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Cybernetics and the English language
We teach ChatGPT to read following George Orwell’s rules for using language “as an instrument for expressing and not concealing or preventing thought”
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The growing popularity of slow photography
After attaining glory, Cartier Bresson abandoned photography for finding it too mechanical. Yet cellphones have turned all of us into amateurs. And very often, as we can see in social media, virtuous ones: it goes on to prove that quality is a function of quantity. Yet it’s true that mechanization has sped things up unnaturally.… Read…
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Would you give your robot the car keys?
Google is upset that California requires all driverless cars to have a licensed driver behind the wheels at all times. Is automation being pushed too far? It’s not the fear of robots run amok and taking control of the universe, even though scientists are pondering about creating “good robots” (hint: those that won’t take away… Read…
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The Age of Mercury: The boom of messaging and the fickle Internet
Email has long been overridden by social networks, and these are now being relegated to the sidelines by messaging, the new boom of the Internet. This kind of service has now displaced conventional text messages. Facebook sees it and is pushing ahead in China. And a 48 hour ban on Whatsapp caused rival Telegram to soar… Read…
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The fascination with Star Wars
As anticipation builds up on the eve of a new Star Wars release, it’s worth pausing to think why epic movies fascinate us. Aristotle explained in his Poetics that in epics characters were more heroic or more evil than in actual life and waged battles on a gigantic scale and with such logical contradictions that… Read…
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Parallel Lives
Teddy Roosevelt famously detested Churchill, which mystified the latter. Yet Teddy’s daughter explained it: they were so much alike. It’s worth wondering if it’s the same with Elon Musk and what he feels for Steve Jobs, a regular newsmaker long after his death. Even, oddly, for the Syrian refugee crisis: Jobs’ biological father was a… Read…
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Cold people in a hot world
What will people think about the Paris pact on climate change, say a millennium later? Its preamble is loaded with references to mankind. We, the talking species that is harming the planet, should remember those without a voice: animals own Earth, too, even if they don’t talk.
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The blurry limits of reality
Nokia is reinventing itself with Ozo, a virtual reality camera that teleports the user, capturing the remote environment just as if you’re right there. It is and it isn’t reality. Like social networks, which are and aren’t society: Adele ignores them and sold 3.3 million copies, an absolute record.
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Yahoo! and the limits of a free Web
Yahoo! blocked email access to people who had installed ad-blockers. The experiment caused anger, but it’s one more sign that the current model of a free Web for services we used to pay – from mail to news – is becoming unsustainable.
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How Fiat Hopped on Google to Drive Traffic
Oil prices and the Detroit meltdown brought Fiat back to the U.S. To raise brand awareness following an absence of decades, it worked with Google on a strategy of online ads and search optimization. In 12 months, name recognition rose 127% and year-on-year sales 120%.
