Mindamp

"1. Thou shall not be always on - Resist the temptation to always being on. Turn your phone off occasionally. 2. Thou shall not do from a distance what can be done in person - Some powerful global brands can become weak at a local level. 3. Exalt the particular - Not everything scales or needs to scale. 4. You may always choose none of the above - Don't tick the gay/straight/married/single boxes. Human beings are more complex than the simple choices 5. Thou shall never be completely right - The internet verses complexities 6. Thou shall not be anonymous - Anonymity has lead to the conversation being well thought out by those who choose to sign in against the hatred spat out by the anonymous 7. Contact is king - Social marketing is an oxymoron. 8. Abstraction - Don't confuse abstract models and the real world. 9. Thou shall not steal - Without a social contract, openness can continue until there is nothing left to give things away. 10. Program or be programmed - We should ask 'What can we make it do?" rather than "What can it do for us?"."

Thoughtful piece by Steven Levy at Google's latest attempt to take on Facebook.

Mind Amplification "Tools we used to amplify our mind and congition." Created and curated by Zaq Mosher Zaq Mosher curates this topic from blogs, tweets, videos and much more: find out how!

Great Scoop-it piublication Zacq

"The scope of the Multitude Project is to drive the multitude social movement. In other words, we try to understand how the new technology is changing the power structure in modern societies, we build a new vision for a brighter future, and we propose a path towards this future, whereby the potential introduced by the new technology is actualized to the advantage of the multitude. Change is clearly on the way, in the natural direction of the emancipation of masses, a trend which can be clearly recognized throughout history. Major institutions will be greatly transformed in the near future due to immense pressure mainly induced by rapid technological advancements. Our goal is to predict some of these changes and to channel the change into a peaceful, incremental and constructive revolution. Along with the aforementioned exploratory and speculative activities, we also propose new methods and tools, to help individuals and groups all around the world in their daily struggle against injustice and economical inequality."

An iPad or Kindle does not magically improve education, says Cathy Davidson

"About the Forward Foundation Forward Foundation is a Foresight/Futures studies not for profit research and development group. Our members in the past have worked in the past with http://www.iftf.org/, MacArthur Foundation, Stanford University, MIT Press, MITE, USDA, and hundreds of small groups and networks across the globe. We produce research and forecasting like most "futures studies think tanks", but we also produce open source software and code, open source hardware and designs, and open licensed education materials. Examples include http://code.google.com/p/flows-dev/ http://flows.panarchy.com/ http://socialmediaclassroom.com and some of us have worked on http://cooperationcommons.com with http://iftf.org"

"Dr. Paul Ekman (1934 -) Paul Ekman was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and New York University. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Adelphi University (1958), after a one year internship at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. After two years as a Clinical Psychology Officer in the U.S. Army, he returned to Langley Porter where he worked from 1960 to 2004. His research on facial expression and body movement began in 1954, as the subject of his Master's thesis in 1955 and his first publication in 1957. In his early work, his approach to nonverbal behavior showed his training in personality. Over the next decade, a social psychological and cross-cultural emphasis characterized his work, with a growing interest in an evolutionary and semiotic frame of reference. In addition to his basic research on emotion and its expression, he has, for the last thirty years, also been studying deceit."

IThis article, written at the end of her life, presents the Historical Origins of The theory of Socio-cultural Viability by Mary Douglas, who is to be seen as the inspirator of the theory, and to have established the foundational ideas who have been further developped by her students, and later further developped and applied by many scholars across a wide range of disciplines. The first paragraph will hopefully provide some incentive to dig further: Introduction: What is Grid and Group Cultural Theory? How Useful can it be in the Modern World? It is a pleasure for me to reflect on the history of Grid-Group. I first described the idea in Natural Symbols ( Douglas 1970), a kind of necessary sequel to Purity and Danger (1966). I now realise that it was a simple idea presented in a complicated way. After a late start it has been radically redesigned by creative collaborators whose work I will describe. Back in the 1960's social anthropologists still felt it was necessary to vindicate the intelligence of colonial peoples, then known as "natives" or "primitives." A major objective of teaching and writing in anthropology was to attack something described by Levy Bruhl as "primitive mentality," which seemed to mean "primitive irrationality." Malinowski had started in the 1920's showing that the Trobrianders had rational customs and laws. In the 1930's Raymond Firth was original in focusing on the "primitive economics" of the Polynesians and found that the basic laws of supply, demand, and price applied in the rustic economies he studied. Evans-Pritchard made a frontal defence of Azande rationality. After World War II, Nadel and Gluckman followed up with the complexities of Nubian and Barotse legal systems. The very idea that the concept of "jurisprudence" could apply to "the natives" was innovative. In the 1950's and 60's we continued to dismantle intellectual barriers assumed to distinguish "Them" from "Us." The following ex

I believe this to be a helpfull introduction to the study od the Theory od Socio-cultural viability, which, it seems to me, is a usefull framework to look from a new angle to cooperation theory, institutional decision making, democracy and many other fields of social sciences

see customer service mentioned anywhere? No way! Google doesn't have any.

The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of people who refuse to employ new technology. It's well known the strictest of them don't use electricity, or automobiles, but rather farm with manual tools and ride in a horse and buggy. In any debate about the merits of embracing new technology, the Amish stand out as offering an honorable alternative of refusal. Yet Amish lives are anything but anti-technological. In fact on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers and surprisingly pro technology.

Kevin Kelly describes Amish Hackers and the way the Amish community sifts and selects appropriate technology. Talk about infotention! These people have focus on what a technology can do for them and how it will benefit the greater community.

Thinking about how to "flip" TedEd

The Problem of Consciousness* John R. Searle (copyright John R. Searle) Abstract: This paper attempts to begin to answer four questions. 1. What is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid? The most important scientific discovery of the present era will come when someone -- or some group -- discovers the answer to the following question: How exactly do neurobiological processes in the brain cause consciousness? This is the most important question facing us in the biological sciences, yet it is frequently evaded, and frequently misunderstood when not evaded. In order to clear the way for an understanding of this problem. I am going to begin to answer four questions: 1. What is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid?

best brainstorm presentation, ever

That's a lot of fun.

In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file).