Then Again, Maybe It's Me

laughingsquid: Jack White’s Third Man Record Booth Allows Fans...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:50:04 -0500

Jack White’s Third Man Record Booth Allows Fans to Record Themselves Live Onto Vinyl

fastcompany: Baratunde Thurston unplugged from his digital life...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:49:44 -0500

Baratunde Thurston unplugged from his digital life for 25 days and is sharing his experience. “The greatest gift I gave myself was a restored appreciation for disengagement, silence, and emptiness. I don’t need to fill every time slot with an appointment, and I don’t need to fill every mental opening with stimulus…”

To help you embark on your own digital detox, we’re putting together a guide to unplugging. This will be something you can print out and take with you. To do this, we’re soliciting pieces of advice from our readers on the best ways to unplug. Got some thoughts? Submit them here, or tweet them at @FastCompany with the hashtag #unplug.

smarterplanet: The Power of Combining Digital and Social...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:47:23 -0500

smarterplanet:

The Power of Combining Digital and Social Intelligence « A Smarter Planet Blog

When we think about “smarter,” let’s not forget about people, says Thomas Erickson, social scientist at IBM Research. Because people sense, analyze and act on data very differently from the way digital systems do, people can add layers of value, interpretation and innovation. “Smarter” means human intelligence and digital smartness working together, in a complementary fashion.

nevver: Dioramas, Rick Finkelstein

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:46:32 -0500

Dioramas, Rick Finkelstein

Dioramas, Rick Finkelstein

nevver:

Dioramas, Rick Finkelstein

The frontier of technology

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:44:00 -0500

Our species has a defining genius for creating new tools, but it races far ahead of our ability to think through the moral and practical consequences of our creations.

By The Week Staff | June 13, 2013

If we can, we will—whether or not we should. That’s pretty much the story of human beings and technology. Our species has a defining genius for creating new tools, but it races far ahead of our ability to think through the moral and practical consequences of our creations. This was true when the frontier of technology was the gun, and the automobile, and the atomic bomb. It is even truer today. Computer processing power is still doubling every 18 months, with quantum computers on the way; digital technology is evolving at such breakneck speed that it is quite impossible to foresee what our devices will be able to do—and how they will change our lives—10 years from now, let alone 20. Millions of very smart people are working long hours to create this unimaginable future, but virtually no one is asking: Should we go there? What happens if we do?

To ask such questions, I know, is to be hopelessly naïve. It’s as naïve as being shocked to learn that the government now has the capacity to obtain and analyze virtually all phone and Internet metadata. It could, so it did. And when we can, we will: implant chips in our brains to make us smarter; bioengineer babies to have desirable traits; make robots that replace millions of workers and even do the killing on the battlefield; create data-analysis and biometric identification systems so sophisticated that privacy and anonymity will be utterly moot. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that by the year 2045, we and our computers will merge, and “there will be no distinction between man and machine.” Should we go there? When we can, we will.

William Falk

"Yes, we shall all be forgotten. Such is our fate, and we can’t do anything about it. And all the..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:13:06 -0500

“Yes, we shall all be forgotten. Such is our fate, and we can’t do anything about it. And all the things that seem serious, important and full of meaning to us now will be forgotten one day — or anyway they won’t seem important anymore.”

- Anton Chekhov, Three Sisters (via larmoyante)

gjmueller: What Is Web 3.0 And How Will It Change...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:12:28 -0500

gjmueller:

What Is Web 3.0 And How Will It Change Education?

This new table built by Dr. John Moravec details the evolving way we’re all learning, trying out technology, and growing as a community. Essentially, we’ll reach a new state of web skills when we reinvent technology tools to better enhance our personal learning. We’ll be at 3.0 when schools are everywhere and not viewed as daycare.

Do you agree with the descriptions in this table? What is being left out of the web 3.0 discussion right now? How long will it take to reach this new level of supposed understanding? Will we ever actually make it?

The Amazon Bundle: Why the Retail Giant Is Like the Cable Company of the Future - The Atlantic

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:12:02 -0500

The Amazon Bundle: Why the Retail Giant Is Like the Cable Company of the Future - The Atlantic:

futuristgerd:

Being the starting point for online purchases is everything: Google’s biggest source of online advertising comes from searches with a shopping intent. Why look anywhere else when only Amazon will get it to you today?

brooklynmutt: (via @chrismichel via The New Yorker)

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:07:09 -0500

brooklynmutt:

(via @chrismichel via The New Yorker)

The New Economics : For Industry , government and education

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 16:23:18 -0500

newsgtc:

By W Edwards Deming

“…competition, we see now, is destructive. It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with the aim for everybody to win. What we need is cooperation and transformation to a new style of management.”

