The first toilet I encountered in Japan was so advanced it automatically lifted the seat itself the moment it sensed my approach, like it just couldn’t wait for me to crap down its throat. It’s disconcerting, defecating into a robot’s mouth. In five years’ time that toilet won’t merely cock its lid when you enter the room, it’ll be programmed to hum lullabies as it swallows your droppings. If the machines ever rise up and kill us, we’ll only have our own smug sense of mastery to blame
Posted on Monday, 23 January
Posted on Monday, 16 January
Bored couples, Martin Parr ››
Posted on Monday, 16 January
Brilliant: Machine pareidolia - hello little fella meets facetracker ››
How will we ever make sense of scientific topics that are too big to know? The short answer: by transforming what it means to know something scientifically.
This would not be the first time. For example, when Sir Francis Bacon said that knowledge of the world should be grounded in carefully verified facts about the world, he wasn’t just giving us a new method to achieve old-fashioned knowledge. He was redefining knowledge as theories that are grounded in facts.
The Age of the Net is bringing about a redefinition at the same scale. Scientific knowledge is taking on properties of its new medium, becoming like the network in which it lives. […]
This new knowledge requires not just giant computers but a network to connect them, to feed them, and to make their work accessible. It exists at the network level, not in the heads of individual human beings.
Posted on Sunday, 8 January
To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data - David Weinberger - Technology - The Atlantic (via new-aesthetic)
(via new-aesthetic)
The act of sitting down and writing something finished makes you try and say what is there that I’ve learned that will still be true in two to five years time? I think I’ve got it. It is the fact that we are facing the collapse of an economic model, that won’t be coming back, that its ruined the lives of generations and it will get worse. There is an unprecedented outbreak of the desire for freedom and the means to achieve it, and the network is beating the hierarchy every time the two go together. That’s really what the blog was about. I think that’s going to be true.
Posted on Sunday, 8 January
Dazed Digital | Paul Mason: Why It’s All Kicking Off (via new-aesthetic)
(via new-aesthetic)
‘When I was making the series How TV Ruined Your Life, we went out and asked members of the public to comment on a new invention we were claiming was real: a mobile phone that allowed you to call through time, so you could speak to people in the past or future. Many people thought it was real: not so much a testament to gullibility, but an indicator of just how magical today’s technology has become. We take miracles for granted on a daily basis’
Posted on Sunday, 8 January
Posted on Thursday, 5 January
Like a muscle, the brain strengthens the part of itself that it uses the most. This isn’t new. Scientists can point to the invention of the hand-held tool hundreds of thousands of years ago, and a corresponding growth in the size of the frontal lobe. The Internet is really just a sophisticated hammer. What will future anthropologists find out about our brains?
Posted on Wednesday, 4 January
ESPN - OTL: Test of Time - E-ticket
(The Internet is really just a sophisticated hammer.)
(via new-aesthetic)
Posted on Friday, 30 December
Posted on Friday, 30 December
Posted on Thursday, 22 December
Posted on Tuesday, 20 December
“Google Earth has developed an extended network of automated cameras, operators, satellites, aerial photographers, programmers, and terrain and map information to assemble an ever more convincing representation of the planet. This mostly automated system sometimes produces unexpected and wonderful artifacts. The bridges in these postcards are glitches that occur when the 2d satellite imagery and 3d terrain don’t line up quite right, or structures such as bridges are projected down onto the terrain below, creating fabulous and unintentional distortions.”
http://clementvalla.com/work/bridges/
via slavin, via @bruces and @bopuc
(Posted previously, worth a repost)
Posted on Tuesday, 20 December
