"lifestream" via c0wb0yz in Google Reader

"We have domesticated our humanity as much as we have domesticated our horses. Our human nature is a..."

2009-11-08T07:41:47Z

“We have domesticated our humanity as much as we have domesticated our horses. Our human nature is a malleable crop that we planted 50,000 years ago, and continue to garden even today. The field of our nature has never been static. We know that genetically our bodies are changing faster now than at any time in the past million years. Our minds are being rewired by our culture. With no exaggeration, and no metaphor, we are not the same people who first started to plow 10,000 years ago. The snug interlocking system of horse and buggy, wood fire cooking, compost gardening, and minimal industry may be perfectly fit for a human nature — of an ancient agrarian epoch. I call this devotion to a traditional being “selfish” because it ignores the way in which our nature — our wants, desires, fears, primeval instincts, and loftiest aspirations — are being recast by ourselves, by our inventions, and it excludes the needs of our new natures. There are many traditionalists who deny this shift, and who hold our nature is unchanging; from the perspective of an individual, or even a generation, it looks that way. But for anyone raised by a modern culture crammed with ubiquitous writing, communication technology, science, pervasive entertainment, travel, surplus food, abundant nutrition, and new possibilities every day, we are different beings than our ancestors. We think different. That should be no surprise because our personas are dictated beyond our genetics. More than our hunter-gatherer ancestors we are shaped by the accumulating wisdom, practices, traditions, and culture of our all those who’ve lived before us and live with us. At the same time our genes are racing. And we are speeding the acceleration of those genes by several means, from medical interventions to gene therapy, and then racing our culture with computers and wires as well. In fact every trend of the technium — especially its increasing evolvability — point to more rapid change of human nature in the future.”

- “Why Technology Can’t Fulfill” par Kevin Kelly sur The Technium (June 26th, 2009)

"The origins of the Wired generation and the laid-back, long-hair computer culture (think open..."

2009-11-08T02:41:51Z

“The origins of the Wired generation and the laid-back, long-hair computer culture (think open source) lay in the hippies of the 70s. As Stewart Brand, hippy founder of the Whole Earth Catalog remembers, ” ‘Do your own thing’ easily translated into ‘Start your own business’.” I’ve lost count of the hundreds of individuals I personally know who left communes to eventually start hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley. It’s almost a cliche by now — barefoot to billionaire, a la Steve Jobs. The hippies of the previous generation did not remain in their Amish-like mode because as satisfying and attractive as the work in those communities were, the siren of choices was more attractive. The hippies left the farm for the same reason the young have always left: the possibilities leveraged by technology beckon all night and day. In retrospect we might say the hippies left for the same reason Thoreau left his Walden; they came and then left to experience life to its fullest. Volunteer simplicity is a possibility, an option, a choice that one should experience for a least part of one’s life, not the least to help you sort out your technology priorities. But in my observation simplicity’s fullest potential requires that one consider it one phase of many (even if a recurring phase as is meditation or the Sabbath). In the past decade a new generation of minimites has arisen, and they are now urban homesteading — living lightly in cities, supported by adhoc communities of like-minded homesteaders. They are trying to have both, the Amish satisfaction of intense mutual aid and hand labor, and the ever cascading choices of a city.”

- “Why Technology Can’t Fulfill” par Kevin Kelly sur The Technium (June 26th, 2009)

En résumé : “From low-tech to high-choice”

"Other aspects of Wikipedia’s history are vividly described but lack discerning intellectual..."

2009-11-07T21:41:45Z

“Other aspects of Wikipedia’s history are vividly described but lack discerning intellectual treatment. Lih sheds little light on the “routinization” of the charismatic and ultimately benevolent authority of Jimmy Wales, how that authority evolved into a vast bureaucratic apparatus with a Kafkaesque system of rules. And while Lih notes user ambivalence toward voting, he leaves it largely unexplained. The attitude seems to have grown from an earlier Wiki culture developed by Meatball Wiki, one of the projects preceding and inspiring Wikipedia. The meatballers saw voting as an unnecessary distraction. “Don’t vote on everything, and if you can help it, don’t vote on anything,” read one page on the site. Wikipedia’s elders adopted those views, realizing that voting could be easily gamed and should not be used often. Instead they settled on a kind of enlightened autocracy: ordinary users would express their views on an issue, after which the more powerful administrators would interpret the vox populi and make a decision. Most of the time, consensus would emerge early on, and the decision was easy; however, as Wikipedia began attracting relatively diverse crowds of editors, achieving consensus grew more difficult. Voting opportunities were further reduced as articles became higher-ranked on Google. A high Google rank means more exposure, which led to more vote-rigging. No longer would there be “votes for deletion,” merely “articles for deletion,” which Wikipedians would discuss. A disinterested administrator would gauge the consensus and make a final decision. For a site that wants to democratize and revolutionize access to knowledge, such a conservative stance on voting seems puzzling and worth studying in detail, but Lih does not explore this incongruity. There is no guarantee that a more democratic Wikipedia would survive, but it would be interesting to investigate why users so quickly and confidently opted for consensus- rather than voting-driven decision-making.”

