Holloway – The Orbital

Mark Zuckerberg and the Metaverse: science fiction or (virtual) reality?

31Oct

By Hannah ArmourNo Comments

News, Science & Technology

Mark Zuckerberg and the Metaverse: science fiction or (virtual) reality?

Mark Zuckerberg, no stranger to controversy, has announced a change in the branding of the parent organization of his media technologies empire. Facebook, originally designed as a social networking website where Harvard students would rate each other’s attractiveness, is now universally recognisable and impossible to escape. Its namesake company Facebook, Inc. is a social media giant owning Facebook (surprise, surprise), Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp. And now they will be attempting to digitally extend the physical world, through social media involving virtual and augmented reality - with a name change to Meta Platforms. Inc. to boot. This rebrand accompanies a series of recent public relations crises including the revelations brought by whistleblower Frances Haugen about Fac...

Royal Holloway Lecturer Sparks Backlash from ‘Get Surrey’

16Mar

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News

Royal Holloway Lecturer Sparks Backlash from ‘Get Surrey’

A Royal Holloway professor has provoked a response from a local paper after he referred to Egham as “a very boring place to live”. Get Surrey, who cover local news and events pertaining to the county, published a defensive article entitled “8 Reasons Egham is actually Pretty Great”. The article is justified as a response to a councillor's derogatory comments on the small Surrey town in which the university is officially based. The accused councillor, of the Labour party, happens to be Jason Brock, who also teaches modern history and the history of political thought at Royal Holloway. He was discussing the move of 250 Procter and Gamble employees from Egham to Whitley, a nearby town just south of Reading. Brock said of Egham: "I oddly enough work in Egham and have lived in Egham for s...

28Oct

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Features

Life as a Disabled Student

I spoke to Grace Bilney, a third-year history student at Royal Holloway who suffers from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME. Grace was first struck by the chronic illness, often confusingly associated with the milder Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, in 2009, after a bout of glandular fever. What started as intense knee pain soon became something far more serious, but despite the severity of her symptoms it took a full three years before a formal diagnosis was made. Since then, she has managed to complete secondary school, the notoriously difficult International Baccalaureate, and, despite a great deal of uncertainty originally, complete two years of study at her dream university. She is always keen to discuss the illness that continues to dominate much of her everyday life, with a passionate ...

Racial Volunteer Force clashes with student protesters at Royal Holloway

24Oct

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News

Racial Volunteer Force clashes with student protesters at Royal Holloway

On Saturday the 22nd October, a political group called the Racial Volunteer Force organised a demonstration at the main gate of the Royal Holloway campus. Prompted by an ongoing case involving two outsourced cleaning staff, hired by the company, CleanTech, contracted by the Students' Union, they arrived at the entrance just after 2pm, carrying flags, banners, and a megaphone. The 10 men and 1 woman were met with a throng of at least 50 students, which grew to maybe 80 or even 100 later on, brandishing their own banners and homemade flags. Their anti-fascist agenda was made clear as chants of “Nazi scum, off our streets” arose to welcome the arrival of the RVF. In both groups, faces could be seen covered by scarves, wary of betraying their identity to the opposition as well as the ...

28Jan

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News

Magna Carta Centre to Open at Royal Holloway

2015 marks the 800th anniversary of a monumental document in British history, the Magna Carta (1215). To mark this anniversary, Royal Holloway, will be launching ‘The Magna Carta Centre for Individual Freedom’. This will include a Doctoral Scholarship Grant, offered by the Leverhulme Trust, worth £1 million. It will enable 15 post-graduate students to be funded, with the university offering a further 5 students the chance to pursue the course. The charter issued by King John of England in the Runnymede Borough, is a symbolic cornerstone of the British constitution, it introduced for the first time the idea that everyone, including the King, was subject to the law. Students of the course will be given the chance to research the relevance of this document in contemporary politics with the...