Category: ideas

“Web 2.0 critic Andrew Keen is taking a lot of flak for his book attacking the internet as a refuge for mediocrity and dilettantism… But one of Keen’s central arguments — that the internet, by its all-inclusive nature and easy access, opens the door to amateurism-as-authority while at the same time devaluing professional currency — deserves a full airing.”

Are the Beatles more globally relevant than Shakespeare? “An academic conference heard yesterday that [Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band] – released 40 years ago with perhaps the most famous sleeve in music history – has overtaken Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet as a global cultural reference point.”

“A century ago, only about 10 per cent of the world’s population lived in cities. By 2050 that figure is expected to rise to at least 75 per cent. The great thing about cities is not how awful they are, but how wonderfully well they work, considering that putting more than 20 million humans in close proximity to engage in serial acts of competitive individualism could not be considered a reasonable idea. If you put rats into claustrophobic circumstances, they become cannibalistic in no time at all. But humans find ingenious solutions: Maglev trains, underground car parks, Korean supermarkets, pizza delivery, cycle lanes, very tall buildings.”

“The story of Romulus and Remus is almost as old as Rome. The orphan twins were suckled by a she-wolf in a cave on the banks of the Tiber. Romulus grew up to found Rome in 753 B. C. Historians have long since dismissed the story as a charming legend. … Yet the legend … has been invigorated by recent archaeological finds.”

“The Romans knew something that modern economists lost sight of at some point: Auctions lead people to do weird things. For a long time, economists have explored and even reveled in the supposed purity of auctions, viewing them as uncannily efficient means of moving goods into the hands of people who value them the most. In fact, studying auctions has long been a fertile subfield within economics.”

“A new study suggests only a small chunk of the brain, called the dentate gyrus, is responsible for ‘episodic’ memories–information that allows us to tell similar places and situations apart.
Déjà vu is a memory problem, occurring when our brains struggle to tell the difference between two extremely similar situations. As people age, déjà-vu-like confusion happens more often–and it also happens in people suffering from brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.”

Much has been written about the myriad ways in which technology and the Internet are changing our culture. But a new book submits that the most important change being wrought is a decidedly negative one: the devaluing of real talent in favor of a mindless celebration of DIY culture. Are we, through YouTube and other online innovations, “celebrating the amateur to the point of absurdity”? Perhaps, but it’s also likely that “the pendulum will swing back, not to the old dominance of professionals, but to a logical middle point. The amateur will be knocked off his pedestal, tossed back into the more general competition for people’s time and money.”

“Why are the utopian visions of 40 years ago strangely similar to the ones we hold today? Because business and political leaders have consistently pushed a carefully orchestrated fantasy of the future to distract us from the present, says Richard Barbrook, who explores the subject in Imaginary Futures – From Thinking Machines to the Global Village.”

“Complaints about RateMyProfessors.com are widespread. Because the site doesn’t seek representative samples of students, or even ensure that students are ranking professors whose courses they have taken, a challenging professor may receive low scores from students who never did the work and an instructor who gives everyone A’s may be nominated for professor of the year. Studies have found that the best way to score well on RateMyProfessors.com is to look “hot” and be an easy grader. So what does it mean if RateMyProfessors.com has a high correlation with the kinds of student evaluations that colleges see as more valid?”

“(W)hen my partner and I started our company, Frank & Wally Films, back in 2003, we were fresh out of Michigan law school and strapped for cash. We could barely afford to buy drinks when we schmoozed at the Chateau Marmont, let alone fly from Hollywood to New York or Paris or Sydney on a moment’s notice. So I decided to work the system. My goal was to get to these meetings by attaining frequent-flier platinum status on Northwest Airlines.”