Sunday, May 30, 2004
Reflections on Timothy Leary
Be-In Now: Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy Discuss Nothing: "A member of the audience asked about the life of Timothy Leary... 'He was shooting star. His life was not expected by his mother.' Wavy Gravy said, 'A smile like a searchlight.' Ram Dass, 'He had an outsider's look (about life).' Wavy: 'Tim was big fun. And he wanted his head to be frozen.'"
Friday, May 28, 2004
Leary, Rushkoff and Jesus
TechnoShamam Shammin'?: "(Douglas)Rushkoff tells us that cyberians (the younger denizens of cyberspace) who use 'drugs do not need to learn that reality is arbitrary and manipulable, or that the landscape of consciousness is broader than normal waking-state awareness suggests' because they have already learned these things from (Timothy) Leary and the psychedelic author Ken Kesey. Rushkoff, a 20-something guru for Generation X, eulogized Leary on Leary's home page, saying, 'Tim's whole trip -- from psychedelics to computers to designer dying -- was to communicate the fact that people are capable of taking charge of their own brains, hearts, and spirits.'"
Sunday, May 23, 2004
inCircles
The Social Software Weblog: "inCircle -- the product suite engineered to drive traffic to an affinity group such as a college alumni association -- was developed within the computer science department at Stanford University with an emphasis on privacy, security, and integration with legacy systems.The proprietary software can be customized, although the design is straightforward and easy to use. For example, a graphical image displays the connections between members, including their friends, friends-of-friends, and so on. Any member can search the graph and find people in their network who like to play golf, travel to Cuba, or work at Google."
Russel Buckley on Social Networking
The Mobile Technology Weblog: "Based on my experiences, I think that there must be a new law that goes approximately 'A network is inversely proportional in effectiveness, the more you have in your network over X' Not sure what X is yet!
By this I mean that if you focus on increasing the size of your network, you are de facto neglecting the members of your existing network. Thus by increasing your network, you actually become a worse networker."
By this I mean that if you focus on increasing the size of your network, you are de facto neglecting the members of your existing network. Thus by increasing your network, you actually become a worse networker."
Erik Davis consults on A Scanner Darkly
Boing Boing: "As has been reported, Keanu Reaves will play Bob Arctor, the Orange County narc who goes schizo after being assigned to spy on himself. Linklater has been planning this project for years; it was Reaves' interest in the story that finally got the ball rolling. As has been already noted, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Rory Cochrane round out the cast, though it also needs to be mentioned that these are some of the most famous druggies in Hollywood."
Google's Blogger Boss Focuses on the User
eWeek: "In a wide-ranging conversation with eWEEK's Steve Gillmor, Blogger co-founder and Google Program Manager Evan Williams runs through the changes in the software, the company, and the RSS and ATOM content syndication ecology."
Douglas Rushkoff Interview
PopImage: "the internet, videogames and comic books are preparing our children for a vastly transformed future."
What is the Singularity?
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence: "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies that are often mentioned as heading in this direction. The most commonly mentioned is probably Artificial Intelligence, but there are others: direct brain-computer interfaces, biological augmentation of the brain, genetic engineering, ultra-high-resolution scans of the brain followed by computer emulation."
Monday, May 17, 2004
"Plogs" (Project-Logs) for Chitchat
CIO Magazine May 15,2004: "A modest proposal for using blogs to keep IT teams and management up-to-date on implementation."
2 out of 3 Statistics Are Wrong
A Brief Guide to Statistical Manipulation: "If you however have a basic understanding of how they're misused or how they're calculated, you can alert yourself to the most common and basic statistical manipulation."
Parallel Universes in Your Basement
A Home Test for Parallel Universes: "A parallel universe, it may surprise you to learn, is actually detectable in your own home, office, or almost anywhere indoors. All that's required is a red laser pointer, a pin, and a piece of paper."
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / The semio-grads
Here is an excellent, brief description of Brown University's graduate course in semioticsBoston.com: "Saussure posited that no word is inherently meaningful. Rather a word is only a 'signifier,' i.e. the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the 'signified,' or the thing itself, in order to form a meaning-imbued 'sign.' Saussure believed that dismantling signs was a real science, for in doing so we come to an empirical understanding of how humans synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts."
How the digital revolution is reshaping the news
Thsi sumamry of an article from South Africa's Mail&Guardian in Smart Mobs suggests that "unfiltered, uncensored images are now starting to drive the menu of the mainstream news oulets."
Saturday, May 15, 2004
The Google Supercomputer
MSNBC: "I always thought of the Internet as a big, decentralized operating system," says Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media. "Google made me realize that it could be hosted by one player."
Thursday, May 13, 2004
The Radical Leap
Steve Farber, author of the new amazing book The Radical Leap (it is really amazing and easily one of the best business books I have read in a very long time), recently completed a round of guest blog entries at Fast Company Now that is worth checking out.
U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
Cyborg Democracy blog: "The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals."
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Google's Man Behind The Curtain
Here is a recent CNET interview with Google's employee No. 1, Craig Silverstein: "I think that understanding language is kind of the last frontier in artificial intelligence, and then talking to a computer will be just like talking to a reference librarian, because they will both be equally knowledgeable about the world and about you.
"The big difference, and this is where the search pets come in, is that the reference librarian will understand emotions and other nonfactual information that even a fully intelligent computer may have trouble with."
"The big difference, and this is where the search pets come in, is that the reference librarian will understand emotions and other nonfactual information that even a fully intelligent computer may have trouble with."
Pattern Recognition
Kurzweil AI: Arizona State University researchers have come up with a new mathematical and computational model for oscillatory networks that could help unlock some of the secrets of how humans process patterns and possibly lead to smarter robots.
A key to pattern recognition is the use of oscillatory associative memory networks. "The human brain and its use of neurons have a great advantage over computer memory in that they employ oscillatory memory systems, where the individual components can oscillate or freely change between states," said Ying-Cheng Lai, an ASU professor of mathematics and a professor of electrical engineering.
A key to pattern recognition is the use of oscillatory associative memory networks. "The human brain and its use of neurons have a great advantage over computer memory in that they employ oscillatory memory systems, where the individual components can oscillate or freely change between states," said Ying-Cheng Lai, an ASU professor of mathematics and a professor of electrical engineering.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Did you see the gorilla?
Telegraph: "Scientists have gathered some remarkable evidence which shows that it is possible to see something without observing it, in research that sheds new light on traffic accidents that occur when a driver 'looked but failed to see', and other examples of mayhem and mishap in everyday life."
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
MRI Biofeedback for Pain Control
New Scientist: "People can learn to suppress pain when they are shown the activity of a pain-control region of their brain, a small new study suggests. The new biofeedback technique might also turn out to be useful for treating other conditions."
Saturday, May 01, 2004
Playing With Sounds in Your Head
Wired News: "NeuroPop is integrating neurosensory algorithms into music to create a certain mood and evoke more intense responses from listeners. The company hopes to market its compositions to the movie industry and video game companies."
