Magnasanti Taken from the comments of this interesting conversation in +Pascal Wallisch‘s thread: https://plus.google.com/u/0/100279438294886290330/posts/dtoeQH2s73f SIMCITY 3000 – MAGNASANTI – 6 MILLION – ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM.flv

Andrea Graziano originally shared this post: via +Sakis Koukouvis Crouching Data, Hidden Code: Tracking Emotions with Twitter in Realtime with EmotiMeter Social Media Content Analysis Natural Language Processing Data Mining and Machine learning for large-scale social media GPU based processing, distributed and parallel architectures Online Social Inter…

Leafcutter ants practice the most sophisticated form of ant agriculture, and probably the most sophisticated form of nonhuman agriculture on the planet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-fungus_mutualism “Generalized higher agriculture is practiced by 63 species in two genera and refers to the condition of highly domesticated fungus. The fungi used in higher agriculture cannot survive without its agriculturalists to tend it and has phenotypic changes that allow for increased ease of ant harvesting. Leafcutter agriculture, which is a more highly derived form of higher agriculture, is practiced by 40 species in two genera and has the most recent evolution, originating between 8 and 12 million years ago. Leaf cutters use living biomass as the substrate to feed their fungi, whereas in all other types of agriculture, the fungus requires dead biomass.” Leafcutters have been practicing advanced forms of sustainable agriculture for over 8 million years. Human beings have been doing it for about 10,000 years or so, which is less that .15% of that time. #ants are #awesome Alex Wild originally shared this post: Among the more charming insects I encountered in southern Brazil was Acromyrmex disciger , a furry little leafcutter ant species. Here, a worker carries a cut leaf down a tree trunk. Lighting this shot required a careful balance between fill and back flash. For #wildlifewednesday , curated by +Mike Spinak.

The Philosopher by +Meghan Fitzgerald

Part of the lesson of this story, I take it, is that “your” song isn’t yours alone, but belongs to the community. But of course the song is just a tool for tracking an individual’s identity over their lifetime. So part of the lesson is that your identity isn’t your own. This lesson is so radically contrary to the existing order of things that it might make one uneasy to state it so explicitly, but better uneasiness than perpetuating the existing order. John Kellden originally shared this post: Our Future Society, part 51: Ubuntu Your Unique Story, Your Song When a woman of the African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes to the jungle with other women, and together they pray and meditate until you get to “The song of the child”. When a child is born, the community gets together and they sing the child’s song. When the child begins his education, people get together and he sings his song. When they become an adult, they get together again and sing it. When it comes to your wedding, the person hears his song. Finally, when their soul is going from this world, family and friends are approaching and, like his birth, sing their song to accompany it in the “journey”. In the Ubuntu tribe, there is another occasion when men sing the song. If at some point the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, they take him to the center of town and the people of the community form a circle around her. Then they sing “your song.” The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment, but is the love and memory of his true identity. When we recognize our own song, we have no desire or need to hurt anyone. Your […]

Money is a bad organization framework. It worked well enough when society was organized around the presumption of private ownership and trade, which accounts for roughly the last ten thousand years or so; its really a legacy issue from the Agricultural Revolution. Remember, that’s less that a fifth of our existence as behaviorally modern humans. The digital age can do better. Digital societies are organized around the dynamics of collaboration and publicity, and those dynamics are better modeled by economies of attention than economies of financial transaction. We need to understand that the #attentioneconomy provides an overall more productive and stable organizational framework than money will ever provide. Money distorts the way we think, and this distortion is literally killing us. The digital age must do better. Moves like these from Google and Apple are early attempts at playing with money as an organizing framework. It’s smart that they are doing something since it is fairly clear that we will be transitioning to cashless economies soon enough; we’re mostly there already. But if we are going cashless anyway, we should at least explore some attempts to go moneyless and start rethinking our organizational strategies from the ground up. More on why markets are counterproductive in the digital age: http://digitalinterface.blogspot.com/2012/05/digital-politics.html Reposted comment from OP Gideon Rosenblatt originally shared this post: The Future of Paying for Things is Apple (and Google) The company that controls mobile is also likely to control the future of paying for stuff. Everything that this article says about Apple is also true for Google. The only real difference is the massive iTunes user base, but Google is working hard on that and has advantages of its own because of its stronger online shopping position. What will Amazon’s response be? I don’t know, but they better be working […]

