(6,340 words)
This online EDGE edition with links and streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge255.html
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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GIN, TELEVISION, AND COGNITIVE SURPLUS (VIDEO)
A Talk by Clay Shirky
And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we're talking about. It's so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of thatÝ is 98 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.
I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you?
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IN THE NEWS
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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Campaign observers: Time is ripe for Obama to step up his game
By Carla Marinucci
... At the Saddleback forum with Pastor Rick Warren on Saturday in San Diego, the Republican presidential candidate delivered on-the-money messages and answers so effective they were "scary to me," said George Lakoff, a renowned author and UC Berkeley linguistics professor who has studied how the human brain absorbs and processes messages. ...
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ABC NEWS
Party Time: From Dreams And Delusions To Wars And Wiretapping
By John Allen Paulos
...Thinking about the genesis and consequences of the Iraq War and the recently passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that authorizes wholesale wiretapping, I recalled a relevant party game I once wrote about. The game, described by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in his book "Consciousness Explained," is a variant of the familiar childhood game requiring that one try to determine by means of Yes or No questions a secretly chosen number between one and one million. ...
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SCIENCE & SPIRIT
Daniel Dennett's Darwinian Mind: An Interview with a 'Dangerous' Man
By Chris Floyd
Dennett has famously called Darwinism a "universal acid," cutting through every aspect of science, culture, religion, art and human thought. "The question is," he writes in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, "what does it leave behind? I have tried to show that once it passes through everything, we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important ideas. Some of the traditional details perish, and some of these are losses to be regretted, but...what remains is more than enough to build on." ...
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
Together Again In Different Time Zones
By John Parales
David Byrne and Brian Eno were the songwriter and producer on the most radical albums by Talking Heads, and they collaborated on a 1981 album, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." Now, 27 years later, they have reunited to make their second duo album, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." It is being released digitally on Aug. 18 via everythingthathappens.com, a month later on major commercial download sites and, as soon as it can be manufactured and distributed, as a physical CD. ...
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THE GUARDIAN
The Religion Of Politics
By Andrew Brown
...It's a commonplace that to call yourself an atheist in the US is to render yourself unelectable. Richard Dawkins' agent, John Brockman, told me once that he would never identify as an atheist, even though he is one. The last 29 years have been terrible for American believers in reason and progress. ...
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WALL STREET JOURNAL
Secondary Sources: Credit Crisis, Authoritarian Fed, Nudges
More on Nudges: Writing for the Financial Times, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, who wrote a book on nudging people to make better choices, look at political proposals that are backed by their findings. "It is not surprising that policy teams for Barack Obama, the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, and David Cameron, the U.K.'s Conservative party leader, have shown an interest in nudge-like solutions to social problems. ...
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FINANCIAL TIMES
The Dramatic Effect Of A Firm Nudge
By Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler
In the past three decades, psychologists and behavioural economists have learnt that people's choices can be dramatically affected by subtle features of social situations. For example, inertia turns out to be a powerful force. If people's magazine subscriptions are automatically renewed, they renew a lot more than if they have to send in a renewal form. Moreover, people are influenced by how problems are framed. If told that salami is "90 per cent fat-free" they are far more likely to buy salami than if they are told it is "10 per cent fat". ...
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This online EDGE edition with links and streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge255.html
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Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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EDGE
John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant
Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
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