ideas items › MachineMachine /stream

Link Can religion tell us more than science?

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…

September 21 2011, 3:52am | Comments

Link Can religion tell us more than science?

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…

September 20 2011, 3:12am | Comments

Link Steven Pinker on the History and decline (and…

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,…

September 20 2011, 3:05am | Comments

Metafilter Innovative websites as template for MFA research community 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,…

September 16 2011, 7:26am | Comments

Link Is New Media Accepted in the Art World?…

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…

September 12 2011, 12:22am | Comments

Link Is New Media Accepted in the Art World?…

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…

September 2 2011, 3:07pm | Comments

Link 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…

August 18 2011, 1:34am | Comments

Link Off-putting behaviour: On Writing and Procrastination

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…

July 8 2011, 1:52am | Comments

Link Three arguments against the singularity

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…

June 23 2011, 2:48am | Comments

Link 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…

June 20 2011, 9:21am | Comments

Link Post-Artifact Books and Publishing

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.…

June 15 2011, 8:50am | Comments

Link Is Twitter writing, or is it speech? Why…

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…

June 2 2011, 1:19pm | Comments

Wikipedia 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…

May 3 2011, 3:13pm | Comments

Wikipedia 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…

May 3 2011, 12:27pm | Comments

Link We are as gods and have to get…

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…

April 28 2011, 3:27am | Comments

Link Similarities - a set on Flickr

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…

March 2 2011, 7:28am | Comments

Link Explain yourself: George-Lakoff, cognitive linguist

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…

February 4 2011, 3:26am | Comments

Link The Third Queue

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…

December 11 2010, 3:11am | Comments

Link How Video Games Are Infiltrating—and Improving—Every Part of…

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…

December 8 2010, 8:46am | Comments

Link The Shadow Scholar

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…

November 17 2010, 3:56pm | Comments

Link Manguel, Muse of Impossibility

One day in December 1919, the twenty-year-old Jorge Luis Borges, during a short stay in Seville, wrote a letter, in French, to his friend Maurice Abramowicz in Geneva, in which,…

October 21 2010, 3:52am | Comments

Link Is There Too Much Exposition in Games?

"Exposition is a dirty word," was one of Kasavin's top points. Too many developers front- or back-load games with heavy exposition to create the game world instead of smartly weaving…

October 7 2010, 2:31am | Comments

Link Is There Too Much Exposition in Games?

"Exposition is a dirty word," was one of Kasavin's top points. Too many developers front- or back-load games with heavy exposition to create the game world instead of smartly weaving…

October 7 2010, 2:31am | Comments

Link Six scientists tell us about the most accurate…

What do scientists think about seeing their fields of research pulverized by science fiction? We asked researchers from diverse fields to tell us whether any science fiction gets it right.…

September 23 2010, 5:07am | Comments

Link Ideas of the Century: Non-Critical Thinking

Back in 1981, R.M. Hare, in his book Moral Thinking, featured a distinction that today I still find useful. Hare admitted that the distinction was not original with him, but…

August 21 2010, 3:16pm | Comments

Link The Mind's I

Now available for free online: The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul (ISBN 0-553-34584-2) is a 1981 book composed and arranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel…

August 16 2010, 3:30am | Comments

Link The Age of Semi-Post-Modernism

It seems to me part of the problem is that the term "postmodernism" was always so muddy and abstract. To different people, it meant (at least) two different things. First…

August 16 2010, 2:56am | Comments

Video

July 19 2010, 2:00am | Comments

Writing from 3quarksdaily A Diatribe from the Remains of Dr. Fred…

July 11 2010, 9:25pm | Comments

Link Are video games the next great art form?

Video games have come a very long way since the 1980s... As Tom Bissell, a journalist, former Salon writer and lifelong gamer, explains in his new book, "Extra Lives: Why…

June 21 2010, 7:02am | Comments

Link The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could…

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers…

June 6 2010, 3:54am | Comments

Link The Pleasures of Imagination

How do Americans spend their leisure time? The answer might surprise you. The most common voluntary activity is not eating, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs. It is not socializing with…

June 1 2010, 3:54am | Comments

Link Evolution and Creativity: Why Humans Triumphed

Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly…

June 1 2010, 2:53am | Comments

Link The iPad, the Kindle, and the future of…

Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of…

April 21 2010, 4:10am | Comments

Link The 'Basic' Plots in Literature

Q: I’ve heard there are only 7 (or 5, 20, 36…) basic plots (or themes) in all of literature. What are they? A: People often say that there are only…

March 9 2010, 4:35pm | Comments

Link From Eternity to Here

The arrow of time points in one direction only, from past to present to future. Now there's a fact—rather like Wittgenstein's observation "A is the same thing as A"—that is…

January 12 2010, 3:15am | Comments

Link The World Question Center 2010: How is the…

Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page…

January 8 2010, 10:55am | Comments

Link Digital Technology is Not the End of Artistic…

The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout thinks future generations will consider itunes, youtube, and Kindle a more important cultural development than anything it distributes. He’s right to point out the…

December 23 2009, 4:49am | Comments

Metafilter Innovative Book Designs Innovative Books: I am looking to compile a list of the most innovative uses of the book format. Books that break the mould in their layout and design,…

November 1 2009, 5:37am | Comments

Link Luis Camnitzer, ALPHABETIZATION, Part Two: Hegemonic Language and…

In all the traditional approaches to pedagogy, both in art and in literacy, the possibility of perceiving the transitional nature of the space produced by text or image—the common space…

October 27 2009, 11:51am | Comments

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