From The Prelinger Library:
Now comes word that the SAA Council has decided that the archives of its own listserv are no longer worth saving and will be “disposed of” at the end of this month. After an appraisal of their value, they’ve determined the cost of keeping these bits is higher than their. . .   Read More

2nd Life takes off

What is real life coming to owe digital life?

After a couple years in the flat part of exponential growth, the steep part is now arriving for the massive multi-player online world construction kit called “Second Life.” With 1.7 million accounts, membership in “Second Life” is growing by 20. . .   Read More

Philanthropic stamina

10,000 families in the US, Katherine Fulton reported, have assets of $100 million or more. That’s up from 7,000 just a couple years ago. Most of that money is “on the sidelines.” The poor and the middle class are far more generous in their philanthropy, proportionally, than the very wealthy. . .   Read More

Welcome to the Anthropocene

The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical— carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? “It’s like trying to understand geology while you’re hanging by. . .   Read More

Giant contradictions

“China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world,” Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions. And by its massiveness— China’s population is estimated to be 1.25 to 1.3 billion; the margin of error in the estimate is greater than the population of France. It. . .   Read More

Generative play

In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno gave an intense clinic on the joys and techniques of “generative” creation.

Back in the 1970s both speakers got hooked by cellular automata such as Conway’s “Game of Life,” where just a few simple rules could unleash profoundly unpredictable and infinitely varied dynamic. . .   Read More

Recursion drives science

The co-founding editor of “Wired” magazine and author of OUT OF CONTROL is working on a new book on “what technology wants.” His research led to the first-ever history of scientific methodology. Starting from this long-term view of science’s past transformation, he speculates on how the practice of. . .   Read More

Hidden order in the Balinese “religion of water”

With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics, anthropologist Stephen Lansing exposed the hidden structure and profound health of the traditional Balinese rice growing practices. The intensely productive terraced rice paddies of Bali are a thousand years old. So are the democratic subaks (irrigation cooperatives) that manage them, and. . .   Read More

Categories go nova

It is fortunate that the leading thinker in “social software” is one of the best speakers in the high-tech world, a hot ticket at any conference that can get him. CLAY SHIRKY gave one of his dazzling presentations Monday, Nov. 14, examining a new dimension in one of the most vexed. . .   Read More

Finessing the future

Instead of one podium there were four chairs on the stage of Wednesday’s seminar. In three seats, three Dysons: Esther, George and Freeman. They were appearing together on stage for the first time. The fourth held Stewart Brand who led the three through an evening of queries. The questions came from. . .   Read More