Explain It to Me Again, Computer
mobile.slate.comA professor of mine once taught a class on a Tuesday, only to read a paper the next day that invalidated what he had taught. So he went into class on Thursday and told the class, “Remember what I told you on Tuesday? It’s wrong. And if that worries you, you need to get out of science.” Science is always in this draft form and this is most clear at the frontier: where scientists work and why they find their inquiry so exciting.
Estimated reading time: 6 min
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mobile.slate.comAnd this advice goes more generally—by failing to offer people a reason to keep coming back to the site every day, Google+ made a bad first impression. And in the social-networking business, a bad first impression spells death.
bool dog recommended this story.
Tearing Down the “Electronic Cottage”
mobile.slate.comBut the most interesting finding is that telecommuting, instead of restoring work/life balance, may have resulted in workers doing more work—but from home. As the authors put it, one plausible interpretation of their findings might be that "telecommuting has become instrumental in the general expansion of work hours, facilitating workers’ needs for additional work time beyond the standard workweek and/or the ability of employers to increase or intensify work demands among their salaