http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion. This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study of the myths… ]]> Wed, 21 Sep 2011 03:52:49 -0700 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion.

This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study… ]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:12:00 -0700 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 http://aminotes.tumblr.com/post/10416268270/steven-pinker-on-the-history-and-decline-of Some of the evidence has been under our nose all along. Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of… ]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:05:16 -0700 http://aminotes.tumblr.com/post/10416268270/steven-pinker-on-the-history-and-decline-of http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/196170 I'm looking for examples of websites that have successfully enhanced a research community (academic or artistic) with a dynamic online/social/mutual-portfolio presence. Blog and social media based hubs, perhaps, that showcase the possibilities of web portfolio/research integration for academic and creative purposes. I've been asked to help implement a website/blogging platform for a community of 20 MFA students.

Basically I'd like to gather up some examples of dynamic websites attached to academia (or similar i.e. the arts). These examples will be then passed on to my superiors with an eye to developing our own platform that takes the best… ]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:26:18 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/196170 http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/08/30/is-new-media-accepted-in-the-art-world-domenico-quarantas-media-new-media-postmedia/ Do institutions and galleries have a growing interest in New Media? Two weeks ago, I identified the art “internet bubble” at The L Magazine, a trend that’s currently giving new media the spot light. Not everyone sees new media the same way though. Domenico Quaranta, an Italian writer and curator previously best known to this blog for “Holy Fire“, a dubiously themed new media exhibition in Brussels that included only “collectible” work, being one such example. Quaranta’s followed up the 2008 exhibition by writing a whole book on the subject of New Media — “Media, New Media, PostMedia” — one core theme being… ]]> Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:22:06 -0700 http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/08/30/is-new-media-accepted-in-the-art-world-domenico-quarantas-media-new-media-postmedia/ http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/08/30/is-new-media-accepted-in-the-art-world-domenico-quarantas-media-new-media-postmedia/ Do institutions and galleries have a growing interest in New Media? Two weeks ago, I identified the art “internet bubble” at The L Magazine, a trend that’s currently giving new media the spot light. Not everyone sees new media the same way though. Domenico Quaranta, an Italian writer and curator previously best known to this blog for “Holy Fire“, a dubiously themed new media exhibition in Brussels that included only “collectible” work, being one such example. Quaranta’s followed up the 2008 exhibition by writing a whole book on the subject of New Media — “Media, New Media, PostMedia” — one core theme being… ]]> Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:07:15 -0700 http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/08/30/is-new-media-accepted-in-the-art-world-domenico-quarantas-media-new-media-postmedia/ http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_manichean_world_of_tim_wu For the past dozen years, several distinguished thinkers about law and technology have warned that a golden age of Internet freedom may be about to close. The most influential alarm-ringer has been Lawrence Lessig, who argued in his 1999 book, Code, that under corporate and governmental pressures, the Net could be flipped to serve top-down control instead of individual freedom. In The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (2008), Jonathan Zittrain showed why this reversal might come about as a result of popular demand. Both the personal computer and the Internet are what Zittrain calls “generative” technologies,… ]]> Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:34:27 -0700 http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_manichean_world_of_tim_wu http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jul/05/procrastination-al-kennedy When I began writing, distractions were all low-tech. I had to worry about typewriter ribbons and correction fluid, for God's sake. There was no possibility of spending an apparently productive day making backup files, defragmenting already tidy hard drives, emailing, watching grainy online movies of cats falling over, or playing virtual patience. (I once tried a more sophisticated computer game and, after many months, managed to advance my character by one level and put him into a loop of crouching, rocking and saying, "Oh, no.") Nevertheless, I could still burn away whole pre-Amstrad weekends in keeping busy, rather than writing.… ]]> Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:52:34 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jul/05/procrastination-al-kennedy http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/06/reality-check-1.html This is my take on the singularity: we're not going to see a hard take-off, or a slow take-off, or any kind of AI-mediated exponential outburst. What we're going to see is increasingly solicitous machines defining our environment -- machines that sense and respond to our needs "intelligently". But it will be the intelligence of the serving hand rather than the commanding brain, and we're only at risk of disaster if we harbour self-destructive impulses.We may eventually see mind uploading, but there'll be a holy war to end holy wars before it becomes widespread: it will literally overturn religions. That… ]]> Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:48:28 -0700 http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/06/reality-check-1.html http://theeuropean-magazine.com/282-bostrom-nick/283-perfection-is-not-a-useful-concept Interview with Nick Bostrom

Our long track record of survival–humans have been around for about 100,000 years–gives us some assurance that the natural risks have been rather small.

If they have not ended human history until now, they are unlikely to have that effect in the near future. So the risks we should really worry about come from new developments. They introduce new factors with a lot of statistical uncertainty, and we cannot be confident that their risks are manageable. The potential of human action to do good and evil is larger than it… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:21:17 -0700 http://theeuropean-magazine.com/282-bostrom-nick/283-perfection-is-not-a-useful-concept http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/ We will always debate:
the quality of the paper, the pixel density of the display;
the cloth used on covers, the interface for highlighting;
location by page, location by paragraph.

