Category: Mediaphilism

  • A Tale of Two AI’s: “Her” VS “Ex Machina”

    Ex Machina Human beings have speculated about Artificial Intelligence for over 2,000 years, our fantasies evolving as our technology evolves. More recent films, like Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick’s A.I., Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and George Lucas’ THX-1138 all tackle the hard questions and present insightful ways of looking at the issue. Most recently, I…

  • Nicolas de Condorcet’s “Progress of the Human Mind”

    It frustrates me bitterly that the works of the Enlightenment are almost forgotten in America’s universities. Science classes ignore them because scientists must focus on the most current understanding of our world. Humanities classes ignore them because the Age of Enlightenment, with its rationality and empiricism, is seen as the oppressor of creative expression. But…

  • Top 10 Books Exploring Otherness

    Top 10 Books Exploring Otherness I hate doing top 10 lists because I am going to make some huge embarrassing oversite and I really don’t have any objective way to order what makes the list. That being said, this list consist of my own personal favorites from the world of literature as someone who grew…

  • Reinventing Radio: An Evening with Ira Glass

    This American Life (TAL) is one of the most successful shows on NPR, it started in 1995, has won numerous awards, and one of my conservative friends even described the show as “single-handedly justifying the existence of NPR.” I’ve heard shows from time to time over the years, but a few months ago I downloaded…

  • A Review of Albert Brook’s 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America

    2030 For a man with a memorable career that spans three decades Albert Brooks doesn’t seem to have that many credits to his name in IMDB. The writer/director of Real Life, Defending Your Life, Mother, and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World has brought us only a handful of films, but they are all…

  • Breakout of Slide Presentation Linearity with Prezi

    Mxplx Prezi Screenshot At Science Online 2011 I was introduced to the Prezi Presentation Paradigm by Stacy Baker of Extreme Biology. After getting past a surprisingly mild learning curve, I was able to produce the following presentation mixing a Prezi presentation with desktop video capture: Keeping in mind this is not the best example of…

  • Memetic Association Exercizes with Science Tarot

    Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, 15th Century If you’re looking to part a fool and their money, psychic readings are a great business*. Through the art of cold reading,by making statements that seem personal, but are true for most people, the psychic creates the illusion of having supernatural intuition about their client. For instance, they may say…

  • Required Reading for Public Computer Science Teachers: Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

    Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms Dr. Seymour Papert is best known as the inventor of the Logo programming language, a tool for teaching children problem solving, but his influence in education goes much further than that. Papert has always been a visionary where computers and education intersect, and it is incredible how glacially society has moved to…

  • A Review of Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget

    You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto When developers of digital technologies design a program that requires you to interact with a computer as if it were a person, they ask you to accept in some corner of your brain that you might also be conceived of as a program. When they design an internet…

  • Random Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar

    Neytiri Roger Ebert absolutely loved it, Jim Emerson thought it was totally lame, and io9 has an essay up about it being a recapitulation of the “White Man’s Guilt” plotline. Here are my thought’s on James Cameron’s Avatar: Uncanny Valley: Doesn’t apply to this movie at all, which was one of my disappointments with it.…

  • Enlightenment Truths and Metaphysical Inaccuracies in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

    Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol I strongly disagree with avid Plotz’s commentary, Dan Brown’s Washington, which argues that the real story of Washington is in the political players, not the spiritual and philosophical history which is the focus of The Lost Symbol. Dan Brown’s power as a writer is in having his characters take an…

  • Carl Sagan Stars in Atomic Robo

    When you return to your unobservable but empirically determined dimension of origin–tell them Carl Sagan sent you! ~ Fictional Carl Sagan in Atomic Robo, Shadow from Beyond Time #4 I had previously covered a Carl Sagan cameo in the Atomic Robo comic book, where Sagan sends Dr. Atomic Robo Tesla to Mars with the Viking…