July 2011
20 posts
6 tags
In an era of global interconnectedness, what is the nature of cross-cultural exchange?
“If you look at the world through a multicultural lens, you realize that that whole idea of exploration is a 19th century concept that has no meaning any more. I think that anthropology actually began in a beautiful way, which was that by studying another culture, albeit the...
9 tags
Stewart Brand: ‘Look At the World Through the Eyes Of A Fool’
Q: Has society become too eager to discard things and ideas?
(…) I think we have become too shortsighted. Everything is moving faster, everybody is multitasking. Investments are made for short-term returns, democracies run on short-term election cycles. Speedy progress is great,...
5 tags
The evolution of generosity. The human impulse to be kind to unknown individuals is not the biological aberration it might seem
“The extraordinary success of Homo sapiens is a result of four things: intelligence, language, an ability to manipulate objects dexterously in order to make tools, and co-operation. (…) Why are humans so willing to collaborate with unrelated...
3 tags
Where Is Now? The Paradox Of The Present
“The night sky is a time machine. Look out and you look back in time. But this “time travel by eyesight” is not just the province of astronomy. It’s as close as the machine on which you are reading these words. Your present exists at the mercy of many overlapping pasts. So where, then, is “now”?
As almost...
7 tags
Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas
“The same mathematics of networks that governs the interactions of molecules in a cell, neurons in a brain, and species in an ecosystem can be used to understand the complex interconnections between people, the emergence of group identity, and the paths along which information, norms, and behavior spread from person to...
5 tags
From Technologist to Philosopher. Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities
“It’s fun being a technologist. In our Internet-enabled era, it is easy for technologists to parlay creative power into societal power: We build systems that ease the transactions of everyday life, and earn social validation that we are “making...
3 tags
Making sense of a visible quantum object. How can an object that is visible to the naked eye be in two places at the same time?
“Can an object that is visible to the naked eye be in two places at the same time? Common sense and experience told us that the answer is “no” — until recently. In this presentation, physicist Aaron O’Connell tells us a little about the...
9 tags
David Eagleman on how we constructs reality, time perception, and The Secret Lives of the Brain
How our brain constructs reality
“The conscious mind—which is the part of you that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning: that bit of you—it’s like a stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, that’s taking credit for the journey, without acknowledging all the engineering...
9 tags
Keri Smith on ‘How To Be An Explorer of the World’ (Click image to enlarge)
“Artists and scientists analyze the world in surprisingly similar ways.”
Science – “The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through...
8 tags
The Pursuit of Happiness. People who take part in their communities and governments are happier than those who don’t
“Today, economics, with its misapprehension that human beings are cost/benefit calculating machines, has come to dominate our politics and our lives. We’re left with an unnatural obsession with individualism, a single-minded focus on wealth over work, and an...
4 tags
Beauty is in the medial orbitofrontal cortex of the beholder, study finds
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1519) (source)
“Beauty is in the forebrain of the beholder, a study has found.
Scientists have identified a region at the front of the brain that “lights up” in appreciation of art or music. But...
5 tags
How the Internet Affects Our Memories: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
“Before the printed book, Memory ruled daily life… (…)
The elder Seneca (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 37), a famous teacher of rhetoric, was said to be able to repeat long passages of speeches he had heard only once many years before. He would impress his...
5 tags
Thomas Metzinger on How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think
“Attention management. The ability to attend to our environment, to our own feelings, and to those of others is a naturally evolved feature of the human brain. Attention is a finite commodity, and it is absolutely essential to living a good life. We need attention in order to truly listen to others — and even to...
2 tags
Human Connectome Project ☞ understanding how different parts of the brain communicate to each other
(Click image to go to the Human Connectome Project) Mapping of the human connectome offers a unique opportunity to understand the complete details of neural connectivity. The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a project to construct a...
4 tags
Tendency Toward Egalitarianism May Have Helped Humans Survive
“Darwinian-minded analysts argue that Homo sapiens have an innate distaste for hierarchical extremes, the legacy of our long nomadic prehistory as tightly knit bands living by veldt-ready team-building rules: the belief in fairness and reciprocity, a capacity for empathy and impulse control, and a...
4 tags
Nicholas Ostler on The Last Lingua Franca. English Until the Return of Babel
“By and large, lingua-francas are the languages of wider communication, such as enable vast empires to have a common administration, and also allow international contacts. (…)
In the second half of the 1st millennium BC, Greek persisted around the Mediterranean mostly as the...
12 tags
George Lakoff on metaphors, explanatory journalism and the ‘Real Rationality’
“Metaphor is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are “metaphors we live...
3 tags
☞ Why we must remember to delete – and forget – in the digital age
“Human knowledge is based on memory. But does the digital age force us to remember too much? Victor Mayer-Schönberger argues that we must delete and let go. (…) “Quite literally, Google knows more about us than we can remember ourselves.” (…) That inability to forget, Mayer-Schönberger argues, limits one’s...
2 tags
☞ Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’
5 tags
When history was made - an alternative timeline for the past two millennia
“Some people recite history from above, recording the grand deeds of great men. Others tell history from below, arguing that one person’s life is just as much a part of mankind’s story as another’s. If people do make history, as this democratic view suggests, then two people make twice as ...
