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Technology

Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

We’d all like life to be simpler. But we also don’t want to sacrifice our options and capabilities. Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity, a rule from design, explains why we can’t have both. Here’s how the law can help us create …

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The Spiral of Silence

Our desire to fit in with others means we don’t always say what we think. We only express opinions that seem safe. Here’s how the spiral of silence works and how we can discover what people really think. *** Be honest: How often do you feel …

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When Technology Takes Revenge

While runaway cars and vengeful stitched-together humans may be the stuff of science fiction, technology really can take revenge on us. Seeing technology as part of a complex system can help us avoid costly unintended consequences. Here’s …

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A Primer on Algorithms and Bias

The growing influence of algorithms on our lives means we owe it to ourselves to better understand what they are and how they work. Understanding how the data we use to inform algorithms influences the results they give can help us avoid …

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The Ingredients For Innovation

Inventing new things is hard. Getting people to accept and use new inventions is often even harder. For most people, at most times, technological stagnation has been the norm. What does it take to escape from that and encourage creativity? …

Read moreThe Ingredients For Innovation

Gates’ Law: How Progress Compounds and Why It Matters

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” It’s unclear exactly who first made that statement, when they said it, or how it was phrased. The most probable source is Roy …

Read moreGates’ Law: How Progress Compounds and Why It Matters

Why the Printing Press and the Telegraph Were as Impactful as the Internet

What makes a communications technology revolutionary? One answer to this is to ask whether it fundamentally changes the way society is organized. This can be a very hard question to answer, because true fundamental changes alter society in …

Read moreWhy the Printing Press and the Telegraph Were as Impactful as the Internet

Don’t Let Your (Technology) Tools Use You

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its …

Read moreDon’t Let Your (Technology) Tools Use You

Marshall McLuhan: The Here And Now

“In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message.” *** In …

Read moreMarshall McLuhan: The Here And Now

The Glass Cage: Automation and US

People have worried about losing their jobs to robots for decades now. But how is growing automation really going to change us? Let’s take a look at the limitations of automation and the uniquely human skills that will remain valuable. *** …

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Claude Shannon: The Man Who Turned Paper Into Pixels

“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning.” — Claude Shannon (1948) *** Claude Shannon …

Read moreClaude Shannon: The Man Who Turned Paper Into Pixels

Douglas Adams on our Reactions to Technology Over Time

“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies,” writes Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt. 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural …

Read moreDouglas Adams on our Reactions to Technology Over Time

Marshall McLuhan: Old Versus New Assumptions

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), for those unfamiliar with him, rocketed from an unknown academic to rockstar with the publication of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in 1964. The core of the book is a phrase many of us are familiar …

Read moreMarshall McLuhan: Old Versus New Assumptions

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