Jaron Lanier is one of a handful of thinkers who grok the Kurzweil concepts, yet maintain a healthy skepticism…
In this edge.org piece
Digital Maoism he talks about online collectivism, a la wikipedia and related sites. He explains that this is not like representative democracy or meritocracy, as all opinions, and all ideas carry equal weight, for bad or worse…
Now I’m really marking myself indellibly in your mind as an uber-geek. But seriously Science and the City is a pretty good read.
Many scientific studies are coming out now showing a connection between over cleanliness and allergies. Here we are trying to protect ourselves from plague, rotting teeth, rates, and syphallis of yesturyear, and just when we got the bath thing down, they tell us we’re overdoing it!
The idea of plants communicating is rather new in science, although good botanists or anyone with a bountiful garden might tell you that’s obvious. At any rate, here’s an interesting article on Fig plants communicating with Wasps.
Thanks Jing.
According to the old science, the old thinking, the universe follows a set of undying laws and is defined by various constants that do not change. But Quantum Physics is screwing everything up. Apparently now even physical constants, such as the speed of light, are not fixed.
If you talk to some science geek who laughs at paranormal phenomenon, esp, or aliens, recite some of modern string theory. There’s room to drive a paranormal truck through that now.
Check out what Alan Kay has to say on the subject:
Einstein said “You must learn to distinguish between what is true and what is real”. An apt longer quote of his is: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality”. I.e. it is “true” that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 in Euclidean geometry of the plane, but it is not known how to show that this could hold in our physical universe (if there is any mass or energy in our universe then it doesn’t seem to hold, and it is not actually known what our universe would be like without any mass or energy).
Uh, that’s what I was gonna say!