Social Media Skills Can Get You in to College

Social Media Literacy: The college-application process is already stressful enough with all of the essays to write and forms to fill out. But it may now become even more stressful as, it turns out, colleges are also looking at prospective students’ social media presence — no, not just to check for red flags that could affect acceptance like racist remarks or drug-related pictures, but to get a sense of students’ digital media literacy and their “personal brand.” According to The Daily Dot, some colleges and universities are recognizing the importance of digital media skills in today’s digital world and are encouraging admissions officers to look at applicants’ social media activity as a positive resource, one that can be used to assess applicants’ digital competency. So if you are in high school now, start building up your Twitter followers and post insightful content on Facebook now! Your college of choice may recognize your social media prowess as a real advantage over other applicants. The Daily Dot

Ms. Siri: Of course Apple chose a woman’s voice for its new AI personal assistant Siri (a Norwegian woman’s name). It seems that society can’t shake the traditional gender-role image of the personal assistant as a woman’s job. As this Atlantic article points out, most technology that involves disembodied voices uses a female voice — think of your voicemail inbox, Julie the Amtrak lady, your GPS, most automated answering services, all ladies. As the article posits, this gender-role stereotype is precisely why Apple chose to make Siri a woman (in the U.S. at least). Sadly people are more familiar with and, therefore, more comfortable with a woman handling secretarial tasks. Case and point, I had never realized until I read this article that most service-related AI voices are female. Would I be alarmed or less satisfied with my GPS if it was a man’s voice telling me where to go? The Atlantic