This week on Spark - Social media is great for staying in touch, but what happens when you don't want to be in touch? And, inside the 3D revolution - 3D scanning and printing are becoming commonplace. But is the law ready for it?

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Spark listeners shared the most unexpected friend suggestions they've been given by a social media network.

Hey, have you checked out the Spark tumblr? You should!

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This week on Spark - Preserving the experience of video games. When online dating preferences tip over into racism. And, free texting apps know more about you than you think!

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According to Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, big data is "so fundamental a change... that it is important not just for every business, for every organization, for every government agency to look at big data... but also for society at large, because we need to put safeguards in place to make sure that big data does not control us."

Recently, Nora interviewed Viktor about his new book, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think.

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This week on Spark - The use of crowdsourcing in trying to find the perpetrators of the Boston bombings resulted in an online witch-hunt. This has us asking: what are the limits to crowdsourcing? Also, library e-books, and the story of noise.

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It got us talking around Spark HQ, about how thanks to our modern tech, there's a lot of noise that really annoys us now!

From headphone bleed to loud keyboard smashing to inane cellphone conversations, we had a lot of grievances. And we want you to hear from you: What noise, thanks to modern tech, really annoys you?

Call the Spark hotline at 1-877-347-7275 (toll free in Canada) or leave a comment below.

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This week on Spark: touch, voice, gesture, sound - bringing the senses back into tech. An online audio resurgence, the deep dark history of the Qwerty keyboard, and a look at the good and bad of voice and gesture commands.

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Earlier today, Twitter launched its new #music service, which aims to help you find and listen to music, based on artists you follow, and what other Twitter users are listening to.

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This week on Spark - What happens to our digital stuff when web services shutdown? We take a look at data longevity online. Also, virtually staging our homes, what to do with e-waste, and integrative thinking in the classroom.

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This week, a repeat of one of our favourite episodes from last June - Spark 185: Robot Pebbles, the Loyalty Leap, and Online Hoaxes.

Click here for the original show notes, or download the MP3 (runs 54:00).

Next Friday, a brand new episode of Spark will be ready for your ears...a look at data longevity online. What happens to our digital stuff when web services shutdown?

In many different ways, electronic books are different from their paper counterparts.

But as Peter Rukavina (Hacker in Residence at the University of PEI Library) argues, "for some reason, we've opted to acquiesce to a system that takes the regular old model we're all used to for managing and circulating physical objects and, absurdly, applies it to digital objects."

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