What we read this week (1 Mar)

Culture’s effects on cognition, “good smart” vs “bad smart” technology, the Borg Complex, print-digital hybrids in publishing and tiny chips and the Internet of Things.

Quote of the week

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.

–Marshall McLuhan

Articles of the week

  • Pacific Standard: We Aren’t the World
    A long and fascinating read about how culture affects cognition, and how the research of three academics is calling some of social science’s fundamental principles into question. The upshot: We are perhaps not all as alike as we think.
  • Wall Street Journal: Is Smart Making Us Dumb?
    Evgeny Morozov classifies sensor technologies into “good smart,” which usually simply provide information and allow us to make our own decisions, and “bad smart,” which use external forces like peer pressure to push us to make certain choices. Here he describes his worries about “bad smart” tech, and what implications might arise as these types of product become more common.
  • The Borg Complex: Borg Complex Symptoms
    Michael Sacasas recently defined the Borg Complex for “self-appointed evangelists of technological assimilation” who “would have us all abandon any critique of technology and simply adapt to the demands of technological society.” This list of symptoms is a good guideline and yes, we can see traits of the complex in ourselves. Acceptance is the first step…
  • desktop: New Publishing Hybrids
    An interview with Dan Hill on the merging process of digital and print media, and the design considerations that need to go into media that move between physical and digital.
  • Wired: Freescale’s Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body
    Freescale makes tiny, tiny computer chips, that may have some interesting applications in a field that sounds a little outlandish: swallowable computing.

Author: Maddie

Maddie is a strategist and researcher. She spends much of her time on the think tank side of Third Wave, and enjoys getting into the details of many different topics at once. Through this foraging for information, she finds ways to apply knowledge from one field in new, seemingly disparate ones, both in client work and other research. She holds an interdisciplinary BA in Computer Science, Linguistics and German, and has previously worked at VCCP and at the Science Gallery in Dublin.