- “Edit This Page” par Evgeny Morozov sur Boston Review (November / December 2009)

La vie privée à l'heure des mémoires numériques. Pour une confiance renforcée entre citoyens et société de l'information

2009-11-07T16:11:27Z

Rapport d'information de M. Yves DÉTRAIGNE et Mme Anne-Marie ESCOFFIER, fait au nom de la commission des lois n° 441 (2008-2009) - 27 mai 2009

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"Sur ce terrain des valeurs, Patrick Buisson est à son aise. Avec un père Action française et..."

2009-11-07T16:41:45Z

“Sur ce terrain des valeurs, Patrick Buisson est à son aise. Avec un père Action française et ingénieur EDF acquis aux idées de Charles Maurras, le jeune Buisson a grandi dans le « national-catholicisme » cher au penseur d’extrême droite. « Je suis pour la séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat, corrige l’homme qui, voyant nos demandes répétées d’interview échouer dans sa boîte mail, tient finalement à préciser : Deux choses pour vous éviter quelques erreurs d’approche : je suis un catholique de tradition. Je ne me range ni du côté des intégristes ni du côté des progressistes. Je n’apprécie ni les fossiles ni les invertébrés. »”

- “Patrick Buisson, conseiller très à droite du Président” sur Télérama.fr (November 6th, 2009)

Louis C.K. invité du Late Night with Conan O’Brien avec un...

2009-11-07T14:41:00Z

Louis C.K. invité du Late Night with Conan O’Brien avec un sketch qu’on pourrait résumer par : “So Amazing, But Nobody is Happy”.

"Cuteness is also creeping into our language. At Urban Dictionary, a wiki site packed A to Z with new..."

2009-11-07T13:58:46Z

“Cuteness is also creeping into our language. At Urban Dictionary, a wiki site packed A to Z with new slang posted by its users, you can find huge swaths of screen space devoted to words rooted in cuteness. The definitions and examples give you the feeling that America’s bootstrap toughness is heading into the sunset. There are the annoying standby words used by adult bloggers in otherwise serious posts, such as “awwww” and “yay.” There is also the word “cutegasm,” which an Urban Dictionary user has defined as “the reaction one feels when being exposed to something overly cute. this may be an emotional, physical or even sexual response.” Here’s the example: “When Holly saw the baby trying to dance, she had a cutegasm.””

- “Addicted to Cute” par Jim Windolf Cuteness sur vanityfair.com (December 2009)

Cologne - Bonn

2009-11-07T09:27:36Z

Played around with my Lumix LX3, Gorillapod and iMovie.

Cast: sillium

En voiture, Simone, pour un Cologne - Bonn sur les chapeaux de...

2009-11-07T11:58:00Z

En voiture, Simone, pour un Cologne - Bonn sur les chapeaux de roues, qui n’est pas sans rappeler la mythique traversée de Paris de Claude Lelouch en 1976 dans “C’était un rendez-vous”.

Bande originale : “8th Wonder” par Gossip (Music for Men, 2009)

Secret Knock Detecting Lock (via Roukie)

2009-11-06T22:08:45Z

Secret Knock Detecting Lock (via Roukie)

Secret Knock Detecting Lock

2009-11-06T18:51:19Z

"Comme toute personne n’ayant pas la chance de pouvoir supporter une équipe en permanence au..."

2009-11-06T20:08:47Z

“Comme toute personne n’ayant pas la chance de pouvoir supporter une équipe en permanence au sommet, Hollande a multiplier d’autres amours footballistiques. Et là, ça frise le n’importe quoi: «Je suis resté attaché à Monaco, depuis l’époque Henry-Trézéguet et qu’il y a eu de belles équipes, même si la ville n’est pas franchement un symbole de foot démocratique. Et puis j’aime bien Guy Lacombe…» Et d’enchaîner, le sourire aux lèvres: «J’aime aussi le FC Nantes et l’En-avant Guingamp. Au final, dès que je m’intéresse à un club, il chute».”

- “François Hollande, l’autre vision du football” sur Tertulia sporting club (November 5th, 2009)

"There are signs that Jobs has inculcated the troops enough to last awhile without him. “The..."

2009-11-06T16:29:45Z

“There are signs that Jobs has inculcated the troops enough to last awhile without him. “The organization has been thoroughly trained to think like Steve,” says someone with contacts among the Apple executive team. “That’s why the six months went so smoothly. People could envision, ‘This is what Steve would do.’” Jobs, in fact, inspires far beyond Apple. Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently told The New Yorker that Jobs is their hero. When Jeff Bezos released Amazon.com’s smooth, shiny Kindle 2, the Jobs envy was obvious. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, says he often evokes Jobs in his advice to entrepreneurs. He says, “The threshold for the release of the first product should be, ‘What would Steve Jobs do?’” Looking out on the next decade, Jobs may well be asking himself a variation of that very question: After creating more than $150 billion in shareholder wealth, transforming movies, telecom, music, and computing (and profoundly influencing the worlds of retail and design), what should Steve Jobs do next? Given his penchant for secrecy and surprise and his proven brilliance, it’s a fair bet that he’ll let us know when he’s good and ready.”

