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In the news this week...
- The mystery of human creativity.
- Telezygology... intelligent fasteners.
- The next Internet shakeout.
- Virtual visitation rights.
- The "youth explosion"
in the Middle East.
- Green investment.
- Speeding up the future.
We also highlight...
Henry Petroski's new book, Success
Through Failure: The Paradox of Design... The
urge to invent, Petroski says, has its roots in our
disappointment with existing technologies and tools...
in their failure to perform as promised, or to perform
as we would wish. There will always be room for improvement.
"The most successful improvements," he says,
"ultimately are those that focus on the limitations
-- on the failures."
The website of The Singularity
Summit... To be held on May 13, 2006, at Stanford
University. Leading thinkers explore the possibility
of a world in which machines surpass human intelligence
-- a world Ray Kurzweil believes will become a reality
by 2029. Speakers include Nick Bostrom, Cory Doctorow,
Eric Drexler, Tyler Emerson, Douglas Hofstadter, Steve
Jurvetson, Ray Kurzweil, Bill McKibben, Max More,
Christine Peterson, John Smart, Peter Thiel, Sebastian
Thrun, and Eliezer Yudkowsky. Registration is free.
An audio clip... Kojo Nnamdi talks
to Robert Maurer, behavioral scientist, about how
we can more confidently make life changes.
David Forrest
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SCIENCE
Top
Story: Where
Do the 'Big Ideas' Come From? - [ABC News] Why is it
that sometimes the light between the ears flashes brightly,
providing that insightful "aha!" moment of discovery,
and sometimes it doesn't come on at all?
Web
watch... most
recent articles
TECHNOLOGY
Top
Story: What
a Snap! These New Fasteners are Really Smart - [Sun-Sentinel]
Nuts and bolts, rivets, welding seams, glue and all the
other fasteners that hold the artificial world together
always have been as dumb as, well, nails. Until now.
Web
watch...
most
recent articles
BUSINESS
Top
Story: Web
2.0's Startup Fever - [Technology Review] If you're
Web-literate, you can organize more and more of your life
around Web-based tools and services given away by a host
of young startups. All for free.
Web
watch... most
recent articles
SOCIETY
Top
Story: Child-Visitation
Rights are Being Updated for the Cyber Age - [St. Louis
Post-Dispatch] Let the Internet join together what divorce
has put asunder. That twist on the traditional marriage
decree is behind developing legislation in Missouri and
Illinois that would require courts to modernize child-visitation
rights for divorced parents living in a cyber age.
Web
watch... most
recent articles
GLOBAL
POLITICS
Top
Story: Outside
View: The Mideast's Generational Demographics - [World
Peace Herald] Some analysts have been focusing on the economic
and demographic pressures that drive the Middle East towards
terrorism and extremism. The threat is driven by forces
that are generational, rather than limited to a few years.
Web
watch... most
recent articles
ENVIRONMENT
Top
Story: Betting
on a Green Future - [Wired] Venture capitalist John
Doerr made his name and fortune with early investments in
Netscape Communications Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc.
and other pioneering tech firms that went from scrappy startups
to household names. Now Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins
Caulfield & Byers, are placing big bets on an emerging
sector he calls "green technology," one he believes
could become as lucrative as information technology and
biotechnology.
Web
watch... most
recent articles
THE
FUTURE
Top
Story: Kurzweil:
Life Is the Fast Lane - [Bio-IT World] Inventor and
provocative futurist Ray Kurzweil’s opening keynote
at Bio•IT World’s Life Sciences Conference + Expo
painted an expansive, optimistic vision of a world governed
by exponentially growing information technologies that will
inexorably transform what it means to be human, dramatically
extend lifespan, and produce machines capable of modeling
the human brain by 2029.
Web
watch... most
recent articles
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Featured Book:
Success through Failure: The Paradox
of Design
by Henry Petroski
Resource
Page
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Featured Link: The
Singularity Summit - [Singularity Institute
for Artificial Intelligence] A rare gathering of thinkers
to explore the rising impact of science and technology
on society. The summit has been organized to further
the understanding of a controversial idea – the
singularity scenario.
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Audio Clip: Kaizen:
Feng Shui for the Brain - [The Kojo Nnamdi
Show] A behavioral scientist figures out how to use
an age-old Japanese principle to help anyone make
life changes without fear or failure. (January 2,
2006)
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