In this book W. Edwards Deming details the system of transformation that underlies the 14 Points for Management presented in Out of the Crisis.

The system of profound knowledge, as it is called, consists of four parts: appreciation for a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology.

Read More

"By 2020, most interruptive marketing will be gone. Instead, marketing will be personalized,..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:31:59 -0500

“By 2020, most interruptive marketing will be gone. Instead, marketing will be personalized, customized, and adapted to what individuals have expressed as their wishes or opt-ins. In other words, advertising will need to take the form of valuable content.”

- A Media-Futurist Predicts What’s Coming for Marketing | Ideally - Content Strategy & Writing | Content Marketing in Greenville, SC (via futuristgerd)

npr: NPR Music’s 25 favorite albums of the year (so far) Stuck...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:26:15 -0500

npr:

NPR Music’s 25 favorite albums of the year (so far)

Stuck in a music rut? The folks from All Songs Considered have you covered with new music that runs the gamut from indie to rap to country. What’s your best album of 2013?

theatlantic: Why Should We Even Care If the Government Is...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:25:11 -0500

theatlantic:

Why Should We Even Care If the Government Is Collecting Our Data?

Privacy is hard to define and even harder to defend. The legal scholar Arthur Miller called it “exasperatingly vague and evanescent.” Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis famously described it as the “right to be let alone” (something that the NSA’s programs can only very indirectly be characterized as violating, since they operate without interfering with us pretty much at all). In Solove’s formulation, we should ease off the privacy hand-wringing and turn our attention to something much more fundamental: how we relate as citizens to our government and how much power we have in that relationship.

Read more. [Image: Flickr]

Emily Post’s Netiquette

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:23:56 -0500

newyorker:

Etiquette is a public performance, just as it was a century ago—but now ‘public’ has become synonymous with ‘on the Internet.’

—Betsy Morais on Emily Post’s new social-media guide to manners: http://nyr.kr/11sXVKn

mashable: “I have no apartment, no job, no income. Still I’m...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:17:25 -0500

mashable:

“I have no apartment, no job, no income. Still I’m exactly where I should be.
I’m on my path. My gut feeling lets me know that.

I’m not exiting to a normal life until my startup has taken off.
This is my big adventure.
I’m not coming back empty-handed.”

I Quit My Job to Live in a Tent and Write Code

"If you are working from your inbox, you are working on other people’s priorities"

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:06:30 -0500

“If you are working from your inbox, you are working on other people’s priorities”

- Donald Rumsfeld (via fred-wilson)

emergentfutures: Full Story: MIT

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:30:57 -0500

emergentfutures:

Full Story: MIT

nprradiopictures: The Chicago Sun-Times made a shocking...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:33:59 -0500

nprradiopictures:

The Chicago Sun-Times made a shocking announcement last week when it fired its entire photo staff. The paper says it will now rely on freelancers and reporters to shoot with cellphone cameras or whatever equipment they have.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist John H. White was among the nearly 30 full-time photographers let go. White spent decades at the Sun-Times. He told Tell Me More that the firings have hurt the Sun-Times, but the future of photojournalism remains bright.

On what the loss of the Sun-Times photography department means to the paper

“It’s like taking the eyes from the body. My former students, there’s a team, there’s a family. You know, for the Sun-Times, that’s lost.

“We were there because it was a great paper. And Sun-Times won a Pulitzer Prize — the news — just two years ago in 2011. That was before this management purchased the Sun-Times. So the Sun-Times has always been that light, that beacon, that symbol of journalism — and the best of journalism. The consistent pursuit of excellence. Everything I photograph, as far as I’m concerned, is for Page 1. And that’s the idea.

Photo Staff Firings Won’t Shake Pulitzer Winner’s Focus

Photo Credit: John H. White

fastcompany: 29 portraits showcase the beauty of Canadian moths

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:33:18 -0500

fastcompany:

29 portraits showcase the beauty of Canadian moths

futuramb: futuristgerd: (via The Joy of Not Being Sold...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:01:56 -0500

futuramb:

futuristgerd:

(via The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything - By Banksy)

This sign speaks for itself about the current state of humanity and where we are heading in the future…