“In fact, it strikes me that the greatest achievements of anthropology have come precisely when we are willing to make that second move: to say, “But are we not all, in a certain sense, totemists?” “Is not war a form of ritual sacrifice?” “Does not knowledge of the logic of Polynesian taboo allow us to look at familiar categories like etiquette, or the sacred, in a different light?””
“Police Attention: No distributing any unhealthy thoughts or objects.” A trilingual (Tibetan - Chinese- English) sign above the entrance to a small café in Nyalam Town, Tibet, 1993. John Hill
Angkor Wat is a temple complex in Cambodia that is the largest religious monument in the world (first it was Hindu, then Buddhist). Constructed in the 12th century, the 820,000 square meter site features a moat and forest that harmoniously surround a massive temple at its center.
All that was ‘normal’ has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the in between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet emerged, and nothing really makes sense. To have any notion of a viable future, we must grasp the significance of this period of transition which is characterized by three c’s: complexity, chaos and contradictions. These forces propel and sustain postnormal times leading to uncertainty and different types of ignorance that make decision-making problematic and increase risks to individuals, society and the planet. Postnormal times demands, this paper argues, that we abandon the ideas of ‘control and management’, and rethink the cherished notions of progress, modernization and efficiency. The way forward must be based on virtues of humility, modesty and accountability, the indispensible requirement of living with uncertainty, complexity and ignorance. We will have to imagine ourselves out of postnormal times and into a new age of normalcy—with an ethical compass and a broad spectrum of imaginations from the rich diversity of human cultures.
I buy my staple food online like a civilized person. It takes me mere seconds to order enough soylent for a month, and version 2.0 does not require any preparation, so I got rid of my noisy blender. At less than $2.50 / meal it also saves me loads of cash, and I appreciate the use of more soy and less rice, finally bringing a nutritionally optimal PDCAAS score of 1.0 while improving the taste and especially texture. I also think it’s crazy cool that some of the ingredients are made by algae rather than water-guzzling pesticide-spraying farms. […] I enjoy doing laundry about as much as doing dishes. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.
Subsidies for fossil fuels amount to $1,000 (£640) a year for every citizen living in the G20 group of the world’s leading economies, despite the group’s pledge in 2009 to phase out support for coal, oil and gas. New figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that the US, which hosted the G20 summit in 2009, gives $700bn a year in fossil fuel subsidies, equivalent to $2,180 for every American. President Barack Obama backed the phase out but has since overseen a steep rise in federal fossil fuel subsidies.
It was Christmas Eve, 1968, and three American astronauts had just become the first human beings to orbit the moon. But it wasn’t the only major news that day. Pan Am airlines announced plans for commercial flights to the moon – and they were so confident it would happen soon, they started a waiting list. And so the “First Moon Flights” Club was born – attracting more than 93,000 members over the next two decades, each convinced they would soon be following the astronauts into space…just in more comfortable surroundings, with an in-flight magazine and a beverage service, at the very least…
The Lebrija 1 Solar Power Plant in Lebrija, Spain is comprised of approximately 170,000 individual mirrors installed on 6,048 parabolic troughs. If placed next to one another, the troughs would extend for 60 kilometers.
It may be fortuitous that the trolley problem has trickled into the world of driverless cars: It illuminates some of the profound ethical—and legal—challenges we will face ahead with robots. As human agents are replaced by robotic ones, many of our decisions will cease to be in-the-moment, knee-jerk reactions. Instead, we will have the ability to premeditate different options as we program how our machines will act. For philosophers like Lin, this is the perfect example of where theory collides with the real world—and thought experiments like the trolley problem, though they may be abstract or outdated, can help us to rigorously think through scenarios before they happen. Lin and Gerdes hosted a conference about ethics and self-driving cars last month, and hope the resulting discussions will spread out to other companies and labs developing these technologies.
“The trolley problem is usually one of the first examples [Patrick Lin] uses to show that not all questions can be solved simply through developing more sophisticated engineering. “Not a lot of engineers appreciate or grasp the problem of programming a car ethically, as opposed to programming it to strictly obey the law,””
Greece-based company OpenBionics describes itself as an “an open-source initiative for low-cost, lightweight, underactuated robot hands and prosthetic devices.” In other words, it creates affordable, lifelike bionic hands that can operate on their own, like transformers.
