Moral of the story: the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don't know how to use it, or don't have the background to ask the right questions, you'll end up with a head full of nonsense. But if you do know how to use it, it's an endless wealth of information. Just as globalization and de-unionization have been major drivers of the growth of income inequality over the past few decades, the internet is now a major driver of the growth of cognitive inequality. Caveat emptor.

WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?

Kevin Kelly argues that Spielberg's new Tintin goes beyond the uncanny valley into the hyperreal

WALL-E! RT @medialab Robot videojournalist uses cuteness to get vox pops.

RT @Tisca: Caveman instincts make you crave tiny gadgets #design #minimalism

Five emotions invented by the internet

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Unskilled and Unaware of It: Being too stupid to recognizing one’s own incompetence

“If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.”

The human hand, in manipulation of objects, is the hand in search of a brain. The brain is in search of a hand, and play is the medium by which those two are linked in the best way. —Stuart Brown

Using examples from Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, Jeff Atwood shows how to keep our guard up against people trying to sell you things and, ultimately, ourselves.

why some people choke and others panic

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

They prop up the tottering music industry, are lifelong consumers of gadgets and gizmos, keep gyms busy and colorists in demand. From their youth, when they behave as badly as adults, to their dotage, when they behave as badly as youngsters, amortals hate to be pigeonholed by age.

"Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It's a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity."

Sisältö on aina ollut mielenkiintoista, mutta tänä vuonna Year in Ideasin graafisessa ratkaisussakin on ideaa. Luettavuudeltaan mahtava.

Häpeälista. "These tracks and artists were most frequently deleted by the Last.fm community from their scrobbles."

According to Burton, confidence in the unproven arises from the neurobiological reward systems our ancestors developed in order to be able to act decisively on the basis of abstractions and ambiguous information. When cavemen began relying on ideas — e.g., how to kill a woolly mammoth — their brains learned to have faith in thoughts and memories. Nowadays, the same reward systems provide us with the feelings of intellectual confidence needed to test certain hypotheses: whether light can bend (Crazy!), or a doomed marriage can work (Sure!). “Say hello,” Burton writes, “to abstract thought’s subliminal cheerleader.”

Simple, but one of the smartest things I've read in a long time

Synthesizes recent popular writing about neuroscience