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As Marty mentioned in a previous post, the new Delicious design is a little wonky, and no longer pumps content to our blog and Twitter account. So here’s a roundup of articles I’ve stumbled across over the past month that you may find interesting:
- Two sides of an argument/book review about the value of unpaid internships in the modern workforce
- Compelling infographics on voice recognition applications, inspired by the launch of the iPhone 4S
- Scott Adams (Dilbert) on creativity, and the stifling thereof
- A press release for an academic article on learning while sleeping
- We’ve posted several entries about publishers moving content online, but here are some folks who are moving in the opposite direction
- On confidence
- The End of the Future
- “Creative Class” around the globe
- There is no evidence supporting auditory and visual learning…(some psychologists say…)
- The back story on Lorem Ipsum
- Tumblr on the up and up
A team of theoretical physicists affiliated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) has recently published a study with potentially interesting implications for computing technology.
It deals with entropy, a thermodynamic concept that seeks to explain how energy within a system tends to distribute towards balance…A good illustration of entropy are ice cubes in a glass of water. Heat will transfer from water to the ice, ultimately melting the ice cubes and equalizing the molecular energy of substance within the glass. Another thing to know about entropy – the energy that’s being applied to this process of distributing energy throughout a system can’t be used to do any other form of ‘work’ (mechanical processes that consume energy).
This notion is central to the ETH’s published study. Up till this point, it has been assumed that, like all computations, deleting data from a computing system is work, one that releases energy. Just like the edits you’re, say, making to a spreadsheet on your laptop when you notice that the device is warming up.
The team at ETH has invoked quantum mechanics, however, to demonstrate that a computing system is actually tied to its operator – And so when data is deleted, by law of entropy the energy that is dissipated from that work can be absorbed by the operator. Moreover, the more entangled the operator is with (or in other words, the more knowledgeable of) the computing system , the greater the amount of energy they can absorb from this deletion task.
This is fairly heady stuff, but it doesn’t take too much to see some significant applications – You know what I mean if you’ve ever seen an IT team meltdown due to an overheated server room. While the this knowledge is still far from being harnessed for practical utility, it’s still pretty neat to consider.
Infomous is a dynamic and intuitive navigation solution – perhaps soon to pop up on websites you visit. Web developers for content-rich sites have integrated word cloud and tablet-style flip navigation over the past few years, but this is a solution that seems to combine aspects of both: reference triggers and dynamic script. The tool is currently available in preview/beta version through a relationship with the provider, but will roll out later this year, ready for embed. More info at Infomous – they have a demo up for world news, a version for sports news, entertainment news, science news. It’s easy to explore and find links to try.
Okay, this one’s a little obtuse… 
Check the article too, whew!
Wired: World’s Most Precise Clocks Could Reveal Universe is Hologram
I had the opportunity to attend TEDxRaleigh a few weeks back. While the event was interesting enough, there was one thing that has really stuck with me. As filler, they showed some videos from other TED events, one of which was David Blaine’s TED talk about how he held is breath for 17 minutes. It’s a great video, filled with the trial-and-error of any innovation process.
The moment that really stuck with me is when, after going to great lengths to create the illusion of holding his breath, he has a revelation: Just figure out how to hold your breath for a really long time. There’s the simple solution.
Sometimes, looking for the shortest route from point A to point B isn’t the best solution. More often, you just need to do it. It’s a hard lesson to learn, and even harder to put into practice.
An exhibit currently running at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences presents an interesting – and illuminating – intersection of art and science.
Noted Salt Lake City, Utah, artist Amy Caron has established residency at the Institute to present her interdisciplinary work Waves of Mu, which investigates the phenomenon of “mirror neurons.”
Mirror neurons are neurons which fire signals to the brain not only when an animal acts, but also when it observes another animal’s actions. The implications are wide ranging – certain scientists have posited that these neurons provide a neurobiological basis for complex learning (think language) which is based on mimicry. For this reason, the discovery of mirror neurons is considered one of the more important recent discoveries in the realm of neuroscience.