- “The decade of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple” par Adam Lashinsky et Doris Burke sur CNN (November 5th, 2009) (via ATestu)

Origami for beginners (via maique)

2009-11-06T14:29:45Z

Origami for beginners (via maique)

Red Panda Cubs, Vol. 1

2009-11-06T14:07:25Z

MacDo + Fries + Free Wifi = YAMMY!

2009-11-06T06:03:00Z

MacDo + Fries + Free Wifi = YAMMY!

"Je devais avoir 13 ans. Pour la première fois de ma vie, j’allais franchir nos frontières et..."

2009-11-06T04:02:46Z

“Je devais avoir 13 ans. Pour la première fois de ma vie, j’allais franchir nos frontières et rejoindre un correspondant en Angleterre. Je me souviens de l’unique recommandation de mon père, que je respectai scrupuleusement une fois sur place : « Souviens-toi que tu seras là-bas l’image de la France : c’est elle qu’on jugera à travers toi ».”

- “Identité nationale ou de l’urgence d’en débattre” par Xavier Darcos sur Des idées d’abord (November 5th, 2009)

"Technology is that which is produced by a mind — any mind: animal, machine or alien. When we created..."

2009-11-06T02:01:56Z

“Technology is that which is produced by a mind — any mind: animal, machine or alien. When we created the technology of writing, we gladly extended our memory onto paper, making ourselves smarter. But in turn the alphabets we invented changed how our minds worked. Because our inventions can reach back into our brains, and essentially transform our minds into another one of our inventions, our inventions are more powerful than our minds. In this way technology can circle back into its origins, becoming its own child. The force of this uroborous is incomparable. There is no nuclear energy, fusion, plasma bolt, black hole, white dwarf, cosmic nebula anywhere in the universe that can uplift itself in the way that technology can. For certain there will be further evolutions of the technium. The great story that begins with the big bang and bootstraps itself up into persistent evolving systems that keep building up more complex systems will certainly keep going. First persistently dynamic planets hatch life, which uplifts itself to make minds, which then uplifts itself to make technology. Technology will uplift itself to create the next level of extropy. But it will continue the same arc. The same big history. Whatever technology evolves into, it will carry on in the direction it has been headed so far for the past 14 billion years: towards greater complexity, diversity, specialization, ubiquity, socialization, consilience, energy density, and sentience. A future meta-technology will be unrecognizable on its face, but fundamentally continue these trends.”

- “The Most Powerful Force in the World” par Kevin Kelly sur The Technium (August 17th, 2009)

Cities are technological artifacts, the largest technology we...

2009-11-06T00:01:00Z

Cities are technological artifacts, the largest technology we make. Their impact is out of proportion to the number of humans living in them. As the chart above shows, the percentage of humans living in cities averaged about one or two percent for most of recorded history. (The chart’s Y axis is a logarithmic scale of percentage.) Yet almost everything that we think of when we say “culture” arose within cities. After all, the terms “city” and “civilization” share the same root. But the massive citification, or urbanization, that characterizes the technium today is a very recent development. Like most other charts depicting the technium, not much happens until the last two centuries. Then populations booms, innovation rockets, information explodes, freedoms increase, and cities rule. Cities are technological artifacts, the largest technology we make. Their impact is out of proportion to the number of humans living in them. As the chart above shows, the percentage of humans living in cities averaged about one or two percent for most of recorded history. (The chart’s Y axis is a logarithmic scale of percentage.) Yet almost everything that we think of when we say “culture” arose within cities. After all, the terms “city” and “civilization” share the same root. But the massive citification, or urbanization, that characterizes the technium today is a very recent development. Like most other charts depicting the technium, not much happens until the last two centuries. Then populations booms, innovation rockets, information explodes, freedoms increase, and cities rule.

“The Choice of Cities” par Kevin Kelly dans The Technium (July 2nd, 2009)

"Whereas it took electrification 45 years to reach 90% of US residents, it’s taken only 20..."

2009-11-05T21:11:45Z

“Whereas it took electrification 45 years to reach 90% of US residents, it’s taken only 20 years for cell phones to reach the same penetration. The rate of diffusion is accelerating. A straight line extrapolation would suggest that the rate of technological adoption should continue to accelerate until it occurs instantaneously. By the year 2100, a personal teleporter, say, should be adopted by everyone alive the year it is introduced. A new immersive VR suit the day after it is released. And a new wireless wearable communicator the hour after it is invented. However that scenario is unlikely to happen because technology specializes as fast as it becomes common, so most technology will not be adopted by most people. In fact the more complex the technology, the less likely it will reach near-ubiquity. The peak global penetration for the average technological innovation will drop over time. We can see a hint of that in the chart above. The level of peak penetration at which diffusion plateaus is falling over time. Any particular new species of communication device in the next century is unlikely to every reach the same ubiquity as machine-woven cotton cloth, or even the television.”

- “Increasing Ubiquity” par Kevin Kelly sur The Technium (May 28th, 2009)