Category: ideas

“For quite a few young people, an event undocumented is an event unlived. It’s easy to forget that a lifetime ago, in the late 1940s, almost nobody did this.”

What The Social Network didn’t show about the development of Facebook (and why we need different scripts): “Moments when predictions don’t come true and adjustments become necessary. Moments when creativity and decisiveness converge.”

“I always believed that sounding like a fast-talking used-car salesman was worth it if it made people chuckle, even at your expense. It was better to come off as an amateur than a good salesman. No one wants to talk to a good salesman.”

“Traditional neuroscientific research, which seeks to explain increasingly specialised aspects of brain function in isolation, may have limited scope. The reductionist approach has to be supplemented by a constructivist one – putting the pieces back together again to explain the whole. Modern tools, including supercomputers and the mathematics of complexity, make that possible.”

“Has technology at last advanced to the point where the revolutionary promise of distance learning can be fulfilled? We don’t yet know; the fervor surrounding MOOCs makes it easy to forget that they’re still in their infancy. But even at this early juncture, the strengths and weaknesses of this radically new form of education are coming into focus.”

“Today, the near 10-year-old Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture believes that neuroscience could make science’s greatest contribution to the field of architecture since physics informed fundamental structural methods, acoustic designs, and lighting calculations in the late 19th century.”

“The past decade has seen a steady stream of findings … about the biological and psychological roots of political ideology, and mostly met by volleys of right-wing scorn. … So what are the findings, and do opponents of such research have a point?”

“We’ve all heard arguments that go something like this: it’s not rational to vote, because the probability that your vote will make a difference is vanishingly small. … I think there are also psychological forces that drive us to the ballot box, forces that stem from the way we attribute responsibility.”

“There is something about the creative process that puts people more in touch with their emotions, which manifests in helping, nurturing, caring types of actions.”

Lydia Callis, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s sign language interpreter and new Internet star, “was expressive, but that’s because she was speaking a visual language. Signers are animated not because they are bubbly and energetic, but because sign language uses face and body movements as part of its grammar.”