ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

Is The Golden Age Of Travel Over?

The old way it was practised, at vast scale, and across increasingly porous borders, has begun to look like it might be a terminal casualty. At the time of writing, there are only memories, and the work of reorienting ourselves to a more inert and less hospitable world. - Aeon

Can Machines Measure Common Sense?

Consciousness, thought, creativity, will, imagination, and agency — once considered to be explainable only through philosophical reflection were now reformulated as precisely defined cognitive functions. And these functions could in turn be measured and compared between humans and machines. - The New Atlantis

Intelligence, Machines, And Why It’s Increasingly Difficult To Tell The Difference

Any of us have interacted with apparently thoughtful machines often enough—for instance, when on the telephone and trying, often fruitlessly, to get to a customer service representative, that we have gradually lowered our standards for intelligence. - Hedgehog Review

Researchers: Where Your Sense Of Right And Wrong Comes From

The researchers found that higher conscientiousness – the tendency to be organised, hardworking and disciplined – was related to rating loyalty, authority and purity/sanctity as important bases for morality. - Psyche

The Essence Of Who You Are

The essence of selfhood is neither a rational mind nor an immaterial soul. It is a deeply embodied biological process, a process that underpins the simple feeling of being alive that is the basis for all our experiences of selfhood. - Nautilus

My Life As A Cyborg

My elevator pitch goes something like this: “I know you think cyborgs are always imminent. But not here yet. However, I am a cyborg. And cyborgs are first and foremost disabled people. We’re the ones who have a fundamental interface with tech. - Wired

What’s The Point Of Coming In To An Office?

The offices of tomorrow may have more in common with a café or a classroom or a maker space, IDEO's Sandy Speicher says. It’s all about giving people a “reason to come in rather than regulation to come in.” - Harvard Business Review

America Out Of Ideas? No – But Our Market For Ideas Is Broken

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the U.S. needed a revitalized culture of experimentation. Now I think that what we really need is more experimentation in markets, because our markets are failing to promote new ideas that drive progress and growth. - The Atlantic

We’re Never Going Back To Normal

So we have to figure out how to deal with "normal-adjacent," at least for the foreseeable future. - Los Angeles Times

Will NFTs Transform The Art World?

"If you believe the hype, NFTs are poised to transform the art world, changing not only how art is bought and sold, but also what kind of art we value, and which artists." That's ... a big if. - Washington Post

Buildings Become ‘Sky Gardens’ With Designers Who Bring Humans And Nature Back Together

OK, sure, we may not want too much forest or savannah in our skyscrapers, but some is good for humans. - The Observer (UK)

How Twitter Distorts Intimacy (And Context)

The frequency of context-destruction is no accident. Twitter rewards high-context speech, and then gives us the perfect tool to decontextualize that speech. Twitter is designed to invite our vulnerability, and then punish it.  - Raven

The Problem With Grand Narrative Histories Of Humanity

By producing an overarching story of life, Big History is meant to fill the void that was left by the processes of secularisation that have dismantled the holistic narratives that were provided by traditional religious systems. - Aeon

Do Computers Need To Be As Smart As Humans? Probably Not

Will deep learning eventually become “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), matching human intelligence in every way? I don’t believe it will happen in the next 20 years. - Wired

The 1920s Russian Novel That Anticipated Totalitarianism

People don’t have proper names; they are marked by a combination of letters and numbers, like the inmates of Nazi camps. They wear identical clothes, their hair is uniformly shorn, their food is synthetic and purely utilitarian, and their homes are identical and transparent. - The New Yorker

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