Category: ideas

“The gist of the argument is this: as app-happy mobile devices become the primary way we compute, the good old browser becomes irrelevant. The hyperlinked, free-flowing, egalitarian, and ubiquitous world wide web will fade away. Instead, digital existence will mostly transpire within the more self-contained domains of individual apps, which offer their creators the flexibility and power of building right into the mobile operating systems. We will still have the internet, but it won’t be the same wherever you use it. And some will have more power over it than others.”

“When Amazon ventures into the physical world — whether with in-store delivery lockers or grocery trucks or vending machines — the company’s sheer scale and ambition demand that you think in terms of world domination.”

“She enforces order, here a street and there a house, and then – wham! – she is able to destroy the whole plan and start again. Given the God-like way many architects carry on, it’s probably helpful to get a sense of this feeling as early as possible.”

“The distance between being willfully unlikable and a total Mary Sue is vast, and within that space live hundreds of female characters who are both challenging and appealing.”

As more than a decade’s research is showing, genius and madness are basically best friends. What’s interesting is why.

Today in neuropsychological research performed on undergraduates: fMRIs indicated that students who read a particular novel developed “heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex” (one of the brain’s language centers) for at least five days after finishing the book.

“The quality of the place is irrelevant, as are collisionable hours per acre per year. As long as talented people born in different places are coming together, even the Orkney Islands can be an innovation hub.”

“Today science and the “philosophy of mind”—its thoughtful assistant, which is sometimes smarter than the boss—are threatening Western culture with the exact opposite of humanism. Call it roboticism. Man is the measure of all things, Protagoras said. Today we add, and computers are the measure of all men.”

“From bilingualism to sporting prowess, many abilities rely on neural circuits that are laid down by our early experiences. Until the age of 7 or so, the brain goes through several ‘critical periods’ during which it can be radically changed by the environment. During these times, the brain is said to have increased plasticity.”

“Nowadays, devices and people are unceasingly uploading all kinds of information about the economy, locations, weather and even what sweater makes them happy. With this flood of data, some believe traditional ways of displaying information do not work well anymore.”