Observe, Think & study

The flâneur wandered in the shopping arcades, but he did not give in to the temptations of consumerism; the arcade was primarily a pathway to a rich sensory experience — and only then a temple of consumption. His goal was to observe, to bathe in the crowd, taking in its noises, its chaos, its heterogeneity, its cosmopolitanism. Occasionally, he would narrate what he saw — surveying both his private self and the world at large — in the form of short essays for daily newspapers. The Death of the Cyberflâneur - NYTimes.com

Pour l’instant, constate-t-il beaucoup de promesses de l’enseignement en ligne n’ont pas encore été tenues. L’éducation autrement : oui, mais comment ? « InternetActu.net

Your World of Text 1 , Z ◊ '

My current research in a nutshell - Random notes in French & English from Pierre Lévy I think that there has been only 4 of these big changes. The first one is related to the invention of writing, when symbols became permament and reified . The second one corresponds to the invention of the alphabet, indian numerals and other small groups of symbols able to represent "almost everything" by combination . The third one is the invention of the printing press and the subsequent invention of electronic mass media. In this case, the symbols were reproduced and transmitted by industrial machines.

The Rise of the New Groupthink - NYTimes.com Many introverts seem to know this instinctively, and resist being herded together. Backbone Entertainment, a video game development company in Emeryville, Calif., initially used an open-plan office, but found that its game developers, many of whom were introverts, were unhappy. “It was one big warehouse space, with just tables, no walls, and everyone could see each other,” recalled Mike Mika, the former creative director. “We switched over to cubicles and were worried about it — you’d think in a creative environment that people would hate that. But it turns out they prefer having nooks and crannies they can hide away in and just be away from everybody.”

How Drugs Helped Invent the Internet & The Singularity: Jason Silva on "Turning Into Gods" - YouTube Advertisement

TO UNDERSTAND IS TO PERCEIVE PATTERNS on Vimeo

The Beginning of Infinity on Vimeo

McLuhan

The Internet Will Get a Peer Review Layer Next Year Think long-term. Infrastructure for 100 years? Or longer? Many formats, many contexts.

Felix Salmon: Why Apple’s Customers Cripple Its User Experience | Epicenter | Wired.com Now for some people — specifically people who are very comfortable with iOS, who know their way around an iPhone, and who value the ability to save money — a switch to Google Voice still makes sense. Text-messaging plans are ludicrously expensive, and I support anybody who comes up with a way of avoiding having to pay those bills. (Including, it must be said, Apple, whose iMessage platform, if it catches on, neatly circumvents existing text-messaging systems.) But it does seem to me that so long as Apple has to deal with the hated wireless providers, people will always be voluntarily accepting a subpar user experience because they want to save on monthly charges. Apple has always hated it when its customers have a subpar user experience, but this problem isn’t going to go away: in fact, it’s only going to get worse. On top of that, you might well be violating your wireless carrier’s terms of service.

The growing population of the world, now estimated to be over 7 billion, marks a global milestone and presents obvious challenges for the planet.Â There are extremely densely populated cities and sparsely populated countries.Â China is the most populous country with India following closely behind. This post brings together some disparate illustrations of our world as it grows, including scenes from Mong Kok district in Hong Kong, which has the highest population density in the world, with 130,000 per one square kilometer. In Mongolia, the world's least densely populated country,Â 2.7 million people are spread across an area three times the size of France.Â Then there's Out Skerries, a tiny outcropping of rocks off the east coast of Scotland where the population is just 65.Â And doing what he can to contribute to that 7 billion global milestone is Ziona, the head of a religious sect called "Chana." Â He has 39 wives, 94 children, and 33 grandchildren. World Population: Where it's thick and where it's thin - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Sans vouloir être désagréable envers les amateurs de musique ethnique, précise le journaliste de Wired, Wikipédia mérite plus d’égards. De fait, le site, monumentale compilation de 19 millions d’entrées en 282 langues, a déjà de par le monde un impact culturel supérieur à une mine d’argent japonaise aujourd’hui éteinte et à la plupart de 936 sites reconnus d’une “valeur universelle exceptionnelle” dans le classement au Patrimoine mondial. Mais, bien que méritant pleinement d’apparaître dans cette liste, la vérité est que Wikipédia n’a pas besoin du classement au Patrimoine mondial. C’est le classement au Patrimoine mondial qui a besoin de Wikipédia. Vous aviez déjà entendu parler de cette classification ? demande Keats. L’Unesco a-t-il besoin de Wikipédia pour protéger notre Patrimoine mondial… immatériel ? « InternetActu.net

"I think today the world is asking for a real alternative. Would you like to live in a world where the only alternative is either anglo-saxon neoliberalism or Chinese-Singaporean capitalism with Asian values? I claim if we do nothing we will gradually approach a kind of a new type of authoritarian society. Here I see the world historical importance of what is happening today in China. Until now there was one good argument for capitalism: sooner or later it brought a demand for democracy... In his distinct and colourful manner, he analyses the Arab Spring, the eurozone crisis, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and the rise of China. Slavoj Zizek: 'Now the field is open' - Talk to Al Jazeera - Al Jazeera English

[Simone Cicero]: At first glance, I think it’s useful that you tell the readers how you came to the concept of Hyper Natural Objects . In essence I would like you to introduce to the diagram that explains the evolution from mimicry to hyper nature and thus the concept briefly. In particular, I also like to know how you got (you and Leandro Agrò ) to the definition: Massimo at Frontiers 2011 - Original under CC > http://goo.gl/NivUJ “The Hyper Natural Objects are souls of software (applications) that revolt the tool that the receive them (eg: iPad) well enough to enable it to “interpret” a specific user experience (UX) by layering on other comparable pre-existing usage habits” Welcome to the Hyper Natural World – A talk with Massimo Scognamiglio, artist and visionary «

Eloge de la transversalité et de l'intelligence collective - LeMonde.fr Il est donc à souhaiter que les politiques scientifiques de demain prennent le soin de construire ou de préserver un espace propice à la transversalité des savoirs. Car si le premier temps de la respiration scientifique est bien celui d'une spécialisation structurante qui s'inspire de l'effort cumulé des connaissances élaborées par les générations passées, le second temps, celui de l'innovation, fonctionne davantage sur le mode du glissement et de la restructuration des schémas de pensée après avoir mis en évidence les limites et les impasses des schémas antérieurs. Ce second temps appelle souvent un entrechoc des discours, une fertilisation croisée des disciplines et une prise de risques clairement indisciplinée ou, pourrait-on dire , indisciplinaire.