I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The bootstrap paradox is a paradox of time travel in which information or objects can exist without having been created. After information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered in the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first place. Numerous science fiction stories are based on this paradox, which has also been the subject of serious physics articles.

Chartwell is a family that explores the use of OpenType to interpret and visualize data. The font format is highly portable and can be used in any application that supports standard ligatures. The data also remains editable allowing for easy updates.

There is a bunch of data that shows that the more we talk about things, the less we tend to actually accomplish them. This is because—and I’m sure you can think of a person in your life who does this a lot—the act of articulating the goal entails visualizing the achievement of it, and thus partially gives us credit for it in our own minds and reduces the motivation to actually do it. So doing this diminishes the payoff. There are many people smarter than I who have written about this, but there is a word for such a process that I think its very important. It’s called reification.

The first phone book, published by the New Haven District Telephone Company in New Haven, Connecticut, appeared in February 1878. It contained 50 entries, a mix of individuals, government services, clubs, and most of all commercial enterprises. Phone numbers didn’t exist yet--at that point, if you had a phone, the operator at your local exchange knew who you were.

Among Johnson's recommendations is to update the the 17th-century practice of keeping a commonplace book. Back then, the books were akin to intellectual journals: You carried them around and copied down interesting passages, quotations and insights you came across in your daily travels. This, Johnson argues, provided a way to let slow hunches build over time. Keeping your old hunches and provocations accessible allowed you to complete them with new information and insights later, a crucial channel for innovation.

The book, that fusty old technology, seems rigid and passé as we daily consume a diet of information bytes and digital images. The fault, dear reader, lies not in our books but in ourselves.

Most journalists are just like Gilbert, with daily computer skills that include Internet searches, word processing, and maybe some basic calculations in Excel, none of which enables journalists to truly mine large collections of data. Meanwhile, the amount of raw data available to journalists has mushroomed. At the federal level, the Obama administration’s “open government” initiative has given rise to new sources like Data.gov, a website devoted to the aggregation and easy dissemination of national data sets. State and local governments have followed suit, making much of the data they collect available online. More elusive tranches of data have been pried loose by nonprofit organizations courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act; an inquisitive journalist can download them in minutes. “I’m constantly amazed and surprised about what’s out there,” said Thomas Hargrove, who often leads data-based research projects for the chain’s fourteen newspapers and nine television stations.

Business visionary and bestselling author David Weinberger charts how as business, politics, science, and media move online, the rules of the physical world - in which everything has a place - are upended. In the digital world, everything has its places, with transformative effects: Information is now a social asset and should be made public, for anyone to link, organize, and make more valuable; There's no such thing as "too much" information. More information gives people the hooks to find what they need; Messiness is a digital virtue, leading to new ideas, efficiency, and social knowledge; Authorities are less important than buddies. Rather than relying on businesses or reviews for product information, customers trust people like themselves.With the shift to digital music standing as the model for the future in virtually every industry, "Everything Is Miscellaneous" shows how anyone can reap rewards from the rise of digital knowledge.

For information to have power, it needs to be held asymmetrically. Preferably very very asymmetrically. Someone who knows something that others do not know can do something potentially useful and profitable with that information.

Only Collect, and put things where they belong: http://tumblr.com/xrinekyso

RT @longreads: On the new longreads.com and the future of online publishing: http://bit.ly/anW7UT #longreads

Nice review of my current read. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains http://bit.ly/ceVf98

People who know a lot about a lot have long been an exclusive club, but now they are an endangered species. Edward Carr tracks some down ...

Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger has just released a new book and it's a good one. Titled Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Weinberger looks closely at how computers and the internet have have fundamentally altered how we organize and use information. Traditionally, because information was bound by atoms (usually paper), everything must go someplace but it can only go one place. But now through things such as tagging, contextual search, and social networks, we can, as he says, hang leaves on more that one branch (eg. Amazon's listing of books in multiple categories) and thus miscellany becomes an asset, not an incomprehensible mess.

Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it's possible to become informed if you choose. For less than your cable TV bill, you can buy and read an important book every week. Share the buying with six friends and it costs far less than coffee.

An Everything Bucket, since you’re probably wondering, is what I call applications that encourage the user to throw anything and everything into them. They’re virtual scrapbooks, applying a lightweight organization system to (often) unrelated data of varying types. These applications typically employ a proprietary database, or at best, build atop the SQLite database technology that Apple ships with Mac OS X. They usually default to storing information in Rich Text Format (RTF) or Portable Document Format (PDF). They are Not A Good Idea.

Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately. You’re five years old. Don’t presume too much to know what’s important and what isn’t. Photocopy journal articles, photograph archives; create bibliographies, buy books; make notes on every article or book you read, even if it’s just one line saying “Never read this again”; collect newspaper clippings and email them to yourself; collect quotes; save your ideas for future papers, future projects, future conferences, even if they seem wildly implausible now. Hoarding must become instinctual, it must be an uncontrollable, primal urge. And the higher, civilizing impulse that kicks in after the fact is organization, or librarianship. You must keep tabs on everything you collect, somehow; a system must be had, and the system must be idiot-proof. That is to say, you should be able to look back on it six months for now and not be completely stymied as to why you’ve organized things that way.

Milton Keynes only: Find The Nearest is a new quick way to find up to date information about the area that you live in. Just type in your postcode and you will get information on, your council tax rate, when your waste collection day is, what ward and parish you are within, local dentist and health centre . This is just some of the information available about your local area.

I just wrapped up a final project for an aesthetics course this semester, the assignment being to create a “Database of the Self.” I chose to make the database as a representation of the roles we play in terms of how we interact with information online. The roles are overlaid on a panarchy, which shows a visualization of adaptive lifecycles. Though the evolution of every idea or meme won’t necessarily follow this specific path, (it may in fact be rhizomatic, with multiple feedback loops), this begins to flesh out what we become as nodes within an enmeshed series of networks.

The cycle can be thought to begin with the “Activators,” in the lower right side of image.

How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various friends and colleagues who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is from an interview with Jay Rosen, press critic, writer, and professor of journalism at New York University.

Coping with the troubling tradeoff between depth of what we know and how fast we retrieve it may require something like peripheral intellectual vision

Meanwhile, Clay Shirky reads a LOT online, but like Carr's picture of a book reader: deep concentration, few distractions http://j.mp/9NxsU5
– Tim Carmody (tcarmody) http://twitter.com/tcarmody/statuses/20252287158

We need to alert people to our nuclear waste for the next 10,000 years. This is a tricky challenge: "The essence of the message itself is simple: Warning, dangerous materials are buried below. But how to communicate this to all possible discoverers using an enduring medium?"

London is famously difficult to navigate around. It lacks an 'organising principle', for instance the naming/numbering of streets popular in the US. Legible London is a new urban wayfaring system that intends to better guide visitors (and residents) around the city, as well as shifting more commuters out of the tube system and onto the streets.