I don’t feel at home where I am,or where I spend time; only where,beyond counting, there’s freedom and calm,that is, waves, that is, space where, when there,you consist of pure freedom, which, seen,turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone,to pebbles and sand … where life’s mean-ing lies buried, that never let onecome within cannon shot [...]
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M$.I.T.
“Today, four years into the five-year partnership, the protests are over and Microsoft technology is firmly entrenched at MIT.” This has to be one of the most thoroughly nauseating and depressing articles I have read in a while. At least everyone at MIT isn’t fooled, but that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. [...]
Genetic Verse
According to an article in New Scientist, David Rea has written a poetry program based on a genetic algorithm that evolves depending on user input. Each word in the poem acts like a gene, and when enough would-be versifiers choose one gene to survive, others are killed off to make way for the newly evolving [...]
Rolling Along
From today’s Corinth Tattler: “Sisyphus, legendary founder of our fair city and lover of Anticleia, was condemed to eternal life rolling a stone up the hill in the realm of Hades. He accused Zeus, well known father of the gods, of abducting Aegina, vacationing daughter of the river-god Asopus. The god of the heaven and [...]
F.C.C. Ruling
From moveon.org: On Monday, Michael Powell and his allies on the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to authorize media consolidation. It’s a sad day for democracy — this decision will place the bulk of our country’s newspapers and TV stations in even fewer hands. Diversity, fairness, and competition will decline as a result. Is this [...]
Neuroethics and Brain Privacy
A staple of science fiction for years, the telepath has often been used to give space monarchs an advantage, bald captains of starships insights into adversaries’ feelings, and consideration into the ethical dimensions of brain scans. Talk about intellectual property, Mr. Spock! Yet, this makes sense, epsecially when viewed in the light of Kurzweil’s consciousness [...]
Visible Circuits
This is not really recent news, but in the light of this week’s reading for my New Media class, I thought it might be worth a look: the Visible Human Project.