A brief overview of three techniques for honing your ability to see beyond the horizon. 1. Trend Analysis In order to develop the capacity for imagining alternative futures and create design solutions accordingly, it is useful to be aware of the current driving forces and megatrends underway. The "STEEP" categories [Social,...

“ The sun swept high in the sky of the metropolis – dreaming, like ‘who on top of...

My good friend has just come back from the "Transforming Humanity: Fantasy? Dream?...

That night they did not go out to work at sea. While the men went to find out if anyone was...

* 01 December 2010 by David Shiga ABSOLUTE zero sounds like an unbreachable limit beyond which it is impossible to explore. In fact there is a weird realm of negative temperatures that not only exists in theory, but has also proved accessible in practice. An improved way of getting there, outlined last week, could reveal new states of...

Here are some talented dancers. Please tell me your opinion about the choreography! The...

Orbital sunrise photo courtesy of The European Space Agency. There is silence in the void. A...

One of the ideas which sprang from our discussions around the future of waste was that of "System Upcycling". System Upcyclers look at how existing infrastructures and technologies can be put to better use, they look to take the elements of our "legacy systems" which are broken, wasteful or social destructive and buy them up...

This future Architype from the Rubbish = Resource Event at ODC last week really resonates with me. I’m now pondering what the infrastructural needs would be for me to make the leap to a Surplus Sustained existence. The Surplus Sufficient sees waste as just excess resource, something which is Surplus to requirement. They use this waste to...

#Inforhythms are an experiment in aural representations of annotations or metadata of information....

In "As We May Think", published in 1945, V. Bush describes a future world colored by technologies which aid man in compounding and extracting data for the growth of the species as an organism... the article is prolific, but at times laughably simplistic, as if Bush should not have been afraid to take his ideas in a more sci-fi direction...

The leading cause of death is birth, and the leading cause of piracy is copyrights and patents,...

Designers, [or any creatives] please read this. { Wonders Revealed } ‹— links directly to PDF. by Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel. { AIGA page }. Excerpts: Science is revolutionizing the world. From global warming to genetic cloning to persistent threats of bioterrorism, its impact upon our very sustainability is of...

Wired Article here The research paper can be found at Science Mag and the abstract is at the...

“The Orion Correlation Theory is a hypothesis in pyramidology. Its central claim is that there is...

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to...

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2010/M10-110.html MEDIA ADVISORY : M10-110 NASA to Hold News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 11 a.m. PST On Dec. 2 MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding...

We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally,...

(Below are some brief thoughts on the effects on creativity in the Information Age, taken from...

.net interview 1 interview 2 - - > "home"

Cosmic rebirth Circular patterns in the universe's pervasive background radiation suggest the Big Bang was only the latest of many By Ron Cowen Web edition : Friday, November 26th, 2010 CIRCULAR REASONING Dark circles indicate regions in space where the cosmic microwave background has temperature variations that are lower than average. The...

A few stray hairs In mice, whisker recoil maps to sensory, not motor, part of brain By Laura Sanders Web edition : Thursday, November 25th, 2010 The part of the mouse brain devoted to sensory input is moonlighting as a whisker-flicker, scientists have found. The result may prompt researchers to rethink strict descriptions of certain brain...

Context: just watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 Words are spells unto the mind (as opposed to the material world); NB and look up “incantation” The mind/intellect grasps/understands reality. Words can be and usually are involved in this process. Convincing a person that p is a unique task... one of the highest order, I...

The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true? THALER'S QUESTION [11.23.10] An Edge Special Event! To selected Edge contributors: I am doing research for a new book and would hope to...

“I believe that consciousness is, essentially, the way information feels when being...

When the power of tradition is broken, modern reason must create normative out of itself by...

Chaos. Flashing lights. Sweat and fragrance. Anxious to indulge, he steps out onto the floor. He takes things slow at first, moving halfheartedly to the beat of the music. As he finds his comfort zone, he begins his long awaited escape; today's featured band providing him with the perfect medium to do so. A steady, consistent beat, yet loud...

They are becoming the same subject through unusual experiments. In recent years, some of the subjective experiences and things that were believed on faith are being scientifically proven. We now know that thinking certain things can directly cause other things to change from thousands of miles away. We're not sure why it happens, but we know it...

Time and Pace Preface A rare astronomical configuration occurred about sixty-five...

Studies showing that people who talk about their goals tend not to complete them. ...

Some friends coded this wicked 3D mandelbox fractal music visualization (& wrote the music!): Anandamide - 7.65 Megaelectronvolts from Anandamide Logistics on Vimeo. The renders are done in realtime within milkdrop, which comes with winamp if you happen to use that to listen to your music. Latest version can be downloaded here if you...

Whats really happening overall? Details like disagreements between countries are not important...

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A short aesthetic exploration into longevity and its implications on our emotional lives- including...

We behold an increase of attention to two very interesting concepts: plasticity and collective....

Moving a movement: What could replace a system that bankrolls corporatist atrocity? #thrivable...

All currently implemented approaches to the stimulation brain circuits suffer from a limitation...

[Cross-posted from Humanity + Magazine.] Emergent technologies often inspire great excitement...

personas pictoglyphs visionary … the main component is that of the eyes: the foresight...

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(this is my final paper for cybernetics class and for graduate school. it is a theoretical metalogue between myself and gregory bateson. many of his phrases and passages are pulled directly from the book Steps To An Ecology of Mind) vm: i want to understand the ecology of mind, how it works. I want to understand how technology is...

mapping emotional tendencies and fluctuations, from and of, content produced online is an...

TeslaTouch The Future of Feel More info: Technology Technical Paper TeslaTouch infuses...

A few months ago, I went to Cyborg Camp in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Cyborg Camp is an...

From ABC Science November 17, 2010 Physicists have succeeded for the first time in trapping...

"Because species diversity was created prior to humanity, and because we evolved within it, we have never fathomed its limits... The living world is the natural domain of the more restless and paradoxical part of human spirit. Our sense of wondering grows exponentially; the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery and the more we seek...

Geneva, 17 November 2011. The ALPHA experiment at CERN1 has taken an important step forward in developing techniques to understand one of the Universe’s open questions: is there a difference between matter and antimatter? In a paper published in Nature today, the collaboration shows that it has successfully produced and trapped atoms of...

The universe equals Chaitin's Constant. I will explain how to use it statistically to create a...