20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus
Startups as Toys to Mask Threats and Have Happy Customers
If you give people a tool and tell them it will perfectly solve an important problem, any imperfection in the tool is going to make them angry. If you give someone a toy and say “Look what I made! Isn’t it fun? It kinda does this thing.” then you’ve set yourself up for a positive reaction. It’s much easier to beat low expectations than high ones, so you’ve materially increased your chances at having a happy user.
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The second thing that goes wrong when you take your toy too ... 1 
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notes20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus
Social Media Distorts Socialization Through Gamification
The problem with social media isn't that we aren't sure how much privacy we want to have or how long the things we say should stick around. The problem is that social media is a gamification of social interaction, and it causes us to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't.
In normal life, people don't take turns loudly stating their political opinions to a room of people and then looking to see how many people agree with them. They also don't have product placements or subtle advertising i...
1 25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
Knowledge Replaced with Social Media
When it emerged towards the end of the 80s as a purely text-based medium, [the internet] was seen as a tool to pursue knowledge, not pleasure. Reason and thought were most valued in this garden—all derived from the project of Enlightenment. Universities around the world were among the first to connect to this new medium, which hosted discussion groups, informative personal or group blogs, electronic magazines, and academic mailing lists and forums. It was an intellectual project, not about ... 1 notes
notes18 MAY 2017 by ideonexus
Programming as a Way of Thinking
Running programs is the whole point of programming, of course, but there is more to it. The ability to execute code makes programming a tool for thinking and exploring. When we express ideas as programs, we make them testable; when we debug programs, we are also debugging our brains.Folksonomies: programming thought
Folksonomies: programming thought
1 notes
notes16 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Buckminster Fuller's Advice to a Youth
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done—that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or Try making experiments of anything j^
Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are inten...
1 Find things that need doing, but aren't being done, experiment, and understand that words are tools.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Belief in Matter is Like Belief in God
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scient...Folksonomies: empiricism
Folksonomies: empiricism
1 notes
notesExcept the belief in matter has proved much more reliable and useful.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Tools Forever Changed Man's Relationship to Nature
[T]he moment man first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environment. From this point on, the way in which the world around him changed was different. It was no longer regular or predictable. New objects appeared that were not recognizable as a mutation of something that existed before, and as each one merged it altered the environment not for one season, but for ever. Folksonomies: technology tool use
Folksonomies: technology tool use
The tools could change the environment in unpredictable ways.
13 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Hypothesis is a Tool for Finding New Facts
Hypothesis is the most important mental technique of the investigator, and its main function is to suggest new experiments or new observations. Indeed, most experiments and many observations are carried out with the deliberate object of testing an hypothesis. Another function is to help one see the significance of an object or event that otherwise would mean nothing. For instance, a mind prepared by the hypothesis of evolution would make many more significant observations on a field excursion... 1 notes
notesIt is used to think up new experiments, things to try. Armed with the hypothesis of Evolution, the naturalist has insights into what to look for in fossils and nature.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Bible was Like Wikipedia
The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible’s authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as “the literal word of God.” If we take a nonmetaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window into human nature and our cultural origins, and can be used as a source of solace and inspiration. Someone who believes in a person... 1 notes
notesWritten anonymously by many authors, which produced an oracle quality about it that allow it to become a tool for manipulation.
06 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Vygotsky's View of Child Learning
Vygotsky saw that adults, and especially parents, were a kind of tool that children used to solve the problem of knowledge. in contrast to our—probably necessary—parental megalomania. Vygotsky noticed, for example, how adults, quite unconsciously, adjusted their behavior to give children just the information they needed to solve the problems that were most important to them. Children used adults to discover the particularities of their culture and society.
But Vygotsky also thought that... 1 notes
notesParents and culture are a crucial part of child learning.
