Mike Maney

This week’s collection of random stories I’ve read. Some are fun, some provocative, some informative. All are shared to expand and deepen how we see the world around us.

Do Humans Have An Unhealthy Fetish For The Future?: Listen to any technology evangelist, business leader, politician, educator, futurist, or “cultural influencer” these days, and you’ll hear the same refrain. Anyone who wants to be successful has to innovate, disrupt, and “own the future.” – http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059369/do-humans-have-an-unhealthy-fetish-for-the-future

The future of car ownership that no one is talking about: It has never been more clear that transformational change to one of the world’s largest industries is just around the corner. Car ownership is supposed to change — and when it does, it is predicted to be one of the most monumental displacements of wealth the world economy has ever seen. – https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/13/the-future-of-car-ownership-that-no-one-is-talking-about/

A civil servant missing most of his brain challenges our most basic theories of consciousness: Not much is definitively proven about consciousness, the awareness of one’s existence and surroundings, other than that it’s somehow linked to the brain. – http://qz.com/722614/a-civil-servant-missing-most-of-his-brain-challenges-our-most-basic-theories-of-consciousness/

How technology disrupted the truth: One Monday morning last September, Britain woke to a depraved news story. The prime minister, David Cameron, had committed an “obscene act with a dead pig’s head”, according to the Daily Mail. – https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth

With the Good Life over, how can suburbia regain its place in the sun?: It was where the interwar generation aspired to, but suburbs today are a tale of dying high streets and creeping poverty “Try to own a suburban home,” said an advertisement by the British Freehold Land Company in the 1920s, “it will make you a better citizen and help your family. – https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/09/suburbs-architecture-stagnation

Apollo 11 sourcecode on Github: Though the code for Apollo 11’s “Apollo Guidance Computer” has been online since 2003, when Ron Burkey rekeyed it from the scans that Gary Neff had uploaded, ex-NASA intern Chris Garry’s posting of the code to Github last week has precipitated a widespread interest in the code, along with close scr – http://boingboing.net/2016/07/10/apollo-11-sourcecode-on-github.html

How statistics are twisted to obscure public understanding: Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli the famous remark: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ In every industry, from education to healthcare to travel, the generation of quantitative data is considered important to maintain quality through competition. – https://aeon.co/ideas/how-statistics-are-twisted-to-obscure-public-understanding

The Weird Nothingness Across the Street From Famous Monuments: Four years ago, cinematographer Oliver Curtis went to Cairo for a freelance assignment. Like any good tourist, he visited the Great Pyramid of Giza. – http://www.wired.com/2016/07/oliver-curtis-volte-face-photography/

A Week of Gun Violence Does Nothing to Change the N.R.A.’s Message: In the language of today’s National Rifle Association, “an armed society is a polite society.” The aphorism, borrowed from the science-fiction author Robert Heinlein, is the inspiration for one of the N.R.A. – http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-silence-and-violence-of-the-n-r-a