Ideas generally don’t just pop out into the world and get traction. They’re set in the context of what we know and what we dream about. Science fiction has helped frame discussions about the future for a long time. So here are the stories that inform us now…
Category: ideas
Buckminster Fuller Believed Technology Is Mankind’s Salvation (Ah, It Was A Gentler Time, Then)
“Fuller put his faith in technology as a means to tame the messiness of humankind. ‘I would never try to reform man – that’s much too difficult,’ Fuller told The New Yorker in 1966. Appealing to people to remedy their behaviour was a folly, because they’d simply never do it. Far wiser, Fuller thought, to build technology that circumvents the flaws in human behaviour – that is, ‘to modify the environment in such a way as to get man moving in preferred directions’. Instead of human-led design, he sought design-led humans.”
Turns Out Our Brains Are Wired To Light Up When We See Something Cute
“Cute judgments might be fundamental to human perception. Examining magnetic brain activity in subjects presented with infant and adult faces, Kringelbach and his colleagues at Oxford have found that the brain starts recognising faces as cute or infantile in less than a seventh of a second after the face is presented to subjects. His group has concluded that cuteness is a key that unlocks the brain’s fast attentional resources before also influencing slower brain networks responsible for compassion and empathy.”
In What (Polite Yet Enjoyable) Way Will Canada Celebrate Culture For Its 150th?
“What effect will all this well-meaning cultural, environmental and athletic activity produce? As the optimistic descriptions washed over me, I had to remind myself that public celebrations of a national birthday can indeed be transformative.”
The True Awesomeness (In The Classical Sense) Of Earth, From Way Above
“While most of humanity will never make it past the ozone, Benjamin Grant’s Instagram project, Daily Overview, has been sharing high definition satellite photographs to give everyone access to this unique perspective.”
Making Streaming More Accessible – And Interesting
“Something of a radical step forward for film accessibility is the ‘enhanced soundtrack version,’ which all but disregards the film’s visuals and instead constructs an entirely new version of the film through purely sonic means. Expressionistic sound design is used to create aural reconstructions of key episodes from Hull’s life, while additional excerpts from his diaries fill in any narrative gaps.”
How Do You Get The Attention Of A Nation Binge-Watching The Presidential Election?
“At BookPeople in Austin, Texas, summertime sales of general fiction titles fell 12% from last year, while science fiction took a 26% hit. ‘I guess they don’t need science fiction because they’re getting so much in politics,’ says Steve Bercu, who is co-owner of the 46-year-old store. Sales of books about politics and current events, he said, surged 45% during the same period.”
The Dreaded ‘Screen Time Wars’ May Be Coming To An End (As We All Give In)
“Over the past decade, an increasing number of researchers, many educators, and not surprisingly, children’s media developers have pointed to a growing pile of studies that show how children, even at very young ages, can benefit from using media when it catalyzes conversation and is designed for learning.”
The Ten Best Books On Creativity
Just as no two artists have the same working methods, so too might your next bolt of inspiration come from an unexpected place, be it a groundbreaking building, a compelling work of art, or a spare Oblique Strategies deck.
On Moral Issues, Liberals Ponder And Conservatives Pounce
“Newly published research suggests … that conservatives decide ethical issues in an intuitive, automatic way [while] liberals are more likely to give such questions serious thought before arriving at an opinion. This difference between snap judgments and reason-based conclusions ‘may be a fundamental aspect of left-right political orientation’.”