+

computers

Education

You may not know Gladys West, but her calculations revolutionized navigation.

She couldn't have imagined how much her calculations would affect the world.

US Air Force/Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Gladys West is inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame, 2018.

This article originally appeared on 02.08.18


If you've never driven your car into a lake, thank Gladys West.

She is one of the mathematicians responsible for developing the global positioning system, better known as GPS.

Like many of the black women responsible for American achievements in math and science, West isn't exactly a household name. But after she mentioned her contribution in a biography she wrote for a sorority function, her community turned their attention to this local "hidden figure."

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by Luke Porter on Unsplash

Even a casual follower of the news over the last few years is likely to have encountered stories about research showing that digital technologies like social media and smartphones are harming young people's mental health. Rates of depression and suicide among young people have risen steadily since the mid-2000s, around the time that the first smartphones and social media platforms were being released. These technologies have become ubiquitous, and young people's distress has continued to increase since then.

Many articles in the popular and academic press assert that digital technology is to blame. Some experts, including those recently featured in stories by majornewsoutlets, state that excessive use of digital technology is clearly linked to psychological distress in young people. To deny this connection, according to a prominent proponent of the link, is akin to denying the link between human activity and climate change.

In an effort to protect young people from the harms of digital tech, some politicians have introduced legislation that would, among other things, automatically limit users' time spent on a social media platform to 30 minutes a day. If the evidence is so definitive that digital technology is harming America's youth in such substantial ways, then reducing young people's use of these devices could be one of the most important public health interventions in American history.

There's just one problem: The evidence for a link between time spent using technology and mental health is fatally flawed.

Keep ReadingShow less

Anyone who has owned an inkjet printer knows the invention is rife with complications and frustrations. We managed to put a man on the moon five decades ago, but we still can't create a printer that works like it's supposed to? Really, humanity?

All we want is to be able to push a button and print the thing. That's it. So simple. We've been carrying complex supercomputers around in our pockets for years. I can send a video to my friend on the other side of the planet in a matter of seconds. I can tell you right now exactly what the weather is like in a tiny town in the Arctic. Printing a damn form in the room I'm sitting in really shouldn't be this hard.

And how about making it so we don't have to sell an organ to afford printer ink, please and thank you. Did you know that the cheapest printer ink costs twice as much per ounce as the world's most expensive champagne? And pricier inks cost upwards of seven times that? It's literally one of the most expensive liquids on the planet, and it's not like we're injecting it into people to save lives. It's freaking ink. And unless you're printing things constantly, that liquid gold tends to dry out before you can use it all anyway, making it functionally even more expensive.

Get it together, people. We shouldn't have to live like this.

Keep ReadingShow less

For Amanda Acevedo, getting on the honor roll meant fighting through a lot of physical pain.

The 10-year-old from East Harlem, New York, didn't have a reliable computer at home or school to complete her assignments in the evening. In order to keep up in class, she was often left with no choice but to write out entire essays using her thumbs on her mother's cell phone.

Can you imagine?

Keep ReadingShow less