Category: ideas

“The idea of man-against-machine competition is a source of constant fascination, one in which the dark fear that we could be bested by our creations always lurks right underneath the surface. Everybody may love GPS, but nobody wants to wind up in the Matrix.”

“It took humankind eight years to spend 100 million hours building Wikipedia. We now spend at least 200 million hours a week playing World of Warcraft. In short, everything you thought was good about the Internet — information, access, personalization — is bad.”

“For the past few decades, Americans have devoted more of their energies to postmaterial arenas and less and less, for better and worse, to the sheer production of wealth. During these years, commencement speakers have urged students to seek meaning and not money. Many people, it turns out, were listening.”

“It works like this. First you call up a blueprint on your computer screen and tinker with its shape and colour where necessary. Then you press print. A machine nearby whirrs into life and builds up the object gradually, either by depositing material from a nozzle, or by selectively solidifying a thin layer of plastic or metal dust using tiny drops of glue or a tightly focused beam. Products are thus built up by progressively adding material, one layer at a time.”

“On a neurochemical level, people in long-term relationships are just like those who are falling in love.”

“Scientists in Australia say they are encouraged by initial results of a revolutionary “thinking cap” that aims to promote creativity by passing low levels of electricity through the brain.”

“The fraction of data that is stored digitally, for example, has skyrocketed from about 0.8 percent in 1986 to 94 percent in 2007. (In 1986, vinyl records still contained 14 percent of stored information.) But surprises also emerge, such as which devices are doing the actual computing.”

“Young women find dogs sexier than smartphones. The bad news for geeks was released Thursday in a Retrevo.com study aimed at finding out whether gadgets make people more attractive as love interests.”

Pathbreaking research by a group of scholars suggests that the traditional division of labor between innovators and customers is breaking down. “What the team discovered… was that the amount of money individual consumers spent making and improving products was more than twice as large as the amount spent by all British firms combined on product research and development over a three-year period.”