“Makers” documentary preview – The Mouse Trap

By Brian Boyko [GAS] Contributor I’ve got a second quick clip from “Makers” my documentary about do-it-yourselfers at the Austin Maker Faire. This five minute movie deals with a live-sized Mouse Trap. As in the game, Milton Bradley’s Mouse Trap. While you can find the standard definition of the video embedded below, if you’ve got […]

Technology in the middle of the world

By Marco Jardim Contributing Writer, [GAS] As my first article here in GAS, I thought would be a good idea to pinpoint the differences between blogging in “technologically-updated” places of the world and one that is several months behind all others. If there are any Australians reading this article, they will probably relate to parts […]

In the Spirit of Gutenberg: Blogs and the Democracy of Ideas

By Lyle Bateman Contributing Writer, [GAS] From a perspective of some six centuries later, it’s pretty easy to see the revolution inherent in the idea of movable type and the printing press. Once a hugely expensive endeavor confined to the scriptoriums of only super-wealthy patrons, book production was suddenly a fraction of the cost. Books, once highly […]

Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Launches Charity Drive 2007

By David Peralty Contributing Writer, [GAS] My favorite web based comic, Penny Arcade, is starting their Child’s Play initiative once again. This is their fourth year of running the charity, and I hope to see it continue growing bigger and bigger every year. The premise of the charity is simple, give gaming technology to hospitals to […]

Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?

In the following video, social psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit […]

A Vision of Students Today

Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch and 200 students at Kansas State University created this video summarizing the most important characteristics of students today: How they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and how the world will change during their lifetime. It’s enlightening and interesting information for […]