Useless statistic of the day
Today twitter user @Uberfacts tweeted “In 2002, the average user spent 46 minutes on the Internet a day – In 2012, the average user spent 4 hours on the Internet everyday.” It seems like an interesting statistic on the surface, especially given the implication — intentional or otherwise — that the Internet is slowly and … Continue reading
Networked Society ‘On the Brink’
“There has not been a time… in history that has enabled such rapid change… in the most optimistic view which is also simultaneously the most pessimistic view; a time that is enabling humans to be more of what we are.” Technologist and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, David Weinberger, expresses this profound idea regarding the … Continue reading
Times are a changin’
So at the moment, there are 100,000 neurons connected to the robot through Bluetooth. It is living, it’s in an incubator at 37 degrees centigrade. We have to feed it every couple of days with minerals and nutrients. It actually excretes, we have to clear away waste products and whatnot. It is living material, living … Continue reading
World Wide Mind
Michael Chorost is a technology theorist with an unusual perspective: his body is the future. In 2001 he went completely deaf and had a computer implanted in his head to let him hear again. This transformative experience inspired his first book, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, in which he wrote about … Continue reading
How Engineers Learn from Evolution
One of the objectives of The Ever-Blurring Divide is to show examples of a larger trend in which technologies are increasingly being modeled after aspects of nature. At the time of posting, this talk, given by Robert Full, was already several years old and the technologies demonstrated had been replaced by newer generations. Nevertheless, I … Continue reading
Biology as Computation with Stephen Emmott
If you enjoy thinking about what life is, you’ll enjoy this.
Us Now
As we tend to mention on this site quite frequently, modern communications are altering our ways of life in a variety of incredible ways. One thing we always try to focus on when we talk about this stuff is how new all this stuff is. In the grand scheme of things, all this wonderful, technological … Continue reading
The self-organizing system: An example
At a very blatant level, a level of details and specifics and focus, this video is about an innovative new way of education. At a broader level h0wever, one that is concerned with looking for grand, over-arching patterns, the ideas here give insight into the potential for self-organizing systems. Sugata Mitra shows by example a … Continue reading
J.J. Abrams’ Mystery Box, the Blank Page, the Uncarved Block
Below is a TED talk by J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost and Cloverfield. While I was watching it, I was struck by the similarities between his “mystery box” and the uncarved block. This small similarity isn’t necessarily a good enough reason to watch this 20-minute video, but it’s pretty entertaining and there’s some great … Continue reading
In the spirit of contemplating the internet…A link for you!
As the future of the internet goes, so goes the future of humanity. The internet and world-wide web, which I admit I only recently learned are not exactly synonymous, affect society in many profound ways, not only providing certain conveniences and luxuries to individual people but also shaping discourses and spreading information en masse. As … Continue reading
Nothing Just Is 