Geneticist Craig Venter: …the future of life depends not only in our ability to understand and use DNA, but also, perhaps in creating new synthetic life forms, that is, life which is forged not by Darwinian evolution but created by human intelligence
. Whether or not designer microbes that replace coal and oil are part of the solution, such disruptive ideas and technologies that let us adapt to and mitigate climate change are. We need a scientifically literate society willing to embrace change. But here’s the problem: Science is a topic which can cause people to turn off their brains. I contend that science has failed to excite more people for at least two reasons: it is frequently taught poorly, often as rote memorization of complex facts and data, and it is antithetical to our visceral-driven way we live and interact with our world
. Our planet is facing almost insurmountable problems, problems that governments on their own clearly can’t fix.
A DNA Driven World
Why don’t we love science fiction?
Why do so many of us see science fiction as hopelessly adolescent? The truth is that we are at last living in an SF scenario,
Brain Aldiss has said, implying that makes SF redundant. Isn’t this – at the heart of our anxieties – just where this genre excels?
Is Photography Dead?
A film photograph was at its core a record of something that happened in front of a camera; a digital photo, on the other hand, may contain only a trace of reality. Photographers can make photos as well as take them, and every landscape is now the most beautiful scenery in the whole history of the universe. The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography’s special link to reality. And they’ll have to do it in a brand-new way
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The New Psychology of Leadership
Recent leadership literature notes that an effective leader is highly dependent on followers, and followers need to see their leader as one of them. For leadership to function well, leaders and followers must be bound by a shared identity and by the quest to to use that identify as a blueprint for action. If you control the definition of identify, you can change the world
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Google and Its Enemies
In the physical world of books, authors and ideas matter the most. But Google’s project to digitize 32 million books has different values. In the Google worldview, content is individually valueless. No one page is more important than the next; the value lies in the page view. And a page view is a page view, regardless of whether the page in question has a picture of a cat, a single link to another site, or the full text of Freakonomics. When all you’re selling is ad space, the value shifts from the content to the viewer. And ultimately the content is valued at nothing.
The Philosophy of Wine-Tasting
What does it mean to be an “expert” in the area of fine wine? The wine world wants its experts; yet those that ascend to such heights demure, apologizing for the hierarchy of authority on the grounds that, well, no one can really say that one wine is superior to another. Barry C. Smith’s review of Questions of Taste places wine-centred questions into a larger framework of questions about taste and perception, subjectivity and objectivity, and the role of knowledge and judgment in perceptual appraisal. In wine, as in other domains of practice, expertise depends on craft as well as knowledge; it is socially sorted and externally validated. Salut.
The IQ Conundrum
Is intelligence a single, general factor, or is it more plural and fragmented? Are we actually getting smarter, or are we just getting better at taking tests? This month’s Cato Unbound offers up a cognitive feast of viewspoints. James Flynn, who opts for the plural, fragmented view of IQ, argues that the envirnoment makes a lot of difference in terms of effect on our level of cognitive functioning. Once we grasp that “the brain is much more like our muscles than we had thought, ” we can do more to improve cognitive performance by doing more to exercise the brain. “If only we who teach could make more of our “subjects” fall in love with ideas. Then we would have truly effective interventions.”
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
What is the secret to raising smart kids? Don’t them that they are. Carol S. Dwek reviews 30 years of research that shows emphasizing effort, not intelligence or talent, is the key to developing high achievers in school and in life. This sees the world populated by two types of learners: those who view intelligence as a fixed trait, and those who think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. If you fall into the latter group, then setbacks stem from a lack of effort, not ability, and can be remedied by more effort.
Free Rice
Build your vocabulary and help end world hunger. At the heart is a simple vocabulary game and sponsors who advertise on the site; rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program. Nearly 4 billion grain of rice have been donated since October 7, 2007. Just brilliant.
Doris Lessing has been a lifelong advocate from freedom, democracy and human decency. So it is a little disheartening that in her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature she has not interpreted some of the big cultural changes in the context of technology, such as diversity, lifelong learning, participation and citizenship.