Category: ideas

They project a near future in which you could walk in to a bar and scan through the crowd, telling your their name, interests or even their credit score. “It impacts the way you’re going to approach and interact with a person before you’ve even met them,”

“For every ocean of new data we generate each hour–videos, blog posts, VRBO listings, MP3s, ebooks, tweets–an attendant ocean’s worth of reviewage follows. The Internet-begotten abundance of absolutely everything has given rise to a parallel universe of stars, rankings, most-recommended lists, and other valuations designed to help us sort the wheat from all the chaff we’re drowning in.”

“With the number of paying subscribers using Match approaching 1.8 million, the ­company has had to develop ever more ­sophisticated programs to manage, sort and pair the world’s singles. Central to this effort has been the development, over the past two years, of an improved matchmaking algorithm.”

“It has become fashionable to talk up the positive side of mental illness, to explain the persistence of conditions such as severe depression in terms of the benefits they bring to the people who experience them. For example, the tendency of depressed people to ruminate – generally considered an undesirable trait because it fuels negative thinking – could actually deepen their understanding of their problems and enhance decision-making.”

“Google is where we go for answers. People used to go elsewhere or, more likely, stagger along not knowing. Nowadays you can’t have a long dinner-table argument about who won the Oscar for that Neil Simon movie where she plays an actress who doesn’t win an Oscar; at any moment someone will pull out a pocket device and Google it.”

“With 3D printing we can go back to pure forms and explore the mathematics of airflow without being forced to put in straight lines to keep costs down.”

“In the history of oratory and public speaking, the notion that good speaking requires umlessness is actually a fairly recent, and very American, invention. It didn’t emerge as a cultural standard until the early 20th century, when the phonograph and radio suddenly held up to speakers’ ears all the quirks and warbles that, before then, had flitted by.”

“Catch a glimpse of a relatively nearby star and you see it as it existed when, perhaps, Lincoln was president (if it’s 150 light-years away). … Stranger still, the sky we see at any moment defines not a single past but multiple overlapping pasts of different depths. The star’s image from 100 years ago and the [distant] galaxy image from 100 million years ago reach us at the same time.” And this principle holds true for much more than just the night sky.

“People who live in high latitude regions have bigger eyeballs and brains than other individuals, according to new research. The increase in brain and eye size allows people to see better in places that receive less light than areas closer to the equator.”