SpaceXponential
@spacexponential
Conscientious Questioner
SpaceXponential
This, I believe, is what happened to many of America’s key institutions in the mid-to-late 2010s. They got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. The shift was most pronounced in universities, scholarly associations, creative industries, and political organizations at every level (nationa... See more
The Atlantic • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
There’s art that I consider art, and there’s other things – things that could be beautiful, but too superfluously so. The intention behind their creation is the desire to please the eyes. They want to be fashionable. But true art is disinterested. True art doesn’t care to be appreciated, obsessed over with, or owned. It holds a certain self-respect... See more
Wendi Yan • An Artist in Crypto
Again, as I noted above, Facebook made the 2013 decision to increase the value of newsworthy links for a reason, and in the time since, BuzzFeed in particular has proven that there is a consistent and repeatable way to not only reach a large number of people but to compel them to share content as well. Was Krugman wrong because he didn’t appreciate... See more
Stratechery • Mistakes and Memes
The key idea behind a dialogue is that 10 or 20 people get together and just begin talking, with the purpose of putting their preconceptions and thoughts outside of themselves to in order to investigate the collective patterns of thought.
Charles Broskoski • Bohm Dialogue
It’s important that people—actual individuals—are doing the work for themselves to decide how exactly they want to group information together, because it’s this exercise that hones a person’s unique intuition. It’s personal intuition that gives a piece of information a unique shape to live in, and it's the many connected shapes that make Are.na su
... See moreare.na • On Motivation
Immutability, as it turns out, is not always well defined. In the case of blockchain, it does not mean that the records can never be changed or rolled back. Blockchain trust is immutable not in a binary sense, but in a probabilistic sense. Distinguishing untrustworthy chains from the consensus is not an all-or-nothing decision. The more subsequent ... See more
JENA MARIE ESPELITA • TRUSTING A TRUSTLESS NETWORK. The Paradoxes of Trust in Blockchain Technology
Context Omission and Trust are fundamental ingredients in the creation of facts, and both depend completely on subjective judgment. Facts are not “indivisible atoms of truth” — instead, they seem impossible to define with the objectivity we’ve come to expect from them.
Mike Elias • Wittgenstein’s Revenge
Process is the new god; not product. Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash‐up and remix stands in the way of the digital revolution. Digital Humanities means iterative scholarship, mobilized collaborations, and networks of research. It honors the quality of results; but it also honors the steps by means of which results are obtained... See more
Todd Presner • The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0
+ Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
Kevin Kelly • Scenius, or Communal Genius
Epistemology and