319Woodchuck

"One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition."

Alvin Toffler (via wildcat2030)

rcjohnso:

Paris

"First, have a grasp of context, detail and the rationale which makes design and image-making worthwhile to yourself and commercially, to someone else. Try not to become a “linear” professional. Learn a variety of technique, of thinking methodology and most of all, don’t become complacent. Honestly, I get scared shitless every time I start a new, big job. I read, I gather information and push the client to tell me what they want. (Sometimes they really don’t know, and those jobs are usually nightmares!) Remember details, notice how people move, how sunlight cascades over moving objects, why foliage looks the way it does (it’s nature’s own fractal magic) and how come velvet has about the same range of value as metallic surfaces but one is soft and the other is brittle. And finally, don’t assume that technique alone will save your ass. It still is the idea that wins…every time. Remember that elaborate technique and dumb story produces a demo reel, not a narrative."

Syd Mead (via inthenoosphere)

"Five hundred years ago, technologies were not doubling in power and halving in price every eighteen months. Waterwheels were not becoming cheaper every hear. A hammer was not easier to use from one decade to the next. Iron was not increasing in strength. The yield of corn seed varied by the season’s climate, instead of improving each year. Every 12 months, you could not upgrade your oxen’s yoke to anything much better than what you already had."

Kevin Kelly (via inthenoosphere)

wildcat2030:

A few months ago, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein’s law of relativity. We contacted White at NASA and asked him to explain how this real life warp drive could actually work. The above image of a Vulcan command ship features a warp engine similar to an Alcubierre Drive. Image courtesy CBS. The Alcubierre Drive The idea came to White while he was considering a rather remarkable equation formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. In his 1994 paper titled, “The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity,” Alcubierre suggested a mechanism by which space-time could be “warped” both in front of and behind a spacecraft.

Fat Cats Unite!

(Source: gerrycanavan)

wildcat2030:

Get ready for a time when computers know our world - and our future - better than we do. One of my favourite Isaac Asmiov stories, Franchise, imagines an election in which computing is sufficiently advanced for the preferences of an entire country to be predicted on the basis of just one voter’s actions. We’re not quite at that stage yet. But we may be on the right path. For perhaps the greatest geek triumph of the 2012 presidential elections was the unlikely figure of statistician Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight blog – which algorithmically assessed hundreds of polls based on their historical accuracy – managed to successfully predict the result in 50 out of 50 states. His analysis – like every political story – divides opinion. To my mind, though, his work shines a light on a bigger story about our future relationship with technology, and in particular on a vision of progress where there’s an increasingly clear divide between those endeavours that can safely be left to humans, and those where machines and mathematics are preferable. It’s something that is already happening. From automated explorations of Mars, the use of unmanned drone aircraft for reconnaissance and remote assassination, to the analysis of probabilities and prediction. We do what we’re best at, and leave the rest to the machines. Some things have ever been thus, but never has the story of human enhancement been quite so closely entwined with the story of human redundancy. In Silver’s case, the people who may face immediate redundancy are those professional political pundits whose speculations saturate the media at election time – or at least replacement by suitably ideologically varied Silver-like figures next time around. In the longer term, though, the wholesale replacement of speculation with massively data-led science may be in order – not to mention the transformation of what it means to plan as well as to predict a political campaign. (via BBC - Future - Technology - All hail the prediction machines)

vintascope:

Broomsticks on Flickr.

Facebook | Flickr | Tumblr | Twitter

gotts love old ads

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote."

George Jean Nathan (via historical-nonfiction)

(Source: futilitycloset.com, via historical-nonfiction)

"Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself."

James Gleick (via inthenoosphere)