Category: ideas

“The current decade has been characterised by an abrupt sense of deceleration. What has happened is that technology has been decalibrated from cultural form. The present moment might in fact be best haracterised by a discrepancy between the onward march of technology and the stalling, stagnation and retardation of culture.”

“The internet is one of the most dazzling inventions of the past 50 years, indispensable to the way we live today. But the truth is that many of those in authority have stopped seeing the internet as a medium by which people send messages and receive feedback via a loop of electronic information. Instead, they have invested the flow of electronic information with a metaphysical significance about human nature and how things work.”

“A growing number of consultants and corporate leaders swear by a new strategy to boost the bottom line, one that departs from the standard bag of tricks: put more women in charge. Several studies have linked greater gender diversity in senior posts with financial success.”

“We have been taught in schools since the late 18th century, and by the culture at large, to revere technology and to place faith in it as a liberator. Soon, soon, it seems to say, soon you will be free. I have a different view. I hold in supreme contempt 90 per cent of modern technology. The whole sorry shebang is actually a costly distraction, which isolates us, makes us stupid and is never going to free us.”

“Birds can boogie to the beat, according to two new studies that found birds, especially parrots, have rhythm and an apparent appreciation for certain songs that compel them to bob their heads, tap their feet and sway their bodies in time to music.”

“Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please … Beauty, on the other hand, demands we consider its meaning. It implies a larger world than the one we deal with every day. […] Still, if nearly everyone likes [kitsch], how bad can it be?”

“According to [psychology professor Daniel] Willingham, one major reason is that what school requires students to do – think abstractly – is in fact not something our brains are designed to be good at or to enjoy.”

“New research finds that meditation boosts visual memory, but only in the short term. The findings counter the claims of some monks who say that years of practicing a meditation technique that centres on creating an elaborate mental picture of deities can offer long-lasting improvements in visual memory and processing.”

“Despite an academic job market that has been anemic at best and disastrous at worst for more than 35 years, top Ph.D. programs still receive far more qualified applicants than they can hope to admit, includ[ing] a rising proportion from overseas. America’s position in basic research, as measured in such things as Nobel Prizes, seems unchallenged. European academics generally regard the American academic system with untrammeled envy … [T]his is the sort of ‘obsolescence’ that Chrysler and The New York Times can only dream of.”

Chinese-American Huan Hsu: “At my workplace [in Shanghai], which is 90% mainland Chinese, just about everyone I interacted with had an English name, usually selected or received in school. The names ran the gamut, from the standard (Jackie, Ivy) to the unusual (Sniper, King Kong), but what really struck me was how commonly people used them when addressing one another, even when the rest of the conversation was in Chinese.”