There’s a new interview with Tom Henderson (aka Mathpunk) on the podcast Strongly Connected Components. Tom talks about numeracy, his teaching style and whatever happened to Math for Primates.
Strongly Connected Components: Tom Henderson
My interview with Tom is here.
Paul Baran, inventor of packet switching and co-founder of the Institute for the Future, is dead. If anyone could have claimed to have invented the Internet, it may have been Paul Baran. From Wired’s obit:
Baran was working at the famed RAND corporation on a “survivable”communications system in the early 1960s when he thought up one of its core concepts: breaking up a single message into smaller pieces, having them travel different, unpredictable paths to their destination, and only then putting them back together. It’s called packet switching and it’s how everything still gets gets to your e-mail inbox. […]
Baran approached AT&T to build such a network. But the company, which at the time had the U.S. telephone monopoly and, backing Baran, could conceivably have also owned the internet, just didn’t see the possibilities.
Wired: Internet Architect Paul Baran Dies at 84
Transhuman Space: Cities on the Edge is a supplement for GURPS and Transhuman Space written by Waldemar Ingdahl and legendary transhumanist Anders Sandberg. It’s meant to be a legitimate piece of futurism in addition to being an RPG supplement:
Tomorrow’s towns in Transhuman Space have certainly evolved from eras past, and there’s no doubt that they’re still vibrant, exciting places. Cities on the Edge is your guide to the dangers and delights to be discovered downtown.
Written by noted transhumanist and futurist Anders Sandberg, with science journalist Waldemar Ingdahl, this gigantic guidebook includes:
- A tour of cities in 2100, from an overview of what they are and have become, to a look at what makes the towns of tomorrow tick. Unearth the allies and enemies of urban areas. Learn how police, health, disaster management, transport, and trade in the cities of Transhuman Space work. Discover how they’re run, and what happens when it all goes wrong . . .
- A look at the bleeding edge of advanced architecture. Ultra-modern metropolises include mile-high skyscrapers, giant arcologies, biological buildings, high-density communications, and more!
- Insight into urban culture: gray-collar crime, animated graffiti, urban AIs, self-configuring hotels, and other elements that make downtown dynamic.
- A huge worked example: Stockholm in 2100! Visit the capital of Sweden, where eco-engineers discuss the restoration of the Baltic in trendy bistros run by Russian refugees; surrendering your privacy is so last year; and flaunting your naked brain in public is the height of fashion.
- A sample scenario: “In the Walls,” a murder mystery that centers on Stockholm. Whodunit, and how?
The future is a foreign country, and there’s perhaps no better place to witness the wonders of the world than by visiting the grandest of the global villages. With Cities on the Edge, you’re at the center of excitement!
(via Justin Pickard)
I’m told Sandberg has contributed to a number of RPGs over the years.
See also: Indie Game Designers Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen on Transhumanist RPG FreeMarket
Here are the ideas that were submitted to BrainSwarm in the first week. Remember, if you if you don’t submit an idea you can still comment and vote on ideas.
general purpose futures market
Use web browser caches and DHT to lower server load
Like seti@home but with profits
Audio-based ‘social media’-type network
Haptic feedback for spacial interfaces
And here’s one idea that’s in progress: Seattle Eso Zone 2011.
I saw William Gibson‘s “Five to Follow” list for The National Post (congratulations on making the list Meredith!) and thought, since the Post will probably never ask me, I’d share my own list here.
These are the top 10 people I think readers of this blog should follow. I couldn’t break it down to five – 10 was hard enough! Apologies to everyone I left off – it was a hard list to write.
Chris Arkenberg. “Research, forecast, & strategy from the Left Coast. Tech, new media, energy, geopol, complex systems. Beatmaker, surfer, nature lover.” You can read my interview with him here.
(((1/f)))). “Mathematics and particle astrophysics. Also writing a book or two.”
Kyle Findlay (aka Social Physicist). “Chaos, networks, reality. Itinerant scholar.” Read my interview with him here.
