I used to work with a HAL 9000. Back when I was at US West in the late ’90s we had a voice system into which we would record the day’s company news so that employees without Internet access could dial in and keep up with the latest events. As with any such system there was a dial-in sequence, buttons
Read morePart four in a series. The terrible specter of nuclear annihilation was now clear in the American mind, a condition that LIFE acknowledged and addressed. But in the months that followed V-J Day an odd thing happened, as military testing of the new weaponry provided an opportunity for bomb-watchers to indulge their awe without having to confront the frightful context
Read morePart three in a series. In an age and a culture dominated by scientism, the word “sample†tends to invoke the adjectival “representative,†and I cannot begin to imagine culling a meaningful representative sample from LIFE’s 400-plus issues. Still, it seems important to devote a few pages to what happened with LIFE and technology between the Fort Peck Dam and
Read moreOne of the great debates in the field of ethics centers around the thinking of Emmanuel Kant vs. the Utilitarians – most notably John Stuart Mill. To simplify, Kant’s philosophy suggests that the means justify the ends: we should always do the right thing and trust the results to work out for themselves. Mill, on the other hand, argued that
Read morePart two in a series. As I suggested in Part One, the messianic/utopian view of science and technology attributed to LIFE Magazine is consistent with an ideological bent that traces its lineage to the dawn of the Enlightenment in Europe. Francis Bacon’s highly influential New Atlantis, first published in 1626, recounts the narrator’s fictional shipwreck on the shores of Bensalem,
Read morePart one in a series. During its 36-year run, LIFE Magazine traversed a period of technological innovation and peril unsurpassed in the recorded history of humanity. As the first issue was released in November of 1936, a resurgent Germany was constructing the most awesome war machine the world had yet seen, a development that literally threatened the very future of
Read moreHi folks, and welcome to SVR’s Halloween in March special. Today we’re going to have a look at things that just scare the bejeezus out of us. First up, Tiny Toons. I was never as big a fan of the series as some of my friends, but it did have its moments. The subtle homomegalomaniacism of Pinky & The Brain,
Read moreItem: Citizens are concerned about online privacy and security. According to a new report from USC’s Center for the Digital Future, “Sixty-one percent of adult Americans said they were very or extremely concerned about the privacy of personal information when buying online, an increase from 47 percent in 2006. Before last year, that figure had largely been dropping since 2001.”
Read moreAccording to the BBC, “Thomas Edison sent his agents round to the Poet Laureate’s home to record his voice on wax cylinders in 1890.” That poet laureate turns out to be none other than Alfred, Lord Tennyson. No, the voice quality isn’t great (as you’d expect), but what a marvelous revelation – to be able to hear one of the
Read moreI don’t get it. Thanks to Dr. Mike Pecaut for passing this along.
Read moreEarlier today I posted an extended analysis of the reporting, good and bad, surrounding the recent California Department of Public Health study on thimerosal and autism rates. But then I got to wondering. What would a cynical, bought-up corporatist whore of an environmental holocaust denier who’d sell his own mother for a nickel’s profit think about the study? I know
Read moreI’ve written in the past about the problem of bad science reporting in the US. The short version: very few American reporters have enough grounding in statistics and the sciences to accurately parse the claims of quantitative research, and as a result they often misrepresent what studies actually say. This is an indictment of, among other things, university journalism school
Read moreLast week I joined a legion of business bloggers in poleaxing the shizizzle out of a self-satisfied new project called The Blog Council. Josh Catone of Read/WriteWeb stomped them. Dave Taylor, who’s probably forgotten more about blogging than the entire council put together knows, took them to school. Robert Scoble – another guy who knows a thing or two about
Read moreWhen a new innovation comes along, corporations typically follow a predictable arc. First there’s the “Ignore It” phase. Then, once it becomes clear that it’s actually important, they dive into the “Getting It All Wrong” phase. The first step in Getting It All Wrong is “pretend that the new thing works like all the old things.” Eventually they get past
Read moreSo, Planet of the Apes wasn’t so far-fetched, after all? Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won. That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that “humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions,” said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University. (Story.) Mercifully, Matsuzawa wasn’t
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lullaby pit 