But really, who cares? 3

Hunting surface analogs between the printed and the digital book is a dangerous honeypot. There is a compulsion to believe the magic of a book lies in its surface.

In reality, the book worth considering consists only of relationships. Relationships between ideas and recipients. Between writer and reader. Between readers and other readers… ]]> Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:50:47 -0700 http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/is-twitter-writing-or-is-it-speech-why-we-need-a-new-paradigm-for-our-social-media-platforms/ Which begs the question: What is Twitter, actually? (No, seriously!) And what type of communication is it, finally? If we’re wondering why heated debates about Twitter’s effect on information/politics/us tend to be at once so ubiquitous and so generally unsatisfying…the answer may be that, collectively, we have yet to come to consensus on a much more basic question: Is Twitter writing, or is it speech?

Twitter versus “Twitter”
The broader answer, sure, is that it shouldn’t matter. Twitter is…Twitter. It is what it is, and that should be enough. As a culture, though, we tend to… ]]> Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:19:30 -0700 http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/is-twitter-writing-or-is-it-speech-why-we-need-a-new-paradigm-for-our-social-media-platforms/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats Alien space bats (ASBs) is a neologism for plot devices used in alternate history to create a point of divergence that would otherwise be implausible. [edit]Definition "Alien space bats" originally was used as a sarcastic attack on poorly written alternate histories due to lack of plausibility. These attacks are usually phrased as the need for alien space bats or by saying the alternate history has gone into "ASB territory". This original definition was used by one critic to criticize Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy.[1] The term eventually evolved into a deus ex machina to create an impossible point of… ]]> Tue, 03 May 2011 15:13:35 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats Alien space bats (ASBs) is a neologism for plot devices used in alternate history to create a point of divergence that would otherwise be implausible.
[edit]Definition

"Alien space bats" originally was used as a sarcastic attack on poorly written alternate histories due to lack of plausibility. These attacks are usually phrased as the need for alien space bats or by saying the alternate history has gone into "ASB territory". This original definition was used by one critic to criticize Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy.[1] The term eventually evolved into a deus ex machina to create… ]]> Tue, 03 May 2011 12:27:43 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/brand09_index.html The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "we are as gods, we might as well get good at it". Photographs of earth from space had that god-like perspective.

What I'm saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it. Necessity comes from climate change, potentially disastrous for civilization. The planet will be okay, life will be okay. We will lose vast quantities of species, probably lose the rain forests if the climate… ]]> Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:27:00 -0700 http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/brand09_index.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/24140210@N05/sets/72157607329841191/with/4295713286/ The pairs of images in this "Similarities" set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgement as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of the pieces can form their own opinion(s) about what they see.

Some are "accidents": The creator of the similar piece had no knowledge of the original. Examples would be the 1982 Rafal Olbinski / New Pornographers posters and the Idea magazine cover / Okkervil River poster.

Some are "re-contextualized": Obscure imagery from long forgotten sources was used from vintage printed ephemera like 1940s… ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:28:57 -0700 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24140210@N05/sets/72157607329841191/with/4295713286/ http://explainer.net/2011/01/george-lakoff/ As part of our research on explanatory journalism, we’re interviewing experts in fields outside journalism about their approaches to explaining complex systems to non-specialtists.

Our first expert is cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who did groundbreaking research on the embodiment of thought and language and the way people think using metaphors. For Lakoff, language is not a neutral system of communication, because it is always based on frames, conceptual metaphors, narratives, and emotions. Political thought and language is inherently moral and emotional. The basic phrases journalists use every day—words like “liberty” “freedom” “immigrant” “taxes”— are essentially contested concepts that have radically… ]]> Fri, 04 Feb 2011 03:26:37 -0700 http://explainer.net/2011/01/george-lakoff/ http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2010/12/third-queue.html I bring all this up because the state of the themed queue - a Disney practice if there ever was one - seems to very much be in a state of flux right now. Less than a month ago (at the time of this writing) Walt Disney World opened her brand new "next generation" queue at the Winnie-the-Pooh attraction in Fantasyland. It is as fully accomplished as one could reasonably expect. Despite the small footprint, there is a very successful woodland atmosphere and some charming activities. Crawl through Pooh's house (much more fun than walking around it, by the way).… ]]> Sat, 11 Dec 2010 03:11:00 -0700 http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2010/12/third-queue.html http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html Games are sneaking into every part of our lives -- at home, school, and work. Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and even the Army depend on games. and Pretty soon, you'll be a part of one. We guarantee it.

If Schell's vision seems a little, well, out there, consider this: Much of what he discusses already exists, having infiltrated our culture and our business landscape in ways that are barely recognized. Sure, 97% of 12- to 17-year-olds play computer games, but so do almost 70% of the heads of American households, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The average… ]]> Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:46:00 -0700 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/ In the past year, I've written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won't find my name on a single paper.

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online… ]]> Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:56:00 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/