Tom Henderson (aka Mathpunk). “Mathematician, gamer, writer, comedian, eater of foods. Futurity now!” Read my interview with him here.
Wade A. Inganamort. “Screenwriter • Partner/Co-founder/Producer @HukilauNow.”
Rita J. King. “Co-Director (with @Josholalia) of IMAGINATION: Driving the Future of Education and Work.”
Venessa Miemis. “Digital ethnographer, futurist, blogger. MA in Media Studies.”
Alex Pang. “Historian | futurist | information ecologist.”
Theoretick. “I am a Quantum Mechanic working through my Love/Hate Relationship with Tech.”
Cat Vincent. “Essayist on occult/fortean topics, former professional exorcist & combat magician. Unnatural Philosopher. Lives in Bristol, England.”
And of course, if you want to follow me I’m @klintron on Twitter. You can also receive updates from this blog by following @techn0ccult.
A pianist plays a series of notes, and the woman echoes them on a computerized music system. The woman then goes on to play a simple improvised melody over a looped backing track. It doesn’t sound like much of a musical challenge — except that the woman is paralysed after a stroke, and can make only eye, facial and slight head movements. She is making the music purely by thinking.
This is a trial of a computer-music system that interacts directly with the user’s brain, by picking up the tiny electrical impulses of neurons. The device, developed by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, working with computer scientists at the University of Essex, should eventually help people with severe physical disabilities, caused by brain or spinal-cord injuries, for example, to make music for recreational or therapeutic purposes. The findings are published online in the journal Music and Medicine.
Nature News: Music is all in the mind
(via Richard Yonck)
See also: Eyewriter, an inexpensive way for people to draw using only their eyes.
TechCrunch TV interviews Bruce Sterling on Hacktivism at SXSW:
Damon Albarn has written and will star in a stage show about 16th Century alchemist, astrologer and spy John Dee.
A musical work based on Elizabeth I’s medical and scientific adviser, Doctor Dee will have its premiere in July at the Manchester International Festival.
It will then be staged at the home of the English National Opera as part of London’s Cultural Olympiad programme.
BBC: Damon Albarn to star in new stage show
(via John Reppion)
Previously: Alan Moore explains why he canceled his involvement in the opera.
Slate has some coverage of the Longevity Project, a decades long research project tracking the lives of geniuses. This could just be propaganda to make us happier about the fact that many of us will never be able to retire, but it makes sense. I don’t want to spend my golden years eating TV dinners and watching Jeopardy reruns.
Retirement is usually seen as the severing of oneself from the work of a lifetime. Friedman, who is 60, dislikes this notion, and from his research he’s come to believe such an attitude is bad both for society and individuals. Of course, for those in miserable work situations, a departure can mean liberation. But most of the Terman males (given the attitudes of the times, far fewer of the women Termites worked) had solid, sometimes even exceptional careers. Interviews done with successful Termites in their 70s, several of them lawyers, showed a striking number continued to work part time.
For those who contemplate retirement as decades filled with leisure and relaxation, The Longevity Project serves as a warning. As Friedman says, “fun can be overrated” and stress can be unfairly maligned. Many study participants who lived vigorously into old age had highly stressful jobs. Physicist Norris Bradbury, who died at age 88, succeeded J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, overseeing the transition of the U.S. atomic weapons research lab from World War II into the Cold War.
(via Alex Pang)
The Big Brains at Darpa have dreamed up some pretty cool stuff over the years: GPS, mind-controlled robotic arms, the Internet.
So could education benefit from its own version of the Pentagon-led research agency?
The Obama administration thinks the answer is yes. Its proposed 2012 budget includes $90-million to kick off the effort, conceived as a way to support development of cutting-edge educational technologies.
Why the need for a new agency? Education research and development is “underinvested,” argues James H. Shelton III, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement in the U.S. Education Department. A new agency—its name would be “Advanced Research Projects Agency-Education”—would have more flexibility to identify specific problems and direct efforts to solve them, he says. Plus, it would be able to attract top outside talent to work on these projects.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Why the Obama Administration Wants a Darpa for Education
(via Theoretick)
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