September 11, 2001. I remember staying up past midnight, flipping through my hundred or so cable channels. Everything covered the attack. I went for a walk. TV light flickered from windows of every house. Everyone was up but nobody was out. Except one guy, on a payphone, highlighted by a street light glowing over him, speaking [...]
Tagged as:
change,
history,
osama bin laden,
perspective,
tv,
twitter,
war
The 2011 Edge Annual Question is a doozy. It came out this weekend: What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? This is my fourth year doing a kind of mashup. A few hours ago I didn’t think I’d be able to. Reading through the answers, I felt like I was taking a pummeling: one after [...]
Tagged as:
brain,
certainty,
edge annual question,
knowledge,
meaning,
mind,
philosophy,
psychology,
spatiality,
temporality,
truth,
uncertainty
So I saw this SEO copywriter joke a bunch of times yesterday. I love it: “So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor” (If you don’t know what SEO copywriting is, it means writing with specific keywords in certain orders to help sites rank [...]
Tagged as:
humour,
jokes,
memes,
networks,
seo,
social media,
social networks,
twitter
Here’s a fascinating article about the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue at Firdos Square in 2003 – a great case to examine how our desire for compelling stories and images makes us deceive ourselves. Some argue it may have made things worse — enabling the infamous “Mission Accomplished” announcement and causing people to overlook real problems. (More [...]
Tagged as:
attention,
conspiracies,
deception,
iraq war,
journalism,
self-deception,
war
The WikiLeaks story is really becoming a saga. It’s like a new chapter is added every week, with new characters and new ethical questions raised. The latest one helped me work out at least one big answer to move forward with. The answer hinges on trust. It used to be that knowledge was power: it [...]
Tagged as:
attention,
crime,
culture,
diplomacy,
feminism,
information,
institutions,
integrity,
julian assange,
justice,
keith olbermann,
michael moore,
news,
open government,
openness,
press,
rape,
society,
transparency,
trust,
wikileaks
We have to make a choice: divert more & more energy to avoid & repair leak after leak or come to terms with an open world. # This is the big ethical and practical choice we need to confront. Every time we choose to keep even the smallest secrets we sow seeds that’ll grow into [...]
Tagged as:
cablegate,
epistemology,
foreign affairs,
government,
history,
internet,
julian assange,
knowledge,
love of learning,
news,
open government,
philosophy,
politics,
process,
secrecy,
transparency,
truth,
wikileaks
I’ve heard great things about Zadie Smith’s work as a writer, but I had a hard time bringing myself to click on this link. The essay is about Facebook, and the generation that made it, and the movie that everyone’s talking about. It also references Jaron Lanier’s critique of the internet and adds to a growing [...]
Tagged as:
change,
evolution,
facebook,
future,
generativity,
meaning,
philosophy,
progress,
social media,
society,
technology,
twitter
I just had a crazy thought about The Social Network. It turns on this controversial and often-repeated remark (found here) by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin: I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling. I’m #TeamInternet all the way but I appreciate where Sorkin is coming from. I’m sort [...]
Tagged as:
cultural evolution,
facebook,
fiction,
film,
generativity,
internet,
movies,
narrative,
stories,
storytelling,
truth,
web,
writing
We had an interesting exchange on Twitter the other day, about the lack of attention given by the media to lesser-known election candidates. Partially aside, it was the kind of thing I’ve been hoping to see for a while — a lively backchannel discussion about how local politics news is covered — and I hope [...]
Tagged as:
blogging,
conversation,
elections,
ideas,
journalism,
leadership,
linking,
politics,
reporting,
social media,
twitter
“Books are being replaced by reading,“ to borrow a phrase from Jack Shafer. Digital technology “distances us from the old magic conjured by books” by giving us better ways to get what’s inside them. Of course the tactile experience is lost, but that’s only a sentimental attachment — not without genuine value, but not without considerable influence from purely [...]
Tagged as:
blogging,
bookfuturism,
books,
future,
information,
publishing,
reading,
writing
Let’s look at the genuine potential of new technology instead of dwelling on what’s being replaced — whether in remorse or celebration… This began as a response to Nicholas Carr’s Experiments in Delinkification a few months ago. I sat on it until Scott Rosenberg brought the topic up again this week with a series of [...]
Tagged as:
attention,
blogging,
context,
culture,
distraction,
future,
generativity,
ideas,
james wood,
knowledge,
Links,
lionel trilling,
matthew arnold,
mind,
nicholas carr,
perfection,
process,
psychology,
reading,
web,
writing
