“All the things that have been driving everything that I do, the kinds of technology that have emerged out of here that have changed the world, have ridden on the fact that the cost of computing doesn’t just fall, it falls at an accelerating rate. And guess what? In the last two years, the price of each transistor has stopped falling. That’s a profound moment.”
Category: ideas
When Genius Becomes Banal – How We See Greatness
“We have a problem of seeing, just as we often have a problem hearing (or hearing clearly), say, a Beethoven symphony. It’s hard to get back to our first enraptured seeings and hearings, when Van Gogh and Beethoven struck our eyes and ears as nothing had before; and yet equally hard to break through to new seeings, new hearings. So we tend, a little lazily, to acknowledge greatness by default, and move elsewhere, away from the crowds discovering him as we first discovered him.”
Information Overload (Quantified And Pondered)
“More data has been created and stored since the turn of the millennium than in the entire history of humanity. Metaphors for information overload tend to fall into two categories: those that suggest addiction or lack of self-control, such as infomania, datamania, infobesity, databesity, dataholism, infostress, dataddiction, infovorism, datadithering, data dread; and those that suggest natural disaster, such as datanami, datageddon, dataclypse, data deluge, data smog, infoglut, information saturation, data swamp, drowning in data.”
University Philosophy Departments Are Overwhelmingly Male. Should We Care?
“What is the explanation for this peculiarity, and should it be a matter of concern? These two questions are interlinked. How far philosophy’s gender imbalance is bad depends on its causes. If it were the result of simple discrimination against women, for instance, then it would not only be unjust, but it would also be preventing some of the best-suited people from working as philosophers. But it is not obvious that discrimination is the right explanation, and it should not be taken for granted that any other causes for the imbalance would be similarly unacceptable.”
The Best Social Network
“It is a silly, idiosyncratic piece of software, but so simple. It says: Here is a picture.”
The Revolt Against Tourism (And Tourists, Maybe, As Well)
“Outraged by tourists’ boorish and disrespectful behavior, and responding to the complaints of their constituents, local officials around the world have begun to crack down on tourism, and the tourism industry, even in the face of opposition from their national governments, which want the tax revenue from tourists.”
Can Good Stamp Design Save The U.S. Postal Service?
“The USPS’s attempts to tap into the zeitgeist deserve credit, and the artists, designers, and art directors behind U.S. postage stamps take extraordinary pride in creating them.”
Think You Can Train Your Brain Into A Better Memory? (Then Read This)
One writer tries all of the new tricks and tips and advice on how to improve her memory. Did she get better? Of course. But not necessarily at remembering things.
When Certain Sounds Really Do Drive You Crazy
“Named in the early 2000s by the neurologists Pawel and Margaret Jastreboff, misophonia – also called selective sound sensitivity syndrome – is one of many symptom clusters that don’t have a clear etiology. Those who suffer from misophonia recoil from human-made noises like chewing and whistling. The risks of being tormented by everyday experiences, like going to the movies only to find themselves sitting near a popcorn-cruncher, can make them too anxious to leave the house.”
Are Ethics Professors Particularly Good People? No More Than Most Of Us, And They Don’t Really Try Any Harder (That’s A Good Thing)
In an essay titled “Cheeseburger ethics,” Eric Schwitzgebel argues, “We – most of us – actually aim at mediocrity. The cheeseburger ethicist is perhaps only unusually honest with herself about this. We aspire to be about as morally good as our peers … B+ on the great moral curve of white middle-class college-educated North Americans. Let others get the As.”