MachineMachine /stream - tagged with ideas

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:00:00 -0700

A Diatribe from the Remains of Dr. Fred McCabe

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:25:00 -0700

About a month ago in handling the remains of one Dr. Fred McCabe I found rich notes of contemplation on the subject of information theory. It appears that Fred could have written an entire book on the intricacies of hidden data, encoded messages and deceptive methods of transmission. Instead his notes exist in the form of a cryptic assemblage of definitions and examples, arranged into what Dr. McCabe himself labelled a series of ‘moments’.

I offer these moments alongside some of the ten thousand images Dr. McCabe amassed in a separate, but intimately…

Are video games the next great art form?

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:02:00 -0700

Video games have come a very long way since the 1980s... As Tom Bissell, a journalist, former Salon writer and lifelong gamer, explains in his new book, "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter," the graphics, storytelling and interactivity of gaming have all made tremendous leaps forward in recent years, allowing players to intermingle with nuanced, fleshed-out digital characters in near-photo-realistic environments. Among the most notable recent examples is Rockstar's "Red Dead Redemption," a game the New York Times hailed as a "tour de force" for its ability to submerge players in a complex and believable world. In his book, Bissell…

The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 03:54:00 -0700

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there's secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe.

The Pleasures of Imagination

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:54:00 -0700

How do Americans spend their leisure time? The answer might surprise you. The most common voluntary activity is not eating, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs. It is not socializing with friends, participating in sports, or relaxing with the family. While people sometimes describe sex as their most pleasurable act, time-management studies find that the average American adult devotes just four minutes per day to sex.

Our main leisure activity is, by a long shot, participating in experiences that we know are not real. When we are free to do whatever we want, we retreat to the imagination—to…

Evolution and Creativity: Why Humans Triumphed

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:53:00 -0700

Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands…

The iPad, the Kindle, and the future of books

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 04:10:00 -0700

Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price. On a twenty-six-dollar book, the publisher receives thirteen dollars, out of which it pays all the costs of making the book. The author gets $3.90 in royalties. Bookstores return about forty per cent of the hardcovers they buy; this accounts for $5.20 per book. Another $3 goes to overhead costs and the price of producing and shipping the book—leaving, in the best…

The 'Basic' Plots in Literature

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:35:00 -0700

Q: I’ve heard there are only 7 (or 5, 20, 36…) basic plots (or themes) in all of literature. What are they?

A: People often say that there are only a certain number of basic plots in all of literature, and that any story is really just a variation on these plots. Depending on how detailed they want to make a "basic" plot, different writers have offered a variety of solutions. Here are some of the ones we’ve found:

1 Plot | 3 Plots | 7 Plots | 20 Plots | 36 Plots

From Eternity to Here

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:15:00 -0700

The arrow of time points in one direction only, from past to present to future. Now there's a fact—rather like Wittgenstein's observation "A is the same thing as A"—that is so patently obvious as to be unworthy of remark. But ask a theoretical physicist just how obvious that fact really is and you will soon discover that it is not obvious at all. Indeed the "arrow of time" presents one of the greatest mysteries known to modern science. Why so? Well, for a start, no one can agree on what precisely is meant by "past," "present" and "future." As for…

The World Question Center 2010: How is the Internet Changing the Way you Think?

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:55:00 -0700

Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and read recent editions of Edge ... Playwright Richard Foreman asks about the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". Is it a new self? Are we becoming Pancake People — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button. Technology…

Digital Technology is Not the End of Artistic Trends

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:49:00 -0700

The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout thinks future generations will consider itunes, youtube, and Kindle a more important cultural development than anything it distributes. He’s right to point out the huge change these technologies have brought, but hosting services and art aren’t comparable. Flickr would not exist without users, or to put it the analogue way, museums are not more important than the painting. After all, the building’s very existence relies on the production of work. Teachout cites Hip Hop as the last true artistic trend, a contentious statement for a number of reasons. I’d argue that while diverse, Internet…

Innovative Book Designs

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:37:00 -0700

Innovative Books: I am looking to compile a list of the most innovative uses of the book format. Books that break the mould in their layout and design, perhaps books that use online systems to extend their content value or push their form into new places. I am most interested in narrative and theory, but any book that is interesting (artist books etc.) would be really appreciated. I have a few examples, in order of publication, to set the ball rolling:

