"In some creation myths, life arises out of the earth; in others, life falls out of the sky. The creation myth of the digital universe entails both metaphors. The hardware came out of the mud of World War II, and the code fell out of abstract mathematical concepts. Computation needs both physical stuff and a logical soul to bring it to life…"

"…When I first visited Google…I thought, my God, this is not Turing’s mansion—this is Turing’s cathedral. Cathedrals were built over hundreds of years by thousands of nameless people, each one carving a little corner somewhere or adding one little stone. That’s how I feel about the whole computational universe. Everybody is putting these small stones in place, incrementally creating this cathedral that no one could even imagine doing on their own."

"I DESPISE MULTI-PAGE ARTICLES WITH THE HEAT OF A MILLION SUNS. The Page One extension for Safari and Chrome fixes them, automatically displaying the single-page version of articles for several popular news sites. Install the extension now:"

[via: http://twitter.com/ballardian/status/60530562850492416 ]

"1. Statistical Literacy: Making sense of today’s data-driven world.<br />
2. Post-State Diplomacy: Power and politics, sans government.<br />
3. Remix Culture: Samples, mashups, and mixes.<br />
4. Applied Cognition: The neuroscience you need.<br />
5. Writing for New Forms: Self-expression in 140 characters.<br />
6. Waste Studies: Understanding end-to-end economics.<br />
7. Domestic Tech: How to use the world as your lab."

"The right word is "unfinished." Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them even, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a "nature," and that this nature is fixed and describable. We find more and more that this idea is insupportable - the "nature" of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for. The functional identity of things is a product of our interaction with them. And our own identities are products of our interaction with everything else. Now a lot of cultures far more "primitive" than ours take this entirely for granted - surely it is the whole basis of animism that the universe is a living, changing, changeable place. Does this make clearer why I welcome that African thing? It's not nostalgia or admiration of the exotic - it's saying, Here is a bundle of ideas that we would do well to learn from."

"[Hunch] isn’t just helping people shop for cars—it is getting its users to volunteer a truly impressive amount of unique psychographic data...

"I was digging through some files the other day and found this document from 1997. It gathers a set of quotes from issues of Wired magazine in its first five years. I don't recall why I created this (or even if I did compile all of them), but I suspect it was for our fifth anniversary issue. I don't think we ever ran any of it. Reading it now it is clear that all predictions of the future are really just predictions of the present. Here it is in full:"

"Last week Jeremy Clark from Adobe and I unveiled the first glimpse of the Wired Reader at TED. Above, you’ll see a video, narrated by Jeremy and Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich, who led our tablet team, that shows more. It explains why the tablet is such a groundbreaking opportunity for magazines such as ours."

Nothing earth shattering in the list, then the comments spin off to DRM, classroom teaching, etc.

"If you want truly dangerous bright green ideas, go way out beyond what the conventional wisdom thinks is possible...Think, instead, of the implications of ideas like zero energy, zero emissions, zero waste, closed loops, true-cost accounting for the value of ecological services, product-service systems, visible flows, totally transparent backstories, open innovation, green infrastructure, etc. These concepts are really weird, full of new insights and critical uncertainties -- and they, or ideas like them, are very quickly going to become the operating principles of our entire society. If we want to avoid a catastrophic collision with ecological reality, we need to change our thinking. Our ideas of what's normal, or even what's possible, will not outlast the next decade. Unfortunately, Wired's list of heresies is a list of normal, contemporary approaches and current environmental commonplaces packaged in a way designed to shock and titillate."

"next stage in technological evolution is...the One Machine...hardware is assembled from our myriad devices, its software is written by our collective online behavior...the Machine also includes us. After all, our brains are programming & underpinning it"

"Winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism's sacred cows. We can afford to ignore neither the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy nor the transformational potential of genetic engineering. We need to t

"to catch up with the personal life of this robotic lander carrying out a heroic mission millions of miles from home...we reveal the real identity of the Phoenix Mars Lander's Tweets. Don't read on if knowing the truth will spoil your fun."

"a place people want to work," "entrepreneurial spirit," "should look like a large home office," "no editorial calendar, not marketing driven," "lead, not follow," "stay lean and mean," and "legendary contributor relations." + "improving constantly"

"Alex Roy has a crazy dream: to beat the legendary Cannonball Run record by crossing the country in under 32 hours and 7 minutes. Floor it!"

Thom Mayne Architect "Blade Runner anticipated the conception of the metropolis that we have now, as a global phenomenon. It's so thorough in this depiction that it's incredibly useful to anyone making environments. It reminded architects to think about t

"Movies, TV, songs, games. Pop culture now comes packaged like cookies or chips, in bite-size bits for high-speed munching. It's instant entertainment - and boy, is it tasty."

"After reading about so-called "brain hacks" like that of Dilbert creator Scott Adams, I've become solidly convinced that my son Caleb doesn't need a coping strategy, he needs his brain to be recalibrated. With the help of some professionals and some surr

"Sometimes not building is the right answer, but it is not one that architects are trained to recommend. When appropriate, AMO can even propose the destruction of buildings "