as the cloud and the Internet of Things -- but that's...

Google's Cardboard has proved to the masses that virtual reality is more than a pipe dream. Inexpensive cardboard headsets leverage smartphones to create makeshift head-mounted displays for low-level VR experiences For those whose fancies of owning a US$600 Rift or a $900 Vive were out of reach, Cardboard was a way to keep their imaginations captiv...

Persistence. It's what permeates the fabric of upcoming sci-fi odyssey No Man's Sky, and it's what will see the game well past its launch this summer While eager to set out into a digital space that's populated with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets, gamers have, for the most part, expressed patience as the handful of developers atHello Gam...

The Rise of Drone Racing, Part 1 With lucrative broadcast deals and cup competitions now crowding calendars, the sport of drone racing has become one of the primary factors driving the surge in demand for consumer drones....

Tearing through open spaces and timing each turn to burst out of them, a seeming continuum of drones weaves through a set of obstacles lap after lap, until the stutter of a pilot's joystick breaks the cadence of this competitive concert and destroys the illusion It's the drama -- anticipating and reacting to those human moments -- that has propelle...

Aging at Home, Part 1: Home May Be Where the Technology Is When road maps for advanced care terminate in the familiar surroundings of one's home, as opposed to assisted living facilities and hospitals, technology can be as critical and comforting as human caregiving. Neither can replace the benefits the other brings....

Medicare started off the year putting into action a program to encourage more doctors to discuss end-of-life and advance care plans with patients. While the details tend to focus on the hard choices on the far side of those arrangements, new and near-future technologies could preserve life's simple pleasures on their front end End-of-life conversat...

Sports Fans and Social Media, Part 1: It's a Brand New Ball Game This fall will see a 10-game pilot of professional football streamed on social media -- Twitter, to be specific. It's a continuation of the National Football League's search for gold in the veins of digital broadcasting and an opportunity for sports brands to forge new and deeper rela...

Twitter and the National Football League are betting that a partnership announced this month could help refine the roughly defined relationship between social media and the world of sports The NFL set out to reclaim fans who chewed through their cable TV cords and have strayed from the flock of football faithful, while Twitter's motive in agreeing ...

Amazon last week announced that it had increased to more than 100 the number of Dash buttons Prime users can install in their homes to replenish supplies of common household goods. Dash buttons -- which are available only to Amazon Prime members, for whom they're essentially free -- are connected devices that link to a customer's Amazon account.

Foxconn has agreed to purchase a controlling stake in Sharp -- about 66 percent -- for roughly US$3.5 billion, the companies announced Wednesday Foxconn has committed to restoring Sharp's profitability and improving operations, according to the companies....