Tag Archives: technology

Two Needles In The Global Haystack Found One Another Through The Internet

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

Then they started Skyping:

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Donna Haraway: The Cyborg, Writing

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

Who is Donna Haraway and what is a cyborg? Donna Haraway (b. 1944) teaches feminist and science studies in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In addition to taking a degree in English, … Continue reading →

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Ye Shall Be As Gods?

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

Wearable computing in the form of smartwatches may be the next big extension of man (and woman). Here’s The Los Angeles Times on what Apple appears to be up to: [Smartwatch owners may soon be able to] read emails, Facebook notifications … Continue reading →

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Robots are Coming to Get You

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

If you missed the 60 Minutes segment on robots Sunday night, you really missed something. Here’s a taste.

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Linotype, the Film

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

I hate the soundtrack for it, but this documentary otherwise looks promising: __________ The film can be found at Amazon for instant viewing for a couple of dollars.

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Donna Haraway’s Question: Would I Rather Be A Goddess Or A Cyborg?

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

Donna Haraway (b. 1944) teaches feminist and science studies in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In addition to taking a degree in English, she also studied biology at Yale. In 1985 she … Continue reading →

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Michio Kaku On Emerging Technologies Worth Worrying About

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

I’m surprised Michio Kaku doesn’t address eugenic technologies. These are certainly coming in the near future—a eugenics race among the nations. But the technologies he does mention are also terrifying.

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What do Harvard, MIT, Coursera, and Udacity Have in Common?

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

Answer: ambitions for offering massively open online courses. MOOCS. That’s what they’re calling them. This is really great news, and certainly puts on display the Internet’s power for good [New York Times]: Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a … Continue reading →

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The Google Goggle Future

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

A little too boy-in-a-bubble claustrophobic for me, but I suppose one would get used to it. I didn’t look at this video and say, “Wow!” (as I expected to). Instead, I felt oddly vacant afterwards, as if Google Goggle Life would … Continue reading →

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2012 On the Brink: Our Networked Human Future

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

We live in interesting times: the end of the “dumb society.” A great short documentary on our collective (and hopeful) future:

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The Future is Not Us: The New York Times on China’s Rapid Rise

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

The following quotes from a recent piece in the New York Times (“Power in Numbers: China Aims for High-Tech Primacy”) really jumped out at me. Here’s the first: China’s great weakness may prove to be too much government control. Chinese … Continue reading →

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Not a Flash Mob, but a Flash Rob

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Demonstrating the double-edged sword that technology so frequently represents, and the human propensity to make use of it for both good and evil, this new form of theft—shown in the below video—is, apparently, coordinated using cell phones.

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Stuxnet Explained

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Stuxnet is more than a computer virus, it’s a code weapon. It was deployed last year, probably by the Israelis, against Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program. The below must-see YouTube, made for Australian public television, succinctly and intelligently explains what Stuxnet is and the code … Continue reading →

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Doctors, Jeopardy, and Computers

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

When I was recently watching online NOVA’s Smartest Machine on Earth—an exceptionally fascinating documentary on the IBM computer that defeated the two most accomplished (human) Jeopardy players in the game show’s history—it occurred to me that it won’t be long before … Continue reading →

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Biotech and Robotics: The Two Great Technology Waves That Are Coming

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

A pretty powerful quote from the BigThink website: [Managing Director of Excel Venture Management, Juan] Enriquez stresses that “life code” (the famous A, G, T, C of DNA) will have the same importance for the next generation as digital code (1’s … Continue reading →

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The Promethean Who Stole Fire from Google: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on 60 Minutes

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

You’ll have to click over to YouTube to see this 60 Minutes segment on the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, but it’s really interesting. Talk about a Promethean! Zuckerberg’s genius, I think, is to have tamed a human form of … Continue reading →

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Thanks, Steve Jobs! If the Global Cellular Network Collapses This Decade It May Not Be Because of Osama bin Laden

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

The Washington Post reports, via Jim Giles of New Scientist, that a catastrophic collapse of the globe’s cellular networks is a real possibility over the next decade: [S]ome kind of collapse in cellular networks in the near future is a real … Continue reading →

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Repent, for the Singularity is Near? Has Ray Kurzweil Started a Secular Religion?

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

In a recent New York Times profile of Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity Movement, I can’t help but see parallels with religion. Indeed, it appears to be an atheist eschatology cult led by a gnostic elite. Based on the New York Times piece, here are … Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker is skeptical of new media skepticism

Posted on June 12, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

At the New York Times this week, Steven Pinker has a not-to-be-missed op-ed on new media skepticism. A taste: Media critics write as if the brain takes on the qualities of whatever it consumes, the informational equivalent of “you are what … Continue reading →

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Evil, Nietzsche’s “amor fati,” Prometheus, and Thomas Edison

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

What is evil? If we call evil whatever outrages a human imagination’s ordering will and vitality; that is, if we define evil in its relation to us, then we quickly notice that evil comes in three forms: There are natural evils that … Continue reading →

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