“Today, Everyone Online Lies However They Please”
We meet Vu Nguyen—Vunyo, to his friends—again to chat about the present and future of journalism, about technology, and about the challenges and the bright sides of life in Bulgaria. A former journalist at The New York Times and a top-level IT specialist in the US, he and his wife decided to move back to Bulgaria after their son started calling the laptop “grandma”; he then won hearts on the Bulgarian edition of MasterChef and ran his own restaurant for a while. Today he is back in the world of information technology, but now here at home.
442Singularity: When Computers Become “Smarter” Than Us
Computers keep getting faster and more sophisticated, and at some point they will move beyond our ability to judge them. That point is called the “technological singularity,” and according to Ray Kurzweil, the researcher who popularized it, it will arrive in 2045. Some consider him a brilliant forecaster, others a charlatan. Either way, it is worth asking whether, at such a moment, artificial intelligence will help us solve humanity’s eternal problems—or enslave us…
443Vu, the Laptop Called “Grandma,” and the Bet That Made Him a Programmer
The digital story of Vu(nyo) Nguyen barely fits on one planet. Born in Vietnam, he landed in Sofia as a child and later left for the United States, where a short but dizzying career at outlets like The New York Times and MSNBC followed. His older son Adi had never seen his relatives in person when… one day he called the laptop “Grandma.” In that moment Vu and his wife decided they had had enough of America and came back to Bulgaria with no plans at all. So what happened next?
444Car, Take the Wheel!
Autonomous cars have been a recurring topic for years. We were supposed to be done with driving by now, and that step still seems close… But is it really? Why is this innovation so important and so eagerly awaited? Here is a brief snapshot of the subject and the challenges ahead.
445“Without Science, We Are Lost!”
Will science soon let us live much longer? Is immortality possible? Could computers be the next step in evolution? And how do we win back trust in science? Assoc. Prof. Milena Georgieva is a molecular biologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She is not only a proven expert in her field but also something far rarer and more precious: a scientist who can present scientific subjects vividly, engagingly, accessibly and, at the same time, competently.
446The Beauty Who “Invented” Wi-Fi
They called Hedy Lamarr “the most beautiful actress in Hollywood.” And also… “the inventor who made Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS possible.” Was her invention really so important that it… could have ended World War II sooner, and how did she find time for it between six marriages and a dazzling Hollywood career? A story like a film from the analog age that turned out to matter for the digital one.
447The Fake News Hunter
It is called Tanbih, it comes from Qatar, and it promises to rescue us elegantly from fake news and disinformation. We meet its creator, Dr. Preslav Nakov, a world-class specialist in natural language processing with artificial intelligence. How can an algorithm tell that a news story is fake… before it has even been written?!
448Linus the Lionheart
“Nobody has ever told me I'm cool. I'm just the thing halfway between a normal person and a tech geek,” says Linus Torvalds. The computer engineer is surely one of the heroes of today's online world: the projects he created, Linux and Git, laid much of the groundwork for life on the internet as we know it. What kind of man is Linus? How does fame sit with him? And what does it feel like to start… an accidental revolution?
449“Computers Will Be Superb at Manipulating Our Feelings”
“Do you think there will one day be an AI capable of laughing and crying?” “No, but it will be capable of making us laugh and cry.” “And that computers might one day have feelings?” “No, but they will be superb at manipulating ours.” For 30 years Prof. Julita Vasileva has studied computers and the world they created. As a scientist, she was lucky enough to land in a field that went through an incredible rise; as a teacher, she has witnessed how several generations relate to technology. Prof. Vasileva knows and studies the technological side of the computer world, but she pays even more attention to its social side.
450The Internet Connects Us, the Internet Divides Us
Conceived and built as the apotheosis of the free human spirit, the internet is turning into a veritable factory of inequality—by many different measures and in completely unexpected directions. Some rifts are quietly becoming chasms capable of causing enormous problems for all of humanity. Is it too late to “turn” the machine around?
451“It’s Time We Thought About Mental Fitness, Too!”
How do we overcome the difficulties that online communication creates? Which character traits give away a good programmer? When is it time to draw a firm line and slow things down at work, before burnout arrives? The answers come from Velina Getova, a psychologist with extensive experience in information technology.
452Facebook Is Now Meta. What Does the Metaverse It Wants to Send Us To Look Like?
Suddenly… a brand we all mention every day is no longer the same. Facebook is becoming Meta to draw attention to its hyper-ambitious metaverse project. But what does this future, which will merge the real and virtual worlds into one indistinguishable environment, look like? When should we expect to find ourselves in the metaverse? And what risks does such a vast project carry?
453“When Everyone Starts Talking About Bitcoin, Don’t Buy!”
Valentin Mihov is the person you need if you want an up-to-date technological view of decentralized finance. What does its future look like after yet another record in the price of Bitcoin? What are the technological risks? What will happen once the last Bitcoin is mined? And what should anyone who decides to invest in cryptocurrencies know?
454The Meme: The Next Step in Evolution
Technology has exploded and we have access to an unthinkable ocean of information, yet what makes us laugh most often these days is… the same dozen pictures. Is there any logic to this phenomenon at all… or is it the art of our time? What is a meme? A descendant of the joke, anonymous online folklore? Or… a phenomenon that marks a new stage in the evolution of humankind? We'll look into the philosophy behind it and try to explain how it came about, and to have some fun along the way, we'll tell the stories of some of the most recognizable meme heroes.
455When Not!News Makes the News
Few pages on the Bulgarian web offer original, unadulterated content that makes you laugh… even if the smile is a sour one, born of the irony of Bulgarian reality. Since 2009, Samuil Petkanov, the creator of Not!News, has been serving up his version of “the news as it could have been.” What does he think of the way we get our information? Does he manage to predict the future? How is it that we are all experts on influencers’ nose jobs and cryptocurrency fluctuations, and where is this taking us? The answers are in this interview, garnished with a small helping of Not!News inspired by Digital Stories.
456Uncle Bob, the Programmers' Much-Hated Moses
Robert Martin, or simply Uncle Bob, is an iconic figure in the history of programming. He formulated the SOLID principles, which every beginner programmer is expected to know by heart at their first job interview. Uncle Bob is also one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, which changed work in the industry forever. So why doesn't he enjoy the fame he deserves today?
457“Empathy Will Save the World”
Kris is the strongest person I know. This time we talk about literature and the media, two of the most important universes in his life. About the obstacles people with disabilities face and their encounter with society. And about how the rest of us should treat them without offending or hurting them.
458Maria, MasterChef and Life's Recipes from the Stone House
Should we watch not only what we eat but also what we feed… our soul? Maria Zhekova won MasterChef. She is a photographer and an influencer… just not like most of them. Glossy photos leave her cold; what moves her is a return to tradition and the restoration of the stone house where her heart lives. How did this young woman bring the glossy show and the old traditions together?
459Robot Pavlovich Chekhov: Artificial Intelligence as a Writer
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” said Hemingway. Can we teach artificial intelligence to create gripping literature, and how will the cultural world change if we do? Here are the most exciting projects and the arguments of the two extremes: that the robot writer will become reality, or that algorithms will never reach the human emotion of a text.
460“Google Is Far More Dynamic and Chaotic Than It Looks from the Outside”
Minko Gechev works at Google as a senior developer on the Angular team. What is it like to be part of Google? How is studying at Sofia's Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics like studying at MIT? Why are programmers often more “closed off” people, and what does it take to succeed in the profession? Answers from a programmer with an impressive résumé and a curious outlook.
