http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/ian-leslie/are-artists-liars Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to be called “Lying for a Living”. On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). “If you can lie, you can act,” Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling… ]]> Thu, 02 Jun 2011 03:55:27 -0700 http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/ian-leslie/are-artists-liars http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.
To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes —… ]]> Mon, 30 May 2011 02:03:04 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html http://www.themillions.com/2011/03/zooming-out-how-writers-create-our-visual-grammar.html Maybe you’re young enough to remember Blue’s Clues, or old enough to have a little one hanging on the mystery-solving adventures of Steve and Blue as you read this. If, by any chance, Blue’s Clues happens to be on in the background, try this experiment: watch and see how long the camera holds on a single shot. You will, by design, be waiting a long time. The child psychologists who helped create Blue discovered that young viewers don’t know what to do with cuts and edits; they understand them as a new scene, not the same scene shot from a… ]]> Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:41:43 -0700 http://www.themillions.com/2011/03/zooming-out-how-writers-create-our-visual-grammar.html http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/uncanny_valley/ Disturbing experiences that feel both familiar and strange are instances of the “uncanny,” an intuitive concept, yet one that has defied simple explanation for more than a century. Interest in the particular occurrences of the uncanny, in which humans are bothered by interaction with human-like models, began as a psychological curiosity. But as our ability to design artificial life has increased—along with our dependence on it—getting to the heart of why people respond negatively to realistic models of themselves has taken on a new importance. Attempts to understand the origins of this reaction, known since the 1970s as the “uncanny… ]]> Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:08:00 -0700 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/uncanny_valley/ http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ability-literally-imagine-oneself-anothers-shoes-may-be-tied-empathy-22592.html Empathy involves, in part, the ability to simulate the internal states of others. The authors hypothesized that our ability to manipulate, rotate and simulate mental representations of the physical world, including our own bodies, would contribute significantly to our ability to empathize. "Our language is full of spatial metaphors, particularly when we attempt to explain or understand how other people think or feel. We often talk about putting ourselves in others' shoes, seeing something from someone else's point of view, or figuratively looking over someone's shoulder," Sohee Park, report co-author and professor of psychology, said. "Although future work is needed… ]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:42:00 -0700 http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ability-literally-imagine-oneself-anothers-shoes-may-be-tied-empathy-22592.html