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Switching focus from bits to humans. How technology affects people.

Quoting Don Norman from a recent article on CNET “…We, as people, we should not care about the technology. We should care about the benefits it gives us…”[1] It’s moments like these that I am reminded why I am a fan of Norman.[2] Personally, I would like to see more cultural criticism of technology, and […]

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Survival of the selfless

The current issue of New Scientist Magazine has an interesting article that compares selfish behaviors with altruistic behaviors and produces a theory of how group-oriented collaboration has a track record of survival. “ALTHOUGH a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other […]

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Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature.

I’m reading Gregory Bateson’s book, Mind and Nature. Bateson was an anthropologist, sociologist, second order cyberneticist and philosopher. In this book Bateson wrote an accessible philosophy that acknowledges issues in science and in popular forms of thinking. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes this blog. Mind and Nature proposes transdisciplinary studies as […]

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Al Gore on Current.com

Quoting Al Gore from a blog post on the Identity unknown blog: “Current, the media company I co-founded six years ago with my partner Joel Hyatt, just last week launched a new web site that integrates television and the Web in an unprecedented way. It provides, as never before, a platform for citizens to make […]

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MicroPlace

An interesting tool that allows users to “invest” in poor individuals from across the world who have entrepreneurial dreams. Link: https://www.microplace.com/ Related in this blog: Complex problems: Poverty > 

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Inequality Rises in the U.S.

“Morning Edition, October 12, 2007 · The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned more than 20 percent of all income in 2005. That means the richest Americans have surpassed the highs of the booming 1990s, according to the latest data from the IRS. The numbers provide more proof that inequality is rising in this country. […]

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Bratton Admits Skid Row Displacement

Pushing people around from one problem area to another does not solve any problems – it shifts them. Comprehensive solution systems are needed to solve problems like these: “Los Angeles city leaders launched a campaign a year ago to reduce crime in downtown’s skid row by deploying 50 additional police officers and declaring they would […]

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Social innovation

“Realizing that innovation driven solely by technology often failed to meet customer needs, many organizations turned to a consumer (marketing) oriented approach where consumer research and observation is handled by “experts”. Green believes that this approach is starting to reaching end of life. [Josephine Green's (of Philips Design)] main point is that we need to […]

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Another think coming

Wayne Hall over at the IdeaFestival blog posted an interesting post: “According to the Financial Times some philosophers have set about mending the rift between experience and thought in order to make the discipline relevant again to a wider audience.”[1] The article details how one philosopher has merged philosophy and performance and goes to to […]

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Human built-in empathy ?

The following quotations are from a 2005 article from The New York Times. The article is titled: “A Career Spent Learning How the Mind Emerges From the Brain.” It features a brief conversation with Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, a Psychologist (Cognitive Neurosciece) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. While I recommend that you read the […]

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