Peter Smalley originally shared this post: #science #biology #seriousbusiness “I am large, I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman There are ten times more non-human cells in your body than there are human cells. Think about that for a moment. Your body is incredibly diverse, a community of cells as populous as the night sky. And though certain cells stand out like constellations, there are multitudes beyond them. You, the individual, are vast beyond comprehension. In this study, 200 scientists from 80 institutions studied 4788 biological samples from 242 healthy adults – and found over ten thousand species represented in what is being called the Human Microbiome Project. “Like 15th century explorers describing the outline of a new continent, HMP researchers employed a new technological strategy to define, for the first time, the normal microbial makeup of the human body,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. This is hardly navel-gazing. The normal complement of microflora that inhabit the human body helps prevent disease, as well as performing many critical cooperative functions for human beings. Understanding of this incredibly varied community may well represent the next major step forward in our understanding of human health. Original paper (full text): http://www.mbl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/microbiome_huse_nature12.pdf First “map” of the bacterial make-up of humans published | R&D MagFirst “map” of the bacterial make-up of humans published The landmark publication this week of a “map” of the bacterial make-up of healthy humans required the work of 200 scientists, who made sense of more than 5,000 samples of human and bacterial DNA and 3…

Just to be absolutely clear, these machines will run on the food you eat. They will be as much a part of your body as anything can be. via +Linda Dean Keith Kolb originally shared this post: +Annika O’Brien ‘s goal of becoming a cyborg is a few steps closer http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/13/mit-engineers-develop-glucose-fuel-cell-for-neural-implants/?utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=website MIT engineers develop glucose-based fuel cell to be used in neural implants We’ve seen fuel cells used in a variety of gadgets — from cars to portable chargers — and while medical devices aren’t exactly

The luxury of human guidance Competing robots must retrieve samples such as colored tennis balls, blocks of aluminum or rocks spread across a landscape filled with soft soils, rocks, trees and bodies of water — all without human guidance or GPS navigation to simulate the challenges of exploring other planets. The contest is scheduled to take place at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., from today through Sunday (June 15 – 17). “Rovers that might have to do this someday on Mars or another planet don’t have the luxury of operating with human guidance,” said Mason Peck, NASA’s chief technologist. NASA originally shared this post: Robots! “NASA $1.5 Million Contest Unleashes Robots for Humans” — InnovationDailyNews. Jeremy Hsu writes about NASA’s Centennial Challenges prize competition at Worcester Polytechnic Institute taking place Friday and Saturday on the WPI campus in Worcester, Mass. Public invited to attend and catch a glimpse of the future! NASA’s $1.5 Million Contest Unleashes Robots from Humans A $1.5 million contest encourages smarter rovers capable of retrieving samples on Mars without human guidance.

The year’s most important technology stories? In one week, I will be at Princeton University to teach my yearly Human Nature and Technology course through Johns Hopkins’ Center For Talented Youth program. It’s basically a summer camp for high school nerds, and our HTEC course covers a range of philosophical issues relevant to human life in today’s technological age. This will be my 7th year teaching the course. It’s a lot of fun! The first assignment is to research the top tech stories of the last year, from the summer of 2011 to today. Last year, students covered the following stories: Ecological disasters (Japan tsunami, Deep Water Horizon spill) Wikileaks Arab Spring Climate Change Autonomous Drone attacks Cyberwar (Stuxnet, Anonymous, etc) The Digital Divide Privacy and Freedom (covered Kentuky vs King, the NC Eugenics program) This list formed after some brainstorming with the students, and then they were let loose in a library to prepare some research on these topics for class presentations. This is a new year, with plenty of new stories. What stories belong on this year’s list? Leave your suggestions in the comments! I’ll leave mine there as well. For more information on the CTY program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Talented_Youth