Selvz

Connecting Different

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:36:02 -0700

Connecting Different

Why You Should Be Asking Questions All The Time

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:16:31 -0700

Why You Should Be Asking Questions All The Time

What Will Human Cultures Be Like in 100 Years?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:14:01 -0700

What Will Human Cultures Be Like in 100 Years?:

You hear a lot about “next gen” science and technology, but not so much about will happen to human societies and cultures in the future. To fill the gap, we asked three futurists and one science fiction writer what social changes we should expect to see in the next century.

Photo

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:47:40 -0800

Stay Alive: Imagine Yourself Decades From Now

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:11:50 -0800

Stay Alive: Imagine Yourself Decades From Now:

Philosophers and social scientists have been keenly interested in learning exactly why some people fail to give a lot of weight to their own futures, even when that failure produces real hardship. Perhaps those who start to smoke don’t even identify with their future selves, who may be seriously harmed as a result.

Maurice Wheeler, TEDx Transmedia 2012, Rome.

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 05:30:28 -0800

Maurice Wheeler, TEDx Transmedia 2012, Rome.

Moving Around Without Losing Your Roots

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:51:28 -0800

Moving Around Without Losing Your Roots:

Yet home need not always be a place. It can be a territory, a relationship, a craft, a way of expression. Home is an experience of belonging, a feeling of being whole and known, sometimes too close for comfort. It’s those attachments that liberate us more than they constrain. As the expression suggests, home is where we are from — the place where we begin to be.

"You dream your way out until you actually, physically get out of it. I got out."

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:30:28 -0800

“You dream your way out until you actually, physically get out of it. I got out.”

- John Lennon - The Beatles Anthology

the prosthetic-memory project

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 00:16:23 -0800

It looks to me as though that prosthetic-memory project is going to be what we are about, as a species, because our prosthetic memory now actually stands a pretty good chance of surviving humanity. We could conceivably go extinct and our creations would live on. One day, in the sort of science-fiction novel I’m unlikely ever to write, intelligent aliens might encounter something descended from our creations. That something would introduce itself by saying, Hey, we wish our human ancestors could have been around to meet you guys because they were totally fascinated by this moment, but at least we’ve got this PowerPoint we’d like to show you about them. They don’t look anything like us, but that is where we came from, and they were actually made out of meat, as weird as that seems.

"An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or..."

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:15:43 -0800

““An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.””

How Self-Talk Raises and Lowers Our Stress Levels

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:36:20 -0800

How Self-Talk Raises and Lowers Our Stress Levels:

What makes your thoughts so powerful is that your self-talk forms a stream of consciousness that is critical to the operation of your body. The cells of your body eavesdrop on this inner self-talk 24-7.

Memento mori: it's time we reinvented death

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:35:05 -0700

The knowledge that we will die profoundly shapes our lives – but the nature of death itself is elusive and changeable

IT’S said that when a general returned in glory to ancient Rome, he was accompanied in his procession through the streets by a slave whose job it was to remind him that his triumph would not last forever. “Memento mori,” the slave whispered into the general’s ear: “remember you will die”. The story may be apocryphal, but the phrase is now applied to art intended to remind us of our mortality - from the Grim Reaper depicted on a medieval clock to Damien Hirst’s bejewelled skull.

As if we needed any reminder. While few of us know exactly when death will come, we all know that eventually it will. It’s usual to talk about death overshadowing life, and the passing of loved ones certainly casts a pall over the lives of those who remain behind. But contemplating our own deaths is one of the most powerful forces in our lives for both good and ill (see “Death: Why we should be grateful for it”) - driving us to nurture relationships, become entrenched in our beliefs, and construct Ozymandian follies.

In this, we are probably unique. Most animals seem to have hardly any conception of mortality: to them, a dead body is just another object, and the transition between life and death unremarkable. We, on the other hand, tend to treat those who have passed away as “beyond human”, rather than “non-human” or even “ex-human”. We have developed social behaviours around the treatment of the dead whose complexity far exceeds even our closest living relatives’ cursory interest in their fallen comrades. Physical separation of the living from the dead may have been one of the earliest manifestations of social culture (see “Death: The evolution of funerals”); today, the world’s cultures commemorate and celebrate death in ways ranging from solemn funerals to raucous carnivals.

