Technology
Israel’s Friends in GazaThursday, November 29, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Hamas was quick to declare victory in the latest conflict with Israel. A closer look at the price it paid in terms of personnel and equipment shows that its bravado was false.
Conferences: Why?Thursday, July 19, 2012 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
As Israelis take in the collapse of Netanyahu’s grand coalition, ultra-Orthodox demonstrations in Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv tent protesters' lionization of an attempted suicide, it may have escaped general attention that none of these problems featured among the prophetic visions of last month’s Presidential Conference, which charged itself with “Facing Tomorrow.”
Text-Message HalakhahFriday, July 13, 2012 by Yoel Finkelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
From the ancient moment when the Sages began committing the Oral Torah to writing, through the invention of the printing press, all the way to searchable electronic databases of Jewish texts, each change in communications technology has had an impact on the Torah.
Editors' Picks
Matchmaker, Matchmaker Jodi Rudoren, New York Times. A new artificial-intelligence system, capable of 4.5 trillion calculations per second, is reconstructing 100,000 fragments from the Cairo Genizah.
Dumbing Down The Talmud? Gil Student, Jewish Action. The ArtScroll Talmud App makes the Talmud with an English translation available for iPad. But certain features ensure that the text isn't too accessible.
The Scrolls Go Digital , Telegraph. Thanks to a two-year collaboration between the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google, the Dead Sea Scrolls are now online.
More from the Start-up Nation Karin Kloosterman, ISRAEL21C. We need disease-resistant plants, but genetically modifying them is dangerous. Now, an Israeli biotech company has a treatment that protects plants while leaving them genetically intact.
Slow-Down Nation? Ben Sales, Times of Israel. It’s not as easy as it once was for Israeli start-ups to get venture capital. Will the country’s high-tech industry decline—or learn to do more with less?
More Digitalmud Shai Secunda, Elli Fischer, Talmud Blog. Is the iPad-toting Jewish scholar just obeying the injunction to speak of the commandments “when you sit at home and walk the road, when you lie down and get up?”
Digitalmud Elli Fischer, Shai Secunda, Jewish Review of Books. Attempts to clarify the Talmud have always provoked new waves of commentary and dispute. Rashi's monumental running commentary opened the door for more sophisticated analysis. What might the ArtScroll app provoke?
The Futurist George Dvorsky, io9. “Pregnancy is barbaric,” wrote Shulamith Firestone (italics hers, indignation ours). But she was as much da Vinci as de Beauvoir, predicting artificial wombs, donor-sperm banks, even computer schooling.
Start-Up Nation, Shut-Down Bureacracy , Associated Press. Israel has lots of sun and the best of solar technology. But just try getting the government’s go-ahead for a solar energy project.
eShabbat? Daniel Nevins, Jewish Week. “I understand melakhah to be about transforming material. [An e-reader] tracks usage . . . and therefore involves a transformation of material reality.” (Interview by Jason Miller)