Of everything I’ve written, I think The New Pragmatist has retained the most value. I told someone two years ago I was going to clean it up and publish a PDF, but I got pulled away from it by too many new ideas to have any patience for futzing around with something old… until now: [...]
Tagged as:
books,
epistemology,
knowledge,
lulu,
objectivity,
practice of theory,
pragmatism,
publishing,
self-publishing,
subjectivity
For 2010′s Edge Annual Question, John Brockman asked 165 of the smartest people he knows “How has the Internet changed the way you think? ” [It's a familiar topic around here... and I actually answered the question when I wrote about last year's.] A surprising number of answers are about sex. More than a few [...]
Tagged as:
brain,
epistemology,
internet,
mind,
philosophy,
psychology,
technology,
think21st,
thinking,
third culture
Picking up the Thinking in the 21st Century thread again… I’m nearing the end of the most philosophical stuff. It all turns on this one… Just a reminder to read this as a proposal — a basis for refinement and elaboration (not to mention citations and evidence), not presuming finality. A few weeks ago I [...]
Tagged as:
epistemology,
ideas,
metaphysics,
mind,
philosophy,
process,
psychology,
relevance,
stories,
theory,
think21st,
will to relevance
The premise of this series is to work out a new way of looking at our changing world» Part of the reason we’ve had so much difficulty making sense of the complex events of the past decade is that our ways of thinking — specifically, the metaphors, analogies, and images we resort to — have [...]
Tagged as:
bias,
epistemology,
heuristics,
learning,
meta factors,
metaphors,
metaphysics,
networks,
object bias,
philosophy,
psychology,
relevance,
social media,
will to relevance
Metaphors aren’t just literary devices, they affect our intuition and reasoning in ways we’re barely aware of. Which isn’t to say they’re bad; they’re essential — that’s the point. By calling Metaphors We Live By a “landmark” in the previous post, I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, I was simply trying to provide better information [...]
Tagged as:
exindustrialism,
industry,
innovation,
intuition,
metaphors,
think21st,
thinking,
vocabularies
Continuing the series… Trying to understand human motivation and behaviour, a few years ago I finally came across this article: Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence, by Robert White (1959). According to the current APA abstract: Theories of motivation built upon primary drives cannot account for playful and exploratory behavior. The new motivational concept of “competence” [...]
Tagged as:
autonomy,
competence,
complexity,
emergence,
flow,
intrinsic motivation,
motivation,
positive psychology,
psychology,
temporality,
think21st
Continuing the previous discussion of object bias and conceptions of time… As a very rough rule of thumb I like to apply a kind of generalized version of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: “the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely…” [via SEP] Applied to social and economic models, [...]
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data,
human factors,
information,
process,
statistics,
systems,
think21st,
thinking,
uncertainty,
uncertainty principle
Reflecting on last weekend’s talk on creativity I worried that probably emphasized the “open” aspect of the creative cycle at the expense of the “closed” aspect. My gist seemed to be, “Don’t worry about anything… try everything, and fantastic creations will magically appear.” Given the circumstances, I’m happy I erred that way rather than the other. We [...]
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benjamin franklin,
bruce mau,
complexity,
creativity,
dennis dutton,
digital media,
discovery,
electricity,
epistemology,
evolution,
generativity,
history,
paradigms,
poetry,
pragmatism,
progress,
revolutions,
social media,
theory,
think21st,
thomas kuhn
[Here's a bit I've got so far prefacing That Project Provisionally Called a Book.] Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg’s book about “how blogging began, where it’s going, and why it matters,” begins on the morning of September 11, 2001. Along with first-hand witnesses in Manhattan, many other people across the US gravitated online to share their thoughts [...]
Tagged as:
9/11,
blogging,
digital media,
social media,
writing
Props to TechAlliance and BIOTECanada for booking Adam Bly to speak at the launch of National Biotechnology Week. I’m very grateful to have attended; I came away rejuvenated with energy and ideas… Bly made the case we need to reorient “our collective ideology, our collective imagination,” towards science — towards “Big Science.” Some of his remarks [...]
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adam bly,
biotecanada,
culture,
data visualization,
infographics,
innovation,
knowledge,
love of learning,
mindsets,
national biotechnology week,
seed magazine,
society,
techalliance,
technology
The book project has evolved from the “world-turned-upside-down” concept to a more general, but better-organized, case for blogging — by which I mean any kind of social, citizen-driven media. [Update: Seconds after publishing I realized what a profound understatement that is... I guess I'll just leave it to readers to figure out exactly what it's [...]
Tagged as:
autobibliography,
blogging,
book,
history,
personal,
writing
There’s been a lot of press for Alison Gopnik’s new book, The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life. Via Bookforum, here’s my lazy way of linking to this review … (and more and more and more and more and more and more). And here’s a short video. Here’s also an opinion piece at the New [...]
Tagged as:
babies,
brain,
childhood,
consciousness,
discovery,
learning,
mind,
play,
psychology