While there’s unarguably greater awareness than ever that man-made climate change is contributing to global warming and rising sea levels, it can be difficult to visualise what that exactly means for the city you live in. How high will sea levels rise? When will it happen? Where will it happen? And, most importantly, what can we do about it?
These are the questions that this stunning new interactive map is designed to get you thinking about. Mapping Choices is part Google Maps, part time machine. It lets you choose any US city or zip code to see what rising seas will do to your nominated address, based on a range of projections about how high sea levels could increase.
Syria’s civil war has prompted the first withdrawal of seeds from a “doomsday” vault built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global food supplies, officials said on Monday. The seeds, including samples of wheat, barley and grasses suited to dry regions, have been requested by researchers elsewhere in the Middle East to replace seeds in a gene bank near the Syrian city of Aleppo that has been damaged by the war. “Protecting the world’s biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” said Brian Lainoff, a spokesman for the Crop Trust, which runs the underground storage on a Norwegian island 1,300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole.
Artist Chico MacMurtrie of the #RoboticChurch discussing the history of the site specific installation in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo by @todseelie. by atlasobscura (via https://instagram.com/p/8vwBPOKfbC/)
The gamification of social conformity, overseen by an authoritarian government and mediated by nudge theory, is a thing of beauty and horror; who needs cops with nightsticks to beat up dissidents when their friends and family will give them a tongue-lashing on behalf of the government for the price of a discount off a new fridge? But don’t worry, I could make it a whole lot worse. The first notable point about this system is that it’s an oppressive system that runs at a profit. Consider the instant no-colateral loans for online shopping: the Chinese system only grants these to folks who are a good credit bet. The debt will be repayed. Meanwhile it goes into providing a Keynsian stimulus for the productive side of the economy. And it rewards people for political right-thinking. What’s not to like?
“While we often see smart refrigerators as in concept kitchens, IKEA and the designer believe that fridges will become obsolete in the future due to their energy inefficiency. Rather, people will store food much as how they have done so in the past—using materials that are naturally insular, such as cooling ceramic, to keep items as fresh as possible. People will no longer buy groceries on a weekly basis, but with automatic delivery from drones and the like, fresh food will be just as easy to get on demand. The design also promotes a mindful way of storage, with clear containers that display the state of food and serve as a visual reminder to eat before it goes bad.”
Yet though her creation is everywhere, Myers and the details of her life’s work are curiously absent from the public record. Not a single independent biography is in print today. Not one article details how Myers, an award-winning mystery writer who possessed no formal training in psychology or sociology, concocted a test routinely deployed by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies, the US government, hundreds of universities, and online dating sites like Perfect Match, Project Evolove and Type Tango. And not one expert in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry with over 2,500 different tests on offer in the US alone, can explain why Myers-Briggs has so thoroughly surpassed its competition, emerging as a household name on par with the Atkins Diet or The Secret.
The tools of the trade. There is nothing more satisfying than making something for yourself! As the genius Mr Buckmisterfuller used to say, “You find out what it is when you find out what it isn’t! ” #getlost #tools #draw #make #sell #r&d #craft #create #curious #product #development #storiestotell #play #photography #explore #understand by thelostexplorer (via https://instagram.com/p/8sA3pvAX5O/)
Philip Ob Rey from Iceland uses VHS tape to sculpt these massive, forlorn looking creatures. The desolate and deserted frozen landscapes of Iceland serve as the backdrop to what is a gorgeous, mournful elegy to these soon to be forgotten curios of at-home viewing 📼
#creepyart #weirdart #darkart #art #eerie #creepy #woman #witch #witches #alien #monster #fantasy #mythology #beauty #beautiful #vhs #bw #blackandwhite #instaart #instagood #potd #fotd #artmag #artmagazine #collidemag by collidemag (via https://instagram.com/p/8sDZC-H1Ug/)
An antenna built for interplanetary connection. The Soviet Union was planning to build bases on other planets, and prepared facilities for connection which were never used and now lie dormant.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has compiled a manual called “Disaster Preparedness Tokyo” (Tokyo Bousai*) to help households get fully prepared for an earthquake directly hitting Tokyo and other various disasters. “Disaster Preparedness Tokyo” is tailored to the various local features of Tokyo, its urban structure, and the lifestyles of its residents, and contains easy-to-understand information on how to prepare for and respond to a disaster．This information will be useful now and in the event of an emergency. *“Bousai” is Japanese for “disaster preparedness”
Efficient storage and retrieval of digital data is the focus of much commercial and academic attention. With personal computers, there are two main ways to retrieve files: hierarchical navigation and query-based search. In navigation, users move down their virtual folder hierarchy until they reach the folder in which the target item is stored. When searching, users first generate a query specifying some property of the target file (e.g., a word it contains), and then select the relevant file when the search engine returns a set of results. Despite advances in search technology, users prefer retrieving files using virtual folder navigation, rather than the more flexible query-based search. Using fMRI we provide an explanation for this phenomenon by demonstrating that folder navigation results in activation of the posterior limbic (including the retrosplenial cortex) and parahippocampal regions similar to that previously observed during real-world navigation in both animals and humans. In contrast, search activates the left inferior frontal gyrus, commonly observed in linguistic processing. We suggest that the preference for navigation may be due to the triggering of automatic object finding routines and lower dependence on linguistic processing.
