Category: ideas

Two years ago, ICOs lured billions of dollars into blockchain companies and spawned a cottage industry of pilot projects. For a while, a blockchain seemed a salve for just about any problem. Many were scams from the start. But even among the more legitimate enterprises, there are relatively few winners. – Wired

“What do the brains of jazz musicians look like as they create their art on the fly? Using an fMRI machine, Dr. Charles Limb found that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex shot up, while activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex plummeted. In short, the area of the brain responsible for self-monitoring shut off, and the source of self-expression lit up.” – Fast Company

“Most of the basic experiences on our phones didn’t even exist 10 years ago. In 2010, Instagram launched and the messaging app WhatsApp came to both Android and iOS; in 2011, Snapchat opened for business and Spotify came to the US; in 2013, the workplace chat system Slack launched. When Pew first began collecting data on the subject in 2011, 35% of US adults owned smartphones; in 2019, 81% do. Here at the decade’s end, there are 1 billion global Instagram users.” – Buzzfeed

“I’m generally skeptical of the “big is bad” school of hipster antitrust, particularly if there’s no documented consumer harm from growing bigness. But I also worry that the rise of data-driven creativity could crowd out the traditional kind — and make it harder to find voices and visions we don’t already know.” – Washington Post

“If today’s advanced economies have reached (or even exceeded) the point of productivity that Keynes predicted, why are 30- to 40-hour weeks still standard in the workplace? And why doesn’t it feel like much has changed? This is a question about both human nature – our ever-increasing expectations of a good life – as well as how work is structured across societies.” – Aeon

“There are different types of creepiness, and the array of things that creep us out ranges from dolls that are too lifelike to clowns in places where clowns should not be… The basic premise is that those who in some way fall outside of the norm put us on our guard because they are unpredictable, and it is unclear whether they pose a threat or not.” – Aeon

“It’s that disconnect between long- and short-term interests that makes frothy articles so frustrating. The feeling of curiosity promised you’d learn something and, admittedly, you did — now you know French citizens’ favorite macaron flavor — but you’re disappointed because your new knowledge doesn’t contribute to your long-term interests. You’ve been clickbaited by your own brain.” – The New York Times

Maybe. They’re doing a lot better at reading comprehension exams, for instance. On a new “benchmark designed to measure machines’ real understanding of natural language — or to expose their lack thereof — the machines had jumped from a D-plus to a B-minus in just six months. ‘That was definitely the ‘oh, crap’ moment,’ Bowman recalled.” – Quanta

Seriously, why would anyone go to the movie in theatres 11 times? Sometimes you need distance to figure something like that out. “In The Matrix, I realized, I had found a message about my own life, the life of a closeted gay Mormon boy. It was something I had strained all those times to hear, and now it shot across the screen in letters lit by retrospect: You too will be free.” – The Atlantic

Jia Tolentino, New Yorker writer and extremely online person, follows the advice of a computer scientist. First thing to do: Give up everything optional on your phone and computer for 30 days. “It just makes you bare to the fact of being alive and the sort of existential dread and wonder of it. It was a doozy.” – Slate