Monthly Archives: March 2013

Apparently, utilizing social media for civic engagement is an ongoing conversation from the past . The Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation reached out to high school students in May of 2011 to promote civic engagement through social media. The organization held an hour and a half long conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. According to the website, “Panelists examine[d] the many positive uses of social media, especially as a tool to promote civic engagement,” and “look[ed] at the role of social media in politics, social entrepreneurship, voluntarism, and activism.”

Speakers also iterated the social media’s power to reach large audiences and provided students with insight on participating in civic engagement and becoming active members of their communities. The conference is now available on YouTube.

Along with the development of artificial intelligence is the improvement in haptic technology, or technology that registers sensory input. Not only can these mechanical devices register tactical stimuli, but they can also relay these sensory details to a person.

The article in Slate Magazine titled The Sensitive Robot: How Haptic Technology is Closing the Mechanical Gap by Erik Sofge indicates that the “promising” improvement of haptic technology with “new sensors and feedback systems” paired with the mechanical technologies of contemporary robotics will improve the usefulness and accuracy of current robots when carrying out tasks that are, or were, mostly performed by humans, such as performing complicated surgeries or detonating bombs.

Later in the article, Sofge mentions that “haptic technology may ultimately give stronger sense of “self,” which brings up the question of whether robots that contain both haptic technology and artificial intelligence could someday hold the same value we give animals, if not other humans.

From crowd sourced information during natural disasters to funding direct personal loans to entrepreneurs in Kenya, people are utilizing social media and data generated from it to contribute to the good of society. Studies have also shown links between the use of social media and the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. The article Using Technology and Data for Social Impact by Amy Gallo, a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, will be Tweeting and regularly updating her findings.