First a quick book review for those that practice the ancient art of reading more than 140 characters.
Funes lives!
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer explores in a light-weight-light-hearted and playful way the history of memory and how humans handle information. My favorite line is where he notes that inventory and invention have the same root. His point is that it would be hard to invent if you didn’t have raw materials in your inventory to recombine in new ways. Other great stat? He recounts a study where participants were asked to view 2500 images (pile of five dollar bills, red boxcar, etc.) and then had them later choose between those images and ones that were almost the same (pile of one dollar bills versus five dollar bills, blue boxcar versus red boxcar, etc.) and the participants were able to successfully pick out the ones they had seen before 90% of the time.
An example of something you could memorize after reading the book (and dazzle people the old school way.)
She Walks in Beauty
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
-Lord Byron (for those geeks out there, that’s the computer programmer Lady Ada Lovelace’s Dad)
And this is the daughter of John F. Kennedy… And an illumination of one of Stephen’s problems.
In the last links I mentioned I’d be speaking at TEDxCMU and now the film of that presentation is online. Please be sure to help in the global fight to save us from the oppression of the Royal wedding dress in the minds of our Internet enabled youth by sharing it broadly with your social network.
——————-Top Five—————-
1. Visual poetry, for oddly enough, banking. I will attest that doing what those men did is exactly why my dad still rides a motorcycle. Live. Dream.
3. In other AR news, this sounds fun and the focus on using AR for medical and other real business applications is exactly right. Plus Sterling’s book Distractions is proving to be prescient.
4. Yes, it was only a matter of time. Use your iphone to scan 3d things. Or why cameras are not just for taking pictures anymore. And this completes the process… Remember this? Now you can own a mini beest… Ahh, you say, how will all this scanning, making, augmenting, creating be regulated? Or combat outlaw rainbow makers…
5. What scientific concept would improve everyone’s cognitive toolkit?
————————-The Rest——————
This one is interesting, go to the red room…
Game theory for budget negotiations…
Hacking the art of pickpockets…
This starts to show the power of sensing and computation in video conference really nicely… though still much work to do.
From the too much time on your hands but pretty amazing department. Superplexus….
NooooO, not my Cap’n Crunch! Give me peace!
What will future archeologists make of these? And what happens when it’s as easy to print these sorts of structures with a “concrete printer” as it is to draw them today?