A project has been started by several men, some of whom are former Young Vinnies, to help give south Auckland children access to computers who otherwise wouldn't have this.

The men are attached to the St Therese Conference of the Society of St Vincent de Paul at Mangere.

Described as working in the IT industry, or being conversant with its mysteries, they clean and overhaul computers that have been donated.

Four schools were approached initially and the team has so far installed or are in the process of installing more than 70 computers in homes and community houses.

The project builds on a scheme started by the SVDP Hornby conference in Christchurch.

An article on the SVDP website explained that the scheme has been enthusiastically taken up in south Auckland.

There have been unexpected benefits, including teachers being able to give extra work to students who needed to catch up on fellow students or understand lessons.

Consideration is being given to extending the scheme to others who might care for students, including caregivers, grandparents, church and community groups.

Other deserving candidates who might benefit from having a computer at home are also being considered.

The New Zealand Deprivation Index released earlier this year showed south Auckland to be among the most deprived areas in the country.

Produced by Otago University researchers, the index included "internet access" among its calculations for the first time, reflecting modern technology's growing influence on everyday life.

The index is based on 2013 census data.

Sources

• Society of St Vincent de Paul (NZ)
• New Zealand Herald
• Image: Pacific Scoop

By 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent. That's a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion.

That raises an obvious question: how come? Why are Americans losing their faith?

Today, we get a possible answer thanks to the work of Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, who has analyzed the data in detail.

He says that the demise is the result of several factors but the most controversial of these is the rise of the Internet.

He concludes that the increase in Internet use in the last two decades has caused a significant drop in religious affiliation.

Downey's data comes from the General Social Survey, a widely respected sociological survey carried out by the University of Chicago, that has regularly measure people's attitudes and demographics since 1972.

In that time, the General Social Survey has asked people questions such as: "what is your religious preference?" and "in what religion were you raised?"

It also collects data on each respondent's age, level of education, socioeconomic group, and so on. And in the Internet era, it has asked how long each person spends online. The total data set that Downey used consists of responses from almost 9,000 people. Continue reading.

Source: MIT Technology Review

Image: theamericanjesus.net

Orchestrated under the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) with support from Google, the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is a free, online archive comprised of thousands of high resolution fragments.

History, now, is literally brought to the homes of people everywhere, accessible by computer and smart phone.

As IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman says on the library's website:

"We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivalled cultural heritage treasure which belongs to all of us, so that the public with a touch of the screen will be able to freely access history in its fullest glamour."

The first of the scrolls was discovered in 1947 in the West Bank, in what is often called one of the most important archaeological finds in history, and certainly in the 20th century. Continue reading.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: Fragment from the Tobit scroll, an apocryphal text from Second Temple times. Shai Halevi, IAA

The project has been given a big boost by a donation, from travel firm House of Travel Holdings, of 85 computer, monitors and servers and a week of IT technician work.

John and technician Adrian Miller spent 5 days in Samoa setting in place the infrastructure to enable the college to get connected.

Adrian has been following up with school staff in Samoa since his return to New Zealand to test the system and guide teachers there to getting it up and running.

For Adrian, who had never travelled to the Pacific Islands before, it proved to be a life-changing experience.

"It felt amazing to do something selfless, altruistic, knowing that I was part of something that was beneficial to so many people. I'm sincerely grateful for that experience. I've always wanted to do something like that and my company gave me that opportunity," he said.

Source

• Etbnews.com
  
• Image: Bebo

I have heard a sad story about a little girl who was in the kitchen using a new toaster, and asked her father: "Do I put the slice of bread in portrait or landscape?"

Our brain is susceptible to everything. It is not as though we have a fixed brain and that going on an "evil" computer changes it. Technology is neutral. But because it is very sophisticated, people think that it leads us when, really, we are the masters. We should be asking how we are going to use technology to enhance our lives, as well as what we want it to teach our children.

For that, we need to be in the driving seat. We should talk about it and decide collectively, as a society, what we want to do. We need to involve parents, to find out what they think, because, at the moment, evidence is purely anecdotal.

Evidence of a link between spending too much time staring at computer screens and physical changes in the brain that lead to attention and behaviour problems is accumulating. As with cancer and smoking in the 1950s, you start off by seeing a trend, and that is what makes you suspect that there might be a causal link.

A recent study by Wei Qin Kai Yuan from Xidian University, in China, found brain structure abnormalities in adolescents with internet addiction disorder. While one study is not enough to prove the link, it is cause for concern.

However, we cannot afford to wait 10 or even 20 years to monitor the changes to a child's identity, to their attention span, to the way they think, to the way they reason. Many of us have perceived a change in the way children today empathise with others. Studies among American college students have found a trend of decreasing empathy during the same time that social networking has risen to prominence. It is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

In Britain, a shocking case reflects this decline of empathy among the young. Schoolgirl Rebecca Aylward was murdered by an ex-boyfriend who had made a bet to kill her in exchange for a friend buying him breakfast. After battering the 15-year-old to death with a rock, Joshua Davies, 16, updated his Facebook page to say he was "chilling" with friends.

— Baroness Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford.
-Telegraph Group and Dominion Post

• Read more: Stuff.co.nz
• Image: The UnAgency Approach