“Satellites and algorithms only get you so far. Google employs a small army of human operators (they won’t say exactly how many) to manually check and correct the maps using an in-house program called Atlas. Few people outside the company have seen it in use.”
Category: ideas
Reshaping Los Angeles With Latino Urbanism
“What the shift means for immigrants themselves — particularly in quickly gentrifying neighborhoods like downtown or Boyle Heights — is a separate and deeply fraught question.”
The End Of The Avant Garde (Thanks A Lot, Damien Hirst)
“Originality requires learning, hard work, the mastery of a medium and – most of all – the refined sensibility and openness to experience that have suffering and solitude as their normal cost.”
Nope, Humans Do Not Come Equipped With A ‘Language Instinct’
“While language acquisition might be uncannily quick, there isn’t much that’s automatic about it: it arises from a painstaking process of trial and error.”
Study: Does Artists’ Creativity Go Up During Times Of War?
“It is possible that war impacts (an artist’s) emotional state in a non-linear way. and some wars may result in a psychological blockade of the creative process.”
Is Internet Addiction Like Drug Addiction?
Maria Konnikova: “In some sense, they aren’t [the same]. A substance affects a person physically in a way that a behavior simply cannot: no matter how severe your trichotillomania, you’re not introducing something new to your bloodstream. But, in what may be a more fundamental way, they share much in common.”
Wheat People vs. Rice People: Why Are Some Cultures More Individualistic Than Others?
A group of sociologists argue that the difference between the analytic, independent-minded societies in Europe and the Americas and the more interdependent, self-effacing societies of Asia has its roots in the way they cultivate their staple crops.
The Uncomfortable Questions Technology Is Forcing Us To Ask
“These are ancient questions we have faced since the beginnings of science and philosophy, and today new information technologies, which indeed rapidly change our world, force us to ask them again.”
The Human Brain Is Engineered For Kindness
“In a neat little animated video published yesterday by the University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Dacher Keltner explains that we were essentially built to be nice.”
Think Your Opinions Are Based on Facts? (Think Again)
“New research suggests that, if options such as relying on biased sources of information prove insufficient, many of us simply rely more heavily on “unfalsifiable” assertions—ones that cannot be definitely proven or disproven.”