Category: ideas

The idea is that these kinds of AI interactions scale in a way that actual humans do not, and while that may seem ominous for the future of real human connections, from the AI Foundation’s point of view it’s not all that different from the way we use social media today. In both cases, the interactions are asynchronous, and they allow us to reach people we otherwise might not talk to at all. – Fast Company

A couple of ideas: Give more to regions, and have the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera tour the entire nation. – The Guardian (UK)

You’ve probably heard of Harry Belafonte’s connection to the Civil Rights Movement, but … McDonald’s? Yes. The history of McDonald’s includes a large number of Black-owned franchises that also employ a lot of young (and not so young) Black women. But of course, there are issues: “Any time we have communities that have to rely on a business to be the place of refuge, to be the place for wifi, to be the sponsor of youth sports, to be the place where the youth job program happens, for the college scholarships to emanate from, then we have a problem.” – NPR

“The 20th century economy rewarded being the same, suppressing whatever made you weird and interesting. But this economy doesn’t reward that. This economy has shifted far more in the direction of rewarding uniqueness. So broadly speaking, more passion is more possible.” – Chicago Reader

Writers are individuals whose job is to find language that can cross the unfathomable gap separating us from one another. They don’t write as anyone beyond themselves. But today, writers have every incentive to do their work as easily identifiable, fully paid-up members of a community. Belonging is numerically codified by social media, with its likes, retweets, friends, and followers. Writers learn to avoid expressing thoughts or associating with undesirables that might be controversial with the group and hurt their numbers. In the most successful cases, the cultivation of followers becomes an end in itself and takes the place of actual writing. – The Atlantic

Over the past few centuries, philosophers of time have worried about divine eternity, absolutism and Kantian idealism. Our current fixation on presentness, and whether it is a real feature of the world, is a 20th-century fad. Ironically, it’s rooted in a Dormouse who rejected the reality of time altogether. – Aeon

Put simply, life is beginning to look ever more complex and ever more collaborative. All this has fractured Western biology’s consensus on Darwin. – Slate

Serious authors create; self-help writers multiply. But the influence of self-help on prestigious literature is much deeper and more sustained than figures such as Macdonald would have us believe. – Aeon

Within anthropology, Mead is still revered, but mostly as a way to understand the discipline’s origins. In the popular mind, Mead’s name has all but vanished, her reputation whittled down to an apocryphal quote found on coffee mugs and dorm-room posters: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ What’s more, Mead has become a target of vitriolic dislike for a particular kind of cultural conservatism. – Aeon