How Your Brain Avoids Mental Traffic Jams - Brian Fung - Health
To keep from tripping over one another, different parts of your brain run at different speeds. Flickr/andrew_bisset We often like to think of our brains as a single device, the unitary executive governing the republic of our limbs and thoughts. While there's some truth to that, the reality is much more complex. In fact, not only do different parts of the brain perform different functions, but many of our basic activities -- such as quoting a song lyric or calculating a waiter's tip -- actually activate multiple regions of the brain that fire in perfect coordination with one another. When these otherwise independent parts of the brain work together, they operate in what's called a brain network: Large scale brain network research suggests that cognitive functioning is the result of interactions or communication between different brain systems distributed throughout the brain.
Finland Futures Research Centre
``Memes, The New Replicators''
Dec. 1999 Chapter 11 from Richard Dawkins, ``The Selfish Gene'' [ First published 1976; 1989 edition: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-286092-5 (paperback) ], the best short introduction to, and the text that kicked off, the new science of MEMETICS, (and, also, the text where Dawkins coined the term `meme'). The following, key, paragraph of this chapter may perhaps serve as an abstract: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. The notes (1), (2), ... are from the 1989 edition. Highlights ** and text in square brackets are not original. 11. So far, I have not talked much about man in particular, though I have not deliberately excluded him either. Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word: `culture'. Cultural transmission is not unique to man. Song in the saddleback truly evolves by non-genetic means. Consider the idea of God. (2) Meme 20.
Futures studies
Moore's law is an example of futures studies; it is a statistical collection of past and present trends with the goal of accurately extrapolating future trends. Futures studies (also called futurology and futurism) is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science. In general, it can be considered as a branch of the social sciences and parallel to the field of history. Overview[edit] Futures studies is an interdisciplinary field, studying yesterday's and today's changes, and aggregating and analyzing both lay and professional strategies and opinions with respect to tomorrow. Foresight may be the oldest term for the field. Three factors usually distinguish futures studies from the research conducted by other disciplines (although all of these disciplines overlap, to differing degrees). Probability and predictability[edit] Methodologies[edit]
The dirty secret behind the incubator boom
“It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food.” Detective Thorn, Soylent Green By its very nature, entrepreneurship involves a certain amount of throwing spaghetti against a wall. Our “spaghetti” is called a minimal viable product, and we launch them because nobody really knows what’s going to stick. But while watching a recent demo day for one of the countless incubators that have sprung up in the last 18 months, I was struck by a horrifying revelation. While the decreasing cost of launching a startup has been almost universally celebrated, one of the downsides has been a flood of would-be entrepreneurs into the Internet space. As market forces dictate, when there is an overabundance of a certain resource, the value of that resource decreases. For many incubators, entrepreneurs have reached this point. Another characteristic of markets is that value accrues to the scarcest resource.
Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
Crystal light methods
*Alistair A.R. Cockburn*Humans and Technology (from Cutter IT Journal, 2001) In the early 1990’s, Alistair Cockburn was hired by the IBM Consulting Group to construct and document a methodology for object-oriented development. They had no preferences as to what the answer might look like, just that it work. His approach to the assignment was to interview as many projects as possible, writing down whatever the teams said was important to their success (or failure). Team after successful team “apologized” for not following a formal process, for not using a hi-tech CASE tool, for “merely” sitting close to each other and discussing as they went. As Alistair says: These results have been consistent, from 1991 to 1999, from Hong Kong to the Americas, to Norway and South Africa, in COBOL, Smalltalk, Java, VB, Sapiens and Synon. People are communicating beings. Written, reviewed requirements and design documents are “promises” for what will be built, serving as timed progress markers. Thoughts?
Innofacturing, the Real Innovation in Manufacturing
We have been confronted again and again with the message that Manufacturing must evolve to Mind-facturing or Talent-facturing. But according this criteria, where is the future of manufacturing headed? What is the new-growth factory for a company? In this article I intend to indicate the manufacturing’s evolution through Innovation, the real Innovation in Manufacturing. For Innofacturing, I define six points that organizations should work towards a Real Innovation in Manufacturing: 1. Increase the Operational Productivity through of the well known tools of Operational Excellence as Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints (TOC), Business Process Management, etc.Increase the Resource Productivity across the full “Supply Circle”. In production, the manufacturers should implement programs to improve labor and capital productivity through Operational Excellence. 2. Kaizen or Continuous Improvement is a Japanese term well known and applied by many companies. 3. 4. 5. 6.
