Today, the worries of 2008 look almost endearingly naive: Forget about the web making us dumber; let’s talk about how it has transformed us into tribalized rage monsters. – Slate
Category: ideas
Quality Versus Quantity: Has “Engagement” Become A Meaningless Measure?
The quantity-vs.-quality debate is now meaningless. Quality is in the eyes of the beholder. We may yearn for a narrative to explain how and why, but that’s not how the digital world works. The algorithmic curation that controls what you do or do not see on every social media company’s newsfeed isn’t programmed to provide you with an emotionally satisfying narrative; it is continuously tuned to keep you engaged and clicking or tapping. So if your key metric is engagement or completed views, “5 Ways to Bounce a Quarter Off of Kim Kardashian’s Butt” or a video of a horrible disaster will always outperform less clickbaity titles or subjects. – Shelly Palmer
Why We Procrastinate
It’s not about self-control. Instead, it’s more like (not very good) emotion management. “Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.” – The New York Times
How Can We Put Theory And Context Behind Video Games And The Worlds Of Gaming? [AUDIO]
Yep, videogames, gamers, and their lives online need to be placed into context by … well … folklorists, of course. Says one, a gamer and a writer: “We all want to be part of a community, we want to be accepted and find people who are like us, and Ultima Online was kind of the start of that.” – Wired
Winner-Take-All Urbanism (Hey, Amazon HQ) Leaves A Lot Of Cities Behind
What can be done for the non-New Yorks, the non-San Franciscos, the non-Seattles? “Left to their own fate, state and local policymakers often end up shoveling money at companies in the hope of attracting future investment. It isn’t working. For today’s left-behind communities to bounce back, the federal government has to act.” – The Atlantic
The Most Expensive Thing To Buy Now Is Human Interaction
The poor and middle-class can’t escape screens, and the data they hoover up both mindlessly and with (scary) intention. But the rich can, and do. – The New York Times
Wait, Who Exactly Is The Real-World Analogue To The Baddies In The Most Recent Marvel Movie?
Spoiler alert, perhaps obviously. But really, whom are the Kree meant to represent? It’s unclear, or variable, perhaps, but for sure: “The Kree become a scapegoat, an oppressive empire that oppresses the oppressed.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Might Our Morality Change With Artificial Intelligence? (Is That Even The Right Question?)
Because AI might ‘think’ differently to how humans think, and because of the general tendency to get swept up in its allure, its use could well change how we approach tasks and make decisions. The seductive allure that tends to surround AI in fact represents one of its dangers. Those working in the field despair that almost every article about AI hypes its powers, and even those about banal uses of AI are illustrated with killer robots. – Aeon
New Thinking On Getting Old
As the population surges into young old age and old old age, the number of books wrestling with that question has grown from a trickle to a tsunami. Apart from the science journals and science-fiction novels debating whether is it possible or desirable to prolong the lifespan by fifty or a hundred years, or (might as well go for it) eternally, books designed to help readers navigate the treacheries of ageing fall roughly into three categories: the scientific, the personal and the political. – Times Literary Supplement
Big Gods, Little Gods – Do Cultures Get The Gods They Need?
Anthropologists say small societies generally worship Gods who only need to be worshipped. Larger societies’ Gods have many more rules for how followers behave… – The Economist [registration]