Curt Hopkins

Curt Hopkins is ReadWriteWeb's Production Editor. Curt is a journalist who has written for Newsweek, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, New Times and others. He was the Social Media Manager for InterActive Corp's InstantAction gaming platform and an early hire at Ask.com, where he was responsible for tanking their stock. He lives in the Greatest State in the Union (TM) and is part of ReadWriteWeb's Oregon Mafia. He's married to @thinkyiddish. Contact Curt at curt@readwriteweb.com.

Posts by Curt Hopkins

Sunday, 26th February 2012

The Inquisition, IT & Privacy

If you were hunting for a book most ReadWriteWeb readers would, based on the title, find irrelevant to their pursuits, you could do worse than "God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World" by Cullen Murphy. But, as Murphy adeptly shows, both information technology and the institutional corruption of privacy would not have assumed…

Reviews Curt Hopkins comments

Monday, 20th February 2012

[Video] Thinking Cities

Ericsson's Networked Society Program has produced a second documentary, which is available for viewing by ReadWriteWeb readers a day before it is released publicly. The documentary series and program are attempts by the Swedish telecom company to investigate larger ideas, ones that affect how technology is created and used. Here's how Ericsson…

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Punk in Africa

When Keith Jones and Deon Maas first started trying to pull together the footage, sources and sound for their documentary, Punk in Africa, they found it slow going. It was only when they started leveraging a dedicated Facebook page and other social media tools did they start to make headway. And make it they did. Thanks to social media, the…

Social Curt Hopkins comments

Thursday, 16th February 2012

From MP3 to Wax Cylinder

The closer the present approaches an imagined future, the more it inspires a look backward. As computers became Star Trek pads, people got more interested, for instance, in Babbage's analytical engine or the Antikythera mechanism. So it's no surprise, but it's still awesome, that a wad of nerdlingers has decided to compare a new wax recording…

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You Don't Need My Location

When I read Jon Mitchell's post on Glassmap, my first thought was, "Who in God's name would want anyone, even friends, knowing where they were all the time?" I wondered if this were a generational thing and to some degree, it probably is. But there's something more. My life is interesting enough, even in its dull patches, that I would be…

Curt Hopkins comments

Monday, 13th February 2012

Malaysia Deports Saudi

Hamza Kashgari, who fled his native Saudi Arabia, has been sent back to face a possible death penalty. He left the country, intending to seek political asylum in New Zealand, after a series of tweets on the Prophet Muhammad's birthday resulted in hundreds of death threats. Kashgari was apprehended at the Kuala Lumpur airport Wednesday by the…

Social Curt Hopkins comments

Thursday, 9th February 2012

Twitter User Faces Death Penalty

A 23-year-old Saudi Twitter user, Hamza Kashgari, fled the country Sunday to avoid being arrested for his religious tweets, only to find himself in the hands of the Malaysian police today. He was heading to New Zealand to request political asylum. On Saturday, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Kashgari tweeted three times…

Social Curt Hopkins comments

Friday, 3rd February 2012

Electronics Manufacture

[Update] Nokia Publishes Policy on Conflict Minerals

"Conflict minerals," those mined to support groups conducting armed conflict or engaging in human rights abuses, have been an issue since long before we first wrote about it in July of 2010. The mineral equivalent of blood diamonds, they include tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold, all of which are used to manufacture our electronics. Nokia, the…

Mobile Curt Hopkins comments

Thursday, 2nd February 2012

Dark Side of the Moon

NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has released the first footage shot of the moon's far side. The 30-second clip (after the jump) sweeps from the moon's northern pole to the southern polar region, passing, among other features, the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile wide dry sea that extends onto the side we can see from…

Science Curt Hopkins comments

Tuesday, 31st January 2012

Lomax Folk Recordings Go Digital

Anyone with an abiding interest in American music will have heard of Alan Lomax. His travels around the U.S. and through other countries recording "folk music" was almost single-handedly responsible for how we think about Americana and world music both. But only a small amount of his recordings were available online, with few available for…

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