Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.
- Charles Babbage (attr)
Neither your opinion of what users should think, nor my opinion of what users should think, matters as much as what users actually do think. Be a scientist, not a priest.
There are four piles of things in the world:
- Things you like/love.
- Things you are good at.
- Things you can be paid to do.
- Things that are important.
Scott Berkun in Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds.
By allowing people to laugh at injustice or hypocrisy, satirical comedy enables them to feel like they’ve done something: I’m cool, I get what’s wrong with that. That self-satisfaction works against activism, so satirical comedy might actually be counterproductive.
Harold Ramis in The New Yorker.
t(p)
The Generalised Mischief Metric is the time until the first penis appears in your user-generated content.
Term coined by Steffan Björk, mentioned by Sebastian Deterding in his excellent presentation, Stop Playing Games.
The great engineer… [is] a pragmatist made conservative by the conspicuous failures of structures and machines hastily contrived.
Clare Clark from The Great Stink (attributed to Joseph Bazalgette).
Society once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of journalism and entertainment. It's not necessarily going to pay for those things for much longer so we might start questioning whether we want to live in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Bang.
Russel M. Davies, from 20 predictions for the next 25 years
The issue here is that even if our world is made of pure information, we don't yet know enough about that data to record it. We don't know all the information, or how to measure it. For now, our digital representations are compromises - symbol systems that record or transmit a great deal about what matters to us at any given moment. Better digital technology merely makes those choices at increasingly granular levels.
And while our computers are busy making discreet choices about the rather indiscreet and subtle world in which we live, many of us are busy, too - accommodating our computers by living and defining ourselves in their terms. We are making choices not because we want to, but because our programs demand them.
Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed
Today's Guardian carries two interviews with pairs of eminent scientists; David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins on natural science, and Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking on physical science. The sub-editor has rather unfortunately given the interviews the series name of 'Gods of Science', which is rather aggrandising and misses the point that it is just people, plain and simple, who reveal the rules of science.
Anyway, nit-picking aside, it's nice to see the great respect that exists between the men, especially the obvious high regard that Brian Cox holds for the work of Stephen Hawking. For my own part, David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins are two of the people that I consider to be great and worthy inspirational figures, so this interview is of keen interest to me.
I'd advise you to read the full texts yourself, but I thought I'd put here some of the answers that I thought were most interesting or deserving of greater consideration.
David Attenborough: The unity of life.
Richard Dawkins: The unity of life that comes about through evolution, since we're all descended from a single common ancestor. It's almost too good to be true, that on one planet this extraordinary complexity of life should have come about by what is pretty much an intelligible process.
Stephen Hawking: Science can explain the universe without the need for a Creator.
Brian Cox: I think everyone should know a few basic facts about the universe. It began 13.7 billion years ago; our sun and solar system formed just under five billion years ago; there are 200 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. These are wonderful discoveries, and it's quite astonishing we've been able to find these things out from our vantage point on our tiny Earth.
SH: Nuclear fusion. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy without pollution or global warming.
BC: I share that view, that the provision of clean energy is of overwhelming importance. What frustrates me is that we know how to do it as physicists, how it works. It is an engineering solution that is within our grasp. I don't understand why we don't seem to want it enough at the moment.
DA: The production of energy without any deleterious effects.
BC: I think one of the great challenges for the scientific community is how to deal with arguments from people with genuinely held views that are demonstrably wrong and potentially damaging. I'm thinking of issues like the vaccination of children or the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The science is very clear on these issues, and science really is the best guide we have to facing global challenges. The dilemma is how to convince quite vocal minorities that a rational and scientific approach is no threat to their political or religious beliefs – it's just the best approach.
SH: It is over genetic engineering. It should soon be possible dramatically to increase the intelligence and life span of a few individuals. They and their offspring could become a master race. Evolution pays no regard to social justice. It was not fair on the Neanderthals they were replaced by modern humans.
DA: How far do you go to preserve individual human life? I mean, what are we to do with the NHS? How can you put a value in pounds, shillings and pence on an individual's life? There was a case with a bowel cancer drug – if you gave that drug, which costs several thousand pounds, it continued life for six weeks on. How can you make that decision?
If you’re not in your full flush of youth, how do you operate? When you’re young you think in mono-blocks – if I had a new computer, if I had this girlfriend, it would be OK. Your life moves in these mono movements, one at a time. When you’re older it’s different: I really like that, but what does that say about me, will it work, how much will it work, will it make me feel better, will it really make me feel better? What will I lose in the process? Happiness is complicated and you become more complicated as you age. Your reactions become more complicated. If you don’t become more complicated you’re just an asshole.
James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem), in the latest Five Dials magazine [PDF, 15.2MB]
