25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
When Information is Cheap, Attention Becomes Expensive
Negative reviews are fun to write and fun to read, but the world doesn’t need them, since the average work of literary fiction is, in Laura Miller’s words, “invisible to the average reader.” It appears and vanishes from the scene largely unnoticed and unremarked. “Even the novelists you may think of as ‘hyped’ are in fact relatively obscure,” writes Miller. “I’ve got a battalion of perfectly intelligent cousins who have never heard of either Jonathan Franzen or Dave Eggers...03 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
The Danger of Scientific Ignorance in a Science-Based Civ...
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when we're a
service and information economy; when nearly all the key
manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries;
when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few,
and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the
issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own
agendas or knowledgeably question those In authority; when,
clutching our crystals and r...We are more reliant on science than ever before, but we are also most disdainful of it.
22 FEB 2013 by ideonexus
William Gibson 1996 Observations of the WWW
In the age of wooden television, media were there to entertain, to sell an advertiser's product, perhaps to inform. Watching television, then, could indeed be considered a leisure activity. In our hypermediated age, we have come to suspect that watching television constitutes a species of work. Post-industrial creatures of an information economy, we increasingly sense that accessing media is what we do. We have become terminally self-conscious. There is no such thing as simple entertainment. ...WWW is emergent, we see consuming information as work, Beavis and Butthead are meta in that we are watching someone watching TV. Lots of good stuff here.
07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Why the Pioneer Anomaly is Worth Investigating
In the short run, knowing the gravitational constant to one more decimal digit of precision or placing even tighter limits on any deviation from Einstein's gravitational theory may seem like painfully nitpicking detail. Yet one must not lose sight of the "big picture." When researchers were measuring the properties of electricity with ever more refined instruments over two hundred years ago, they did not envision continent-spanning power grids, an information economy, or tiny electrical signa...The effect is tiny, but magnified over great distances, and if we are meticulous now, we make it possible for future generations to traverse the solar system.
04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Deleterious Effects of Pseudoscience
...science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or...Science is crucial to our civilization, but we live in a society that cannot grasp scientific issues.