Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: “The second machine age will be characterized by countless instances of machine intelligence and billions of interconnected brains working together to better understand and improve our world. It will make mockery out of all that came before.”
Category: ideas
You Can’t Force Creativity (Or Good Ideas). So Here’s How To Unlock Yours
“Creative people thrive on serendipity, spontaneous interactions, moments of ribald humor, intense debate or just simple eye contact, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I decided that it was time to act. So I tried an experiment. I just stopped saying yes and started saying no to things.”
Study: What Makes You Happy? Being Creative
In a study of college students, “people who reported feeling happy and active were more likely to be doing something creative at the time.”
The Country Where They Measure Gross National Happiness
That’s Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan kingdom wedged between China and India. The government has devised ways of measuring happiness – though not in the ways that Westerners might imagine.
Where Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Came From, And What the Rest of the World Misunderstands About It
Former prime minister Jigmi Thinley explains how the country’s fourth king came up with the concept, and how it’s defined and measured.
What Exactly Do Americans Mean When We Say ‘Hello’?
“In Colorado, it’s ‘Where do you ski? (hike/mountain bike/fish)?’ And it’s never asked after noon on Friday because everybody is already en route.”
Cute Infographics Have Been Saving Lives For More Than A Century
“The brutal message of [Florence Nightengale’s] ‘rose’ charts of mortality, constructed using data from the Crimean war, was both informative and highly influential, showing in stark, uncompromising terms that the numbers of soldiers dying from disease and squalor far outweighed those dying from battle injuries.”
The U.S. Is Weak On Public Intellectuals. Why Not Turn To Universities?
“It’s not just that America has marginalized some of its sharpest minds. They have also marginalized themselves.”
You Can Never Go Home Again (It Doesn’t Exist As You Remember)
James Wood: “When I left this country 18 years ago, I didn’t know how strangely departure would obliterate return: how could I have done? It’s one of time’s lessons, and can only be learned temporally.”
Study: Dress A Bit Oddly If You Want People To Think You’re Powerful
They argue that dressing in an unconventional way “signals that one has the autonomy needed to act according to one’s own inclinations.”