Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 2:00PM Things are changing here at the lab, and it's easy to get swept up in the exciting world of redesign, reorgs, and chasing elusive scientists. But rest assured, we'll be back at work looking for causes to champion and ways to save the world soon enough.
Don't hold your breath because I don't know CPR, but check back in a few days after I've had a chance to regroup - and catch my own breath!
Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 6:12PM We’re all getting an upgrade, whether we like it or not.
In a few years, every moment of our lives will be recorded, analyzed, and shared. We’ll take the sum of human knowledge for granted. We’ll wear tiny computers masquerading as fashion accessories. The merging of humans and technology is unavoidable, and the end result will be a new species able to hack its own cognition and edit its own biology.
This new species—call it Human 2.0—is the most important subject of the century. But it’s still hiding in academia and science fiction. We hope to change that.
Human 2.0 is a person, imbued with superpowers that let him learn, play, and love in new ways. It’s also a society, rethinking how to vote, govern, prosecute, cure, and comfort. It’s as much about upgrades to our bodies—seeing around corners, navigating flawlessly, hearing things miles away—as it is about adding our thoughts to the hive mind of human consensus.
We don’t recognize our smartphones as ancestors of thejack on the back of Neo’s head. Yet they connect us to a world of layers, both real and virtual, that we share with those around us. With every click we’ve gained another ability, added another layer, or shared with another network. Each time we do so, we incur new social obligations, battery requirements, and physical dependencies. Every tap lets another genie out of the digital bottle, never to return.
Unlike biological evolution, which is regulated by the rate of mutation, reproduction, and the pressures of natural selection, Human 2.0 can happen as fast as we can invent it. Kevin Kelly points out that the Internet is only five thousand days old. Imagine the next five thousand.
Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 6:01PM 
‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is open to participation. If you want to install a dead drop in your city/neighborhood follow the ‘how to’ instructions and submit the location and pictures.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 at 4:51PM I was sitting at my day job earlier about pull off my own ears, or stab through them with a pencil. Why? Because so many of the songs I came across were so poorly written. No storyline, no cohesion, mixed metaphors (and not in an artful way), bad structure (or none at all), outdated instrumentation choices...I could go on forever. But I won't.
Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 10:25AM He wakes up, stretches his limbs, turns his head, and...frowns. She's not there. No one is. And, when she is there next, it might be the last time. For good. Suddenly, the major events of their relationship flash through his mind: meeting at a high school dance, graduating college together, getting married, having their son, and then - the images get fuzzy, too bright. She's whirling away from him at a ballroom dance class when, without warning, she collapses. Hospital, nurses, doctors refusing to make eye contact. It's cancer, she has weeks to live, she needs immediate care. She's been there for months now, begging to come home to him for just one night. He feels the pain of their separation as acutely as he feels the pain of her illness. They are one in a million, true love. But as he closes his eyes to the emptiness of her side of the bed, his mind starts racing, spiraling into a flurry of dark thoughts that would seem illogical to her and their son. Another depressive phase is beginning, and he's powerless against it.
Depression, Family, Mental Disorders, Psychology in Health, Social Issues Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 10:07AM Sitting here, looking down at the Las Vegas Strip, I've noticed a curious thing. The people who are walking - to the souvenir store, down the block to the next hotel, wherever - look happier. Seriously, it's 105F outside, how are they so happy?
