IBM’s Watson Can Now Debate Its Opponents “Watson then presented three relevant arguments in favor of banning violent video games for minors, but qualified its assessment by bring up several relevant counterarguments and considerations. In all, it was a fairly cogent review of the data. “ tags: ibm watson debate ai weekly argument thoughtvectors BBC News – YouTube star Michelle Phan sued over copyright breach “Michelle Phan found success posting make-up tutorial videos, attracting more than six million subscribers to her channel since she started it in 2007. She is a member of a group of YouTube stars whose popularity rivals that of many mainstream pop stars. “ tags: bbc youtube copyright weekly tweet breaking the spell – Text Patterns – The New Atlantis “Ben Jonson’s frustration that Shakespeare’s plays were far more inconsistently and incoherently put together than his own but were nevertheless, somehow, more popular, and commented that this was just it: Jonson’s plays were put together, more like “mechanical models of plays” than the real thing, whereas Shaksepeare’s plays had all the odd growths and irregular edges of organic life. This is my chief complaint with much fiction of the past fifty years, including much very highly regarded fiction, like that of John Updike: these aren’t novels, they are mechanical models of novels. Precision-engineered down to the last […]

How Einstein Thought: Fostering Combinatorial Creativity and Unconscious Connections | Brain Pickings “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” tags: einstein thought creativity connections weekly School for poetic computation “school for poetic computation is an artist run school launching this fall in New York. A small group of students and faculty will work closely to explore the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory — focusing especially on artistic intervention. It’s a 10 week program, a hybrid of residency and research group, that will happen multiple times per year to be a powerboost for creativity. Our motto is: more poems less demos.” h/t Gardner Campbell tags: code poetry language beauty programming computer english weekly 10 Rules of Internet – Anil Dash “Most websites treat “I like it” and “This is good” as the same thing, leading to most people on the Internet refusing to distinguish between “I don’t like it” and “It’s not good”. When a company or industry is facing changes to its business due to technology, it will argue against the need for change based on the moral importance of its work, rather than trying to understand the social underpinnings. “ tags: rules internet society weekly Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane | Alternet ” Many of us, sadly, are ashamed […]

Google Sends Reporter a GIF Instead of a ‘No Comment’ | WIRED “This adorable animated GIF is apparently the official answer Google sent to a Daily Dot reporter in response to his seeming scoop on a new YouTube livestreaming plan. “ tags: gif comment wired news change culture weekly The Architecture of a Data Visualization — Accurat studio — Medium “he clarity does not need to come all at once, however; we also like the idea of providing several and consequent layers of exploration on the multiple dataset we analyze. We call it a “non-linear storytelling” where people can get lost in singular elements, minor tales, and last-mile textual elements within the greater visualization.” tags: weekly data storytelling learning visualization data visualization xkcd: xkcloud xkcd continues to be amazing tags: comic interactive xkcd cyoa weekly How Companies and Services Like Facebook Are Shaped by the Programming Languages They Use | MIT Technology Review “Programming languages shape the way their users think—which helps explain how tech startups work and why they are able to reinvent themselves. “ tags: programming languages tools thinking language weekly Great advice from Marshall McLuhan: “Read only the right-hand page of serious books” – Boing Boing ““If it’s a frivolous, relaxing book, I read every word. But serious books I read on the right-hand side only because […]