Looking back, every successful medium has either “killed” a predecessor (in the manner that television displaced radio in the home, or that streaming video is chipping away at cable) or “colonized” time and attention that was unused or used for something else. However, that was somewhat easier when people actually had free time. Today, we live in a media environment where billions of dollars are spent fighting for the time spent “waiting at the bus stop.”
Category: ideas
Is Democracy Really Such A Great Idea? Mob Rule?
“Over the past few years concerns about “unchecked” democracy and rule by the people have exploded—but such concerns have been around as long as democracy itself. The ancient Greeks commonly equated democracy with mob rule. Aristotle, for example, worried about democracy’s tendency to degenerate into “chaotic rule by the masses” and in Plato’s The Republic, Socrates argues that given power and freedom the masses will indulge their passions, destroy traditions and institutions, and be easy prey for tyrants. Classical liberals, meanwhile, lived in mortal fear of democracy, convinced that once given power ‘the people’ would trample the liberties and confiscate the property of elites.”
How Is It That ‘The Simpsons’ Has Predicted Everything From The Current President To Disney’s Takeover Of Fox?
Basically, you put a bunch of very smart people in a writers’ room and let them loose: “The result is a show packed with references to art, literature, pop culture, politics and science.” (Alternative theory: The Simpsons has so many episodes that it’s bound to get a few things right.)
How The New ‘Black Panther’ Movie Approaches African History, And What’s Untold
Actor Lupita Nyong’o appears in the Marvel superhero movie. Her father, a politician in Kenya, writes about why he believes the film will be more than a superhero movie to the continent of Africa: “Just imagine an African nation that was never colonised, had its own civilisation and decided to develop on her own steam by empowering her people without leaving the women behind. What would such a nation be capable of doing, especially when it discovers that it has some precious minerals that it can sell to the outside world and use the wealth to modernise society without destroying her own culture and way of life?”
Some Deep Thinking About What Enjoyment Is
Philosophers have puzzled over the question of what enjoyment is, proposing competing accounts of pleasure, but we can take a straightforward view that enjoyment is a distinctive state of finding an experience pleasurable. The hallmark feature of pleasure, in turn, is its feel-good quality. An enjoyable experience feels good. And it can be distinguished thus from a painful one, which feels bad. Does then the transitory nature of enjoyment undermine its worth? Or might that very brevity of enjoyment be part of its importance in human life?
Do We Code-Switch When We Laugh The Way We Do When We Speak?
Of course we do – think of how you’d laugh in an office meeting versus how you’d do it at a bar or a theater. But how much of the switching is based in the situation at hand, and how much in the personal identity of the laugher?
The “Best Person” Fallacy
The multidimensional or layered character of complex problems undermines the principle of meritocracy: the idea that the ‘best person’ should be hired. There is no best person. When putting together an oncological research team, a biotech company such as Gilead or Genentech would not construct a multiple-choice test and hire the top scorers, or hire people whose resumes score highest according to some performance criteria. Instead, they would seek diversity. They would build a team of people who bring diverse knowledge bases, tools and analytic skills.”
Is There Really Such A Thing As ‘The Self’? Yes, And Science Really Can Study It
The idea that there is no “self” that can be fully apprehended, let alone studied, goes all the way back to David Hume – and up to Daniel Dennett today. In philosophy, it’s called antirealism – and Şerife Tekin is here to demolish it.
The Condescension Of Calling Something Out
When is the last time you heard someone say outright that someone else is watching wrong? These days, to call out wrongness or falseness or badness is to risk being accused of condescension. The desire to make such accusations is taken as a mark of unacknowledged privilege. It’s understood as likely to hurt someone’s feelings. People prefer to play it safe. They hesitate to make such critical judgments.
How Artificial Will Judge Us (The Star System? Really?)
The reputation economy is based on the simplistic, but effective star ratings system. Anyone who’s ever rated their Uber driver or Airbnb host has actively participated. But what happens when algorithms, rather than humans, determine an individual’s reputation score based on multiple data sources and mathematical formulas, promising more accuracy and more flexibility via machine learning?