Author: Douglas McLennan

Smartphones Are Ruining Museums

We’ve become so accustomed to interacting through our phones that we’ve forgotten about everyone else in the room. That obliviousness has found its way into more and more exhibitions across the country, as museums rebrand themselves as community spaces that foster “interaction” with hashtags and tweets. Encouraging that interaction has come at a cost.

The New Higher Ed: Less Time Teaching And Learning, More Time Measuring And Admining

In most universities nowadays — and this seems to be true almost everywhere — academic staff find themselves spending less and less time studying, teaching, and writing about things, and more and more time measuring, assessing, discussing, and quantifying the way in which they study, teach, and write about things (or the way in which they propose to do so in the future. European universities, reportedly, now spend at least 1.4 billion euros [about 1.7 billion dollars] a year on failed grant applications.). It’s gotten to the point where “admin” now takes up so much of most professors’ time that complaining about it is the default mode of socializing among academic colleagues; indeed, insisting on talking instead about one’s latest research project or course idea is considered somewhat rude.

The Problems With Trying To Define Beauty

Sometimes, the word ‘beauty’ aspires to the solidity of a proper noun, grand and true. Other times, it seems a more nebulous term for an elusive kind of experience. We can be careless about the beautiful, shrugging it off as a matter of mere appearance. It is not grave like the stuff of our political lives, or profound like our moral considerations. Certainly, we know to admire the beautiful in its different forms – a painting, a song, a building, sometimes even an act or a gesture – and we might go so far as to believe that our engagement with beautiful things constitutes a deep and meaningful experience, as though it were a momentary pause in the hectic thoroughfare of our lives. But we rarely permit matters of beauty the same seriousness that we customarily grant big ideas such as ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’.

Deciding How Frightened We Should Be Of Artificial Intelligence

A central tension in the field, one that muddies the timeline, is how “the Singularity”—the point when technology becomes so masterly it takes over for good—will arrive. Will it come on little cat feet, a “slow takeoff” predicated on incremental advances in A.N.I., taking the form of a data miner merged with a virtual-reality system and a natural-language translator, all uploaded into a Roomba? Or will it be the Godzilla stomp of a “hard takeoff,” in which some as yet unimagined algorithm is suddenly incarnated in a robot overlord?

A Debate About Whether Truth Exists

Can we have knowledge of the past? Does science progress toward a more truthful apperception of the physical world? Or is it all a matter of opinion, a sociological phenomenon that reflects consensus, not truth? Unfettered emission of greenhouse gases promotes global warming. Species evolve through natural selection. Can we meaningfully assess the truth of these assertions?

Neuroscience Is Giving Us Fresh Appreciation Of The Fact Our Brains Are Physical

“Lost in the public’s romance with the brain is the most fundamental lesson neuroscience has to teach us: that the organ of our minds is a purely physical entity, conceptually and causally embedded in the natural world. Although the brain is required for almost everything we do, it never works alone. Instead, its function is inextricably linked to the body and to the environment around it. The interdependence of these factors is masked however by a cultural phenomenon I call the ‘cerebral mystique’ – a pervasive idealisation of the brain and its singular importance, which protects traditional conceptions about differences between mind and body, the freedom of will and the nature of thought itself.”

Why Musicians Seem To Be Releasing A Steady Stream Of Singles

“Traditionally artists would go a long time between album projects, disappear and then come back as a big event,” explains Robby Snow, SVP of Global Marketing for Hollywood Records (Demi Lovato, Bea Miller). “In this day and age, we try to keep things flowing so artists almost never go away. Fans want to be engaged constantly with artists that they like.”

How DIY Opera Is Changing Opera

American opera is still primarily placing safe bets on its well-worn canon, but composers like Missy Mazzoli and David Little see a changing landscape that gives cause for optimism: institutions that think more flexibly, provide more opportunities and embrace a DIY, upstart spirit to find ways to make it work. But most importantly, they see peers writing timely works for responsive audiences.