Monday, April 30, 2018

In any other period, "one of the greatest inventions ever made" wouldn't seem like such hyperbole

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One of the concepts that features heavily in the upcoming technology book is the idea of ubiquitous explosive change. When people wonder at ...
3 comments:
Friday, April 27, 2018

..."and we'll visit the Man in the Moon"

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When you see one of those pretty, quaint yet ingenious and functional turn-of-the-century aircraft, chances are it came from this guy . Al...
Thursday, April 26, 2018

The headline actually was "This chart shows every major technological innovation in the last 150 years"

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Sometimes, when you've been working on a theory for a long time, you come across an example so apt, so overly on-the-nose, that it make...
4 comments:
Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Apologies, but I'm going to be a bit coy with the title. -- UPDATED

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I'd like you to think about the following scenario: 7:30 – – wake up. 7:40 – – have a cup of coffee and some breakfast. 8:00 – – s...
Tuesday, April 24, 2018

"Or help you at the automat"

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The fascination with automation was a big part of the late 19th/early 20th century popular imagination. And they ued to call all vending m...
2 comments:
Monday, April 23, 2018

The part about Disney's frozen head, however, is completely accurate

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There's a lot of interesting and important stuff to discuss in this article by Derek Thompson, both in terms of the implications of Dis...
Friday, April 20, 2018

More Retro-future (R.I.P. Chuck McCann)

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This sketch from the largely forgotten HBO show Likely Stories (h/t Mark Evanier ) hasn't agedd that well -- these things seldom do -- b...
Thursday, April 19, 2018

Electro-culture

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We previously discussed Turn of the Century scientists announcing major discoveries only to have the effect sizes later turn out to vanish ...
Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Remember, billboards are the billboards of the 21st Century

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We've been over this before ( repeatedly ). Virtually every story you read or hear about Netflix -- whether it's a review of a new ...
Tuesday, April 17, 2018

A reply to Kevin Drum

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This is Joseph. Kevin Drum asks: So why do we expect reading scores to be skyrocketing in the first place? Why do we almost universally ...

Career Thoughts

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A few years ago I decided to take some time off and focus on writing. Now, with some big projects either out of the way or nearing completio...

People in the late 19th century fully expected to be commuting at a hundred miles an hour in the next ten or twenty years...

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Remember that. It's going to be important for future discussions. THE BOYNTON BICYCLE ELECTRIC RAILWAY.  Scientific American 1894/02/1...
Monday, April 16, 2018

An excellent/terrible piece of reporting on crypto currency from the New Yorker.

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The article does a superb job getting in the heads of the subjects. The details are sharp and informative and the quotes are often unintent...
Saturday, April 14, 2018

Asking a favor from our regular readers

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I realized recently that my networking skills (which weren't that strong to begin with) have atrophied while I've been focusing on w...
2 comments:
Friday, April 13, 2018

"They've given you a number, and taken away your name."

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I've been trying to to trace back the origins of the science fiction trope of giving futuristic characters numerical names, usually for ...