So you could say that humans invented death - not the fact of it, of course, but its meaning as a life event imbued with cultural and psychological significance. But even after many millennia of cultural development, we don’t seem to be sure exactly what it is we’ve invented. The more we try to pin down the precise nature of death, the more elusive it becomes; and the more elusive it becomes, the more debatable our definitions of it (see “Death: The blurred line between dead and alive”).

And those definitions matter, because they are the only way we have of rationalising our otherwise illogical fear of death - a fear that’s probably the most widespread phobia on Earth (see “Death: Don’t fear the reaper”). Most of us would wish for a peaceful death after a long and well-lived life. Of course, not all of us get our wish. For some, death comes sooner than we would like, and that’s one reason to fear it. Only recently has it become commonplace for death to come later than we would like. Death can now be deferred by mechanical and medicinal means for days, weeks, months or years - and that brings with it fears of its own: of impotence, dependency and pain. Nothing in the way our societies are constructed is at all suited to this new situation.

So perhaps it is time for humanity to reinvent death, 3 million years or more after our first intimations of it. Indeed, the job is already underway: the proliferation of new types of death - industrial, vehicular and biochemical - has led to correspondingly complex legal codes. And there are those who seek to redefine death still further, by freezing their heads or replicating their minds outside their bodies - all to reify our long-held notions of passing beyond humanity.

Such projects may seem outlandish. But even for sceptics, the idea of greatly deferring or even defying death outright is worth deep and sincere reflection: in thinking about death, we are also thinking about life.

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628872.900-memento-mori-its-time-we-reinvented-death.html?cmpid=RSS%7CNSNS%7C2012-GLOBAL%7Conline-news

Time Travel: A Son Takes His Father on a Tour of His Boyhood Home—in a Video Game

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 09:02:48 -0700

Time Travel: A Son Takes His Father on a Tour of His Boyhood Home—in a Video Game:

Today, I’m going to tell you about the time my grandfather shot a man in the ass.

The year was 1949. The place was downtown Los Angeles. The occasion was a robbery with violence. A small store, I think: a tailor’s, or maybe a family-run grocery market? History has not recorded all of the details.

"We have the responsibility to take care of the whole planet. It is not a luxury, it is a matter of..."

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:17:24 -0700

““We have the responsibility to take care of the whole planet. It is not a luxury, it is a matter of our own survival.””

- Dalai Lama

Tweet by @ajayjuneja

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:48:50 -0700

Tweet by @ajayjuneja

Ceiling Beams - Temple of Seti I at Abydos

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 05:12:00 -0700

Ceiling Beams - Temple of Seti I at Abydos

Building Resilience by Wasting Time

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 05:07:04 -0700

Building Resilience by Wasting Time:

Research suggests that engaging in some activities we assume are nonproductive—as tiny exercises—may actually be a smart way to spend time, especially at work. These practices can make people more-resourceful problem solvers, more collaborative, and less likely to give up when the going gets tough. In other words, they can make people more resilient.

"The purpose here is to utilize the many available and unavoidable digital existences that we all..."

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 04:52:39 -0700

““The purpose here is to utilize the many available and unavoidable digital existences that we all take part of every day in a way that only truth can bring. Self truth. Honest individual beliefs and feelings. For my team, creating in a way that brings the feel that is familiar to all of us. This is something lost often in the move to a blurred analog/digital existence. To be able to gift an individual that may be inactive, disconnected, going through a personal crises, etc., with a means of self expression. Most find discretion and privacy a very valuable necessity. In such one may be hesitant to share these things that are being discovered. To have a self test-bed for coaching ones possible interest or even fancy is part of the solution. To allow one to hear their inner voice and act on it. Not act on what they heard, or what another is professing and even dogmatically pushing upon them. Let the truth of that individual out. Soon that one is comfortable and confident enough to bring it to the street or out into the open. That enhances society with true expression and variety. It educates us all in the diversity of us, spread YOUR word. Ignorance is not bliss and we will open a path to self-understanding, by allowing a way to develop the many Selvz within you.””

- HN

Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that the cloud will help expand...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 04:59:18 -0700

Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that the cloud will help expand the capacity of the human brain beyond its current limitations.

(Image: Sharee Davenport/Flickr/Getty) Philip K. Dick put it,...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 05:22:32 -0700

(Image: Sharee Davenport/Flickr/Getty)

Philip K. Dick put it, reality is that which, if you stop believing in it, does not go away. Things we just make up yield to our wishes and desires, but reality is stubborn.