Leaving my local library today, I noticed Moxyland on the shelves, and decided to give it a go. Now several chapters in, I’m hooked. As the cover quote promises, it breathes new life into a seemingly dying genre, and one I’ve always loved: cyberpunk.
If you enjoy smart, gritty, future-tech-laden sci-fi, Moxyland is a great read.
From Linchpin by Seth Godin
The financial panic of 2008 was horrible, but it did have one good result: the nation began its first interesting conversation about economics in more than 25 years.
Source: changethis.com
Forgetting in a digital age
Dan Misener of CBC’s Spark:
In his new book, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argues that forgetting is a natural human process, and that digital technology and cheap storage are creating all sorts of problems, from an assault on privacy, to an inability to make decisions.
Source: cbc.ca
Where consciousness isn't
Tuomas Manninen in Metapsychology:
The key assumption behind the science of consciousness is that consciousness is an internal process that occurs in the brain. Noë’s chief goal in [his book, Out of Our Heads,] is to show that this highly questionable, yet unquestioned assumption, has led the consciousness research astray; in brief, the search for consciousness has focused on where it isn’t. Noë opens by challenging this assumption, and offers an alternative picture. Instead of characterizing consciousness as an internal process (like digestion) Noë proposes a picture which takes consciousness to be an activity (like dancing).
This is a topic that fascinates me: what is consciousness and where and how does it occur? The scientific community has generally accepted that the mind is merely “what the brain does,” but that view seems to be shifting.
Source: 3quarksdaily.com
Indeed it would be realistic to say that what we have in common is our vulnerability; it is the medium of contact between us, what we most fundamentally recognize in each other.
Source: Washington Post
Flat N All That
“Matt Taibbi takes on porn-stached New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s greenish ways.”
Source: nypress.com
