Category: ideas

“Where there was once a 12,000-square-metre festival of science, nothing is left – only a trail of ashes through the sky. The Città della Scienza – the City of Science – a huge science education initiative in Naples, Italy, has been destroyed by fire. Among the losses are all the hands-on interactive experiments that drew 350,000 visitors each year to the site.” Early reports suggest arson by the Camorra.

“Millions of grade school and university students worldwide are using iPads to visualize difficult concepts, revisit lectures on their own time and augment lessons with videos, interactive widgets and animations.”

“The subject-area expert, the substantive specialist, will lose some of his or her luster compared with the statistician and data analyst, who are unfettered by the old ways of doing things and let the data speak. This new cadre will rely on correlations without prejudgments and prejudice.”

“Scientific concepts have always washed in and out of popular consciousness but like never before, the brain has become part of contemporary culture.”

“3-D printing is clearly going to be to 2018 as mobile devices were to 2008, the web was to 1998, personal computers were to 1988, and dance floors with randomly lit colored squares were to 1978.”

Big Data says: ‘Take a step back from looking at causes. Look at correlations. Look at the what rather than the why, because that is often good enough.’

“Recent debates about Twitter revolutions or the Internet’s impact on cognition have mostly glossed over the fact that Silicon Valley’s technophilic gurus and futurists have embarked on a quest to develop the ultimate patch to the nasty bugs of humanity. If they have their way, no individual foibles would go unpunished — ideally, technology would even make such foibles obsolete.”

“Typically, circuits inside of batteries are rigid, but creating bridges using metal wiring to connect the elements gives the circuits the ability to stretch and flex along with any device.”

“As airports grow, argues Kasarda, they become more city-like. The shopping zone of Indianapolis International, he says, ‘really gives the feeling’ of a town square. There are 6,000 weddings a year at Stockholm Arlanda, the Rijksmuseum exhibits art in Amsterdam’s Schiphol, and the London Philharmonic is performing at Heathrow.”

“3D printing is still young, catering to the curious and the restless and the early-adopting. But in a few years, its enthusiasts suggest, the technology could be as ubiquitous and as easy-to-use as a camera phone.”