Caron believes that the mirror neuron has particular bearing on artists like her. In her words, “…as a performer, emotional exchange is a big part of performance. I was interested to learn that there’s actually a neurobiological basis for this, and a function that’s not just purple fluffy stuff and feelings.” Caron feels that the emotional resonance that draws people to art and performance has its roots in the so-called “empathy neuron,” too.
She explores this idea in her installation, which is constituted of an elaborate construction of the brain’s internal architecture and an interactive performance in which Caron engages her audience in various ways to try and get their mirror neurons firing. If you’re interested in learning more about the exhibit, check out it’s site here.
They’re still “seeking”:
- an oceanographer
- a chemist
- a marine engineer
- and at least one expert on the problem
(yeah, might need at least one of each of these…)
but a group of Dutch architects and engineers has started up a research project to explore the idea of creating a sustainable island nation out of the trash floating in the Pacific. The project has been heralded “Recycled Island,” and the goal is a livable and scalable habitation the size of Hawaii’s big island.
The early mock-ups bring Venice, Dubai, and science fiction to mind, but the project is still very much in the early R&D stages and far from a reality. People love Dutch design for architecture and urban planning, not to mention their credibility in environmental solutions, so despite the distance from the potential island, this idea has sparked in the Netherlands. And why not beckon the world’s greatest minds through online publishing and networking? The project has been spreading across magazine websites, blogs, and press releases this week (I saw it here), and the group networks through Facebook to various other sustainable design groups.
Some virtual ships, machines, and robots and things building Recycled Island in Waterworld, er, the Pacific
A recent article in the WSJ titled “Hard Questions From ‘Soft’ Sciences” got me thinking, and when I’m spurred to think a bit, I might as well share the thought!
In much of the last century, the goal of science was to answer “big” questions in the ‘hard’ sciences: curing polio, getting to the moon, building a better car, quicker. In school as a kid, I was taught the validity of objectivity by way of the “scientific method” – observable, empirical, and measurable evidence as a methodology to reasoning. In high school, both my statistics and biology teacher explained that this approach led to the development and advancement of knowledge as we know it, and the main reason why we don’t all still lived in caves. “Thank God they came up with that!” I remember thinking at the time, for I kinda liked the way I had my bedroom set-up at the time.
Not any longer. Nowadays, probably since the 70s, the public discource of inquiry has shifted to the study of the social sciences. Even more recently, say the past ten years, this focus on social scientific inquiry has taken a nose dive, and become notably obsessed with pop consumer behavior. People of all stripes, not just business leaders, are reading “The Tipping Point”, “The Blank Slate”, and “Freakanomics” to better understand, in a couple hundred pages, the application of sociology, psychology, evolution, and economics. Grasping the dynamics of the social order in less than a week; understanding the big ‘why’s’ of the order of man in his environment.
Heck, only twenty years ago the business and social sciences sections of a bookstore was the vestige of dull bankers seeking interest rate formulas or neurotic mothers trying to figure out why their kids smoke pot. Now bin titles are pushed up to the best sellers table, featured as top choices on Amazon, or visiting visiting a Kindle or iPad near you.
Arguably, the social sciences today are under attack from those seeking a book deal and $25,000+ fees from keynote speaking at marketing conferences. It’s a good gig if you’re willing to spend a chunk of time pouring over the past two decades of arcane academic journals in a particular field of social science study; find themes of scholarly discourse that evolve and bubble up over time in the literature, and then condense the themes into palaple chapter-bites of info dumbed down to a Flesch Readability Index at the junior-high school level (i.e. cocktail party banter). Then find an agent to sell it to a publisher; then get a stylist.
What ever happened to the a good old-fashioned maturation in a social sciences graduate degree program for those of us who sought beyond the strict adherence to the scientific method explaining all (and detour a few more years from fulltime work)? I mean, what’s wrong with being mentored by scholars who, without motive of profit or fame, help align the stars a bit?
In the end, I’ve never read Gladwell (yes, I’ve lied) or really any of the others who provide ‘cliff notes’ on social phenomena. Myself, I choose to go to the source, the academics, the originals. Like Gladwell? Read Granovetter and Rodgers. That’s what grad school taught me. If you skip to shortcuts, your only shorting yourself…