Compendium for literates : a system of writing by Karl Gerstner - A book about book form…

Luis Camnitzer, ALPHABETIZATION, Part Two: Hegemonic Language and Arbitrary Order

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:51:00 -0700

In all the traditional approaches to pedagogy, both in art and in literacy, the possibility of perceiving the transitional nature of the space produced by text or image—the common space for author and receptor—is completely lost. The emphasis is on producing communication vessels that are static and consumable objects, for which the sign has to be well executed. In this kind of art, execution has to reach the point of desirability, which in turn defines success. Teaching and instruction are generally used as synonyms, something that reflects an implicit pedagogical ideology. The word instruction is a homonym: it refers to…

42 Essential 3rd Act Twists

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:19:00 -0700

Dresden Codak's handy comic-chart of '42 Essential Third-Act Twists' for writers.

Atheism: class is a distraction

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:14:00 -0700

For some reasons it seems to be anathema to say that there might be an intrinsic reason for the correlation between educational level and the rejection of religion: atheism takes training, and is more difficult. We accept that in medicine, physics and mathematics, but, for reasons of political correctness, it is very much considered a faux pas to say the old 19th-century thing: it takes education to develop a worldview based on science. It would be even more outrageous to say that the reasons for choosing atheism over religion might actually be valid, as the so-called new atheists have dared…

An Interview with W. Brian Arthur

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:26:00 -0700

Technology so pervades our culture that it's sobering to consider how poorly we understand it. How do new tools and techniques arise? What principles guide their evolution? And how does their existence inform the larger economy? In The Nature of Technology (Free Press, $27), economist W. Brian Arthur sets out to establish a coherent theory describing fundamentally what technology is, how it evolves, and how it spurs innovation and industry. Technology, he finds, "builds itself organically from itself" in a process that resembles chemistry and in some ways even recalls life itself. Currently a professor at the Santa Fe Institute,…

Fictional Stimulus

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:54:00 -0700

Fictional Stimulus is a reading experience for people who like books and are curious about the future of literature in the digital world. It's an introductory taster for those new to reading online, and its form is inspired by the bookgroup where everyone reads the same material then gets together to discuss it at the end. Fictional Stimulus started on 22 September 2009 and runs for four weeks, over which time you’ll be sent twelve emails, one each time we make available a new batch of stimuli. Click on the green headings above to find the latest concise selection of…

Offsetting sea level rise: An engineering idea of Biblical proportions | Ask Metafilter

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:12:00 -0700

The seas are rising. Climate change has made it inevitable. I have a strange question... Assuming that world sea-level rises by 1 metre over the next hundred years - Would it be possible to cordon off a section of land, somewhere in the centre of a continent, and flood it to create an artificial ocean, thus reducing the consequences of the sea rise? This Biblical scale engineering feat must take these issues into account: 1. The section of land would have to be a very large 'bowl', in the centre of a continent, that is already below sea level. Another…

HOW TO: Write a Novel Using the Web

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:27:00 -0700

Though you’ll still have to do your writing using the old fashioned method — one word at a time — web applications and social media have made the process of writing a novel considerably easier and arguably more enjoyable. Here is a toolkit for using the web to write a book. If you know of any other great applications useful to aspiring writers, please leave them in the comments.

3quarksdaily Philosophy Competition (Judged by Daniel Dennet)

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:37:00 -0700

So, here it is, the final list that I am sending to Professor Dan Dennett, who will select the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize winners: (in alphabetical order by blog name) 1. 3 Quarks Daily: Penne For Your Thought 2. Der Wille Zur Macht und Sprachspiele: Nietzsche's Causal Essentialism 3. Grundlegung: Philosophy as Bildung 4. Justin Erik Halldór Smith: The Fundamentals of Gelastics 5. PEA Soup: Scanlon on Moral Responsibility and Blame 6. The Immanent Frame: Immanent Spirituality 7. Tomkow: Blackburn, Truth and other Hot Topics 8. Underverse: Refuting "It," Thus 9. Wide Scope: Emotions and Moral Skepticism