Category: ideas

“Collecting always seems to start with rocks.” But, asks Bookslut founder Jessica Crispin, do driven collectors pursue their goals for the thrill – or for a quick profit?

“Time travel is inherent in the basics of general relativity. … The question is, can you? Yes – in principle.”

“It is a disturbing prospect, more chilling even than the end of our universe, because in most of the ordinary scenarios of cosmic doom there remains the comforting possibility that a new universe might rise from the ashes of the old. But if time itself can end, then we surely have no get-out clause. …”

“Blank stares and rigid postures could be holding back virtual-reality conversations in environments like Second Life. Now, mapping real-world motions to virtual avatars has been shown to help people communicate better.”

“The worlds of art, politics and business are attempting to find out what we really think about things by using new technology that, it claims, can track our emotions and attention.”

“We can move through space in any direction we like – but time is a strictly one-way street, and physicists still can’t tell us why.”

When Finland wants to address solve tough issues, “it turns to Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund. Most governments have a cluster of thinktanks and policy groups at their disposal to tackle their country’s challenges. But what’s different about Sitra is that it uses designers.”

“When tracked against the admittedly lofty hopes of the 1950s and 1960s, technological progress has fallen short in many domains. Consider the most literal instance of non-acceleration: We are no longer moving faster.”

“Maverick linguists say the word order of the first human language was more like Latin than English.”

“One of the most important outcomes of a liberal education should be the permanent eradication of a romanticization of the past. On any measure we care to generate, from health to wealth, we are better off than at any point in history.” But why do inequalities persist?