Category: Technology
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A physicist solves the City equation
Geoffrey West, a physicist, set out to study cities and urban growth and find variables for growth and decline. Consuming massive amounts of data, he discovered cities are governed by Laws, just like physics. After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few […]
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Kevin Kelly – What Technology Wants
In What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly views technology’s evolution from multiple perspectives–the anthropologist, the sociologist, the evolutionary biologist, the technologist and the futurist. Using these perspectives, he examines his core thesis: technology is an extension of our abilities. Broken into four sections, Origins, Imperatives, Choices and Directions he combines ideas from various disciplines with stories, […]
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Can technology end poverty?
Kentaro Toyama worked at Microsoft Research India for several years leading research initiatives but also ICT4D, or Information and Communication Technologies for Development. ICT4D seeks to address global poverty with technology. He learned a few things while there. Technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a […]
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Processed war photography
Brian Barrel of Gizmodo spots Hipstamatic photos on the NY Times front page. When NYT photog Damon Winter went to northern Afghanistan to catalog the efforts of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division, he took all the fancy camera equipment you would expect. He’d shoot video of firefights with a Canon […]
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Long held beliefs eventually disproven
Richard Thaler, a behavioral economist and research, issued a call for previous held beliefs that were eventually disproved, and for extra credit, why were they held for so long. Lots of good examples from a wide array of smart folks (Nicholas Carr, Howard Gardner, Clay Shirky and many many others). Some are obvious (gravity! flat […]
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Light painting with an iPad
To do light painting well, it takes , planning, coordination and patience. Achieved with long exposures and a bright, glowing source of light moving in front of a camera, cool things can happen. But what if you could program your light source to emit patterns of light? That’s about what you get below. Making Future […]
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Lost World’s Fairs
Lost World’s Fairs show cases how damn awesome HTML5 is in the hands of a capable designer. Initially, the project came about when Microsoft asked the designers to showcase Internet Explorer 9’s support for WOFF. Says Jason Santa Maria: Today marks the beta launch of Internet Explorer 9. To celebrate the release, Nishant Kothary from […]
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The Wilderness Downtown
The Arcade Fire released their second video for their latest album The Suburbs with, The Wilderness Downtown. It’s a synthesis of web technology, music and video to create an experience. It uses HTML 5 to drive much of video so for now Google Chrome or Safari 5 are the only browsers that can play it […]
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iPad a tool to help those with autism
Random, assorted specification lists can’t prepare for possibilities like this. A family in California is finding that their son with severe autism may be benefiting from interactions with an iPad. So when Leo took it in his small hands as if it were an old friend, and, with almost no training, whizzed through its apps […]
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Susan Orlean discusses the iPad
Susan Orlean discusses, at length with Glenn Fleishman, her use of an iPad. She candidly describes her use with the insight of an anthropologist–observant not only on the physical, but the social and much broader social contexts: And while you can do that with your phone, it is so much more visual, and almost tactile […]