Stories by Fred O'Connor

Era of robots, tech-enhanced humans not here yet

Advocates of the concept called singularity envision a future in which humans and technology fully converge, but a keynote speaker at the World Future Society conference voiced skepticism about the idea, citing the complexities of the human mind.

Technologist: Full immersion in the cyberworld is coming

Although many people already are engrossed in cyberspace, judging by the amount of communicating, socializing and commerce conducted online, we're at the advent of what will be a near total immersion in technology and the Internet, according to a technologist who spoke Saturday at the World Future Society conference in Boston.

Twitter, Apple, AT&T irk customers

User frustration ran high in IT news this week. People cursed Apple and AT&T after both companies' Web sites crashed from the crush of iPhone 4 pre-orders.

Nokia sees mobile users wanting services over phones

Services, such as maps and music downloads, will dictate how consumers select their mobile phones, and hardware will adapt to meet this trend, said Tero Ojanperä, Nokia's executive vice president of services.

Consumers want useful robots, executive says

Hollywood movies may offer entertainment, but looking to the big screen for consumer robot ideas most likely won't produce profitable devices, a robotics company executive told an industry conference this week.

Foreign Web attacks change security paradigm

Traditional security systems may be ineffective and become obsolete in warding off Web attacks launched by countries, according to Val Smith, founder of Attack Research. New attack trends include blog spam and SQL injections from Russia and China, Smith said during his talk at the Source Boston Security Showcase on Friday.

Business process flaws seen posing security risks

Running a secure Web site means more than just guarding against cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks. Flaws in the business processes that underlie Web sites can also present serious security risks, the CTO of a Web security company said Thursday.

Political cyberattacks to militarize the Web

Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks to their censoring methods, according to a security expert speaking at the Source Boston Security Showcase.

Technology, biology turn thought into action

Using computers for checking e-mail, drawing images and playing games seem like common tasks for most people. For the severely paralyzed, however, these undertakings can be beyond their reach.

WORLDBEAT - Robots will become part of daily life

Caring for an aging population, giving manual-labor jobs to illegal immigrants and keeping production costs down as worker wages rise sound like issues reserved for a political campaign. But panelists at a recent discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge believe robotics will help solve these problems and others faced by society and businesses.

Wikis, the Semantic Web head to the streets

While drivers are accustomed to using traffic reports to assess road conditions, pedestrians who navigate cities are typically left without aid to determine the best route. But researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology using wikis and the Semantic Web look to change the way people map and navigate their cities.

Study finds wide Internet gap among US Latinos

While some segments of the U.S. Latino population are using the Internet less than other segments of the country's adult population, some Latinos are online more than non-Hispanic whites and African-Americans, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

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