The home of the future has a long history. In 1893, at the World’s Fair in Chicago, domestic science and home economics were presented on the global stage for the first time as academic disciplines, topics to be systematically considered and innovated upon. In 1933, the Chicago World’s Fair was themed “Century of Progress.” It had a whole exhibition called Homes of Tomorrow, advertised by a flyer touting “the home of the new era … a steel house you would want to live in,” one that’s “fireproof and sanitary.” The home itself was now fair game for innovation, and companies like Monsanto and General Motors started to get on board.
There is very good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism itself will no longer exist—most obviously, as ecologists keep reminding us, because it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet, and the current form of capitalism doesn’t seem to be capable of generating the kind of vast technological breakthroughs and mobilizations that would be required for us to start finding and colonizing any other planets. Yet faced with the prospect of capitalism actually ending, the most common reaction—even from those who call themselves “progressives”—is simply fear. We cling to what exists because we can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse.
How did we get here? My own suspicion is that we are looking at the final effects of the militarization of American capitalism itself. In fact, it could well be said that the last thirty years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the creation and maintenance of hopelessness, a giant machine designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures. At its root is a veritable obsession on the part of the rulers of the world—in response to the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s—with ensuring that social movements cannot be seen to grow, flourish, or propose alternatives; that those who challenge existing power arrangements can never, under any circumstances, be perceived to win. To do so requires creating a vast apparatus of armies, prisons, police, various forms of private security firms and police and military intelligence apparatus, and propaganda engines of every conceivable variety, most of which do not attack alternatives directly so much as create a pervasive climate of fear, jingoistic conformity, and simple despair that renders any thought of changing the world seem an idle fantasy. Maintaining this apparatus seems even more important, to exponents of the “free market,” even than maintaining any sort of viable market economy. How else can one explain what happened in the former Soviet Union? One would ordinarily have imagined that the end of the Cold War would have led to the dismantling of the army and the KGB and rebuilding the factories, but in fact what happened was precisely the other way around. This is just an extreme example of what has been happening everywhere. Economically, the apparatus is pure dead weight; all the guns, surveillance cameras, and propaganda engines are extraordinarily expensive and really produce nothing, and no doubt it’s yet another element dragging the entire capitalist system down—along with producing the illusion of an endless capitalist future that laid the groundwork for the endless bubbles to begin with. Finance capital became the buying and selling of chunks of that future, and economic freedom, for most of us, was reduced to the right to buy a small piece of one’s own permanent subordination.
It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere – no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.
An analysis of the Mercedes-Benz collaboration with Ars Electronica for the European launch of the brand’s intelligent car prototype - the F 015 Luxury in Motion - and the problems that many high-end brands in traditional industries seem to have envisioning a believable future.
The attacks have not dimmed disruption’s popularity as a management buzzword. Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive officer, has said that Europe can solve its unemployment problem with disruptive innovation. This year, USAID, a government agency, credited disruptive innovation for helping curb Nepal’s “extreme poverty.” In a speech at New York University this summer, Hillary Clinton said she was looking for “innovative, disruptive ideas that will save capitalism for the 21st century.” Business leaders seem so enamored with the idea that they’re reluctant to seriously consider naysayers who poke holes in it. “Ninety percent of the problem isn’t Clay, it’s what happened afterwards,” King says. “People don’t want to give this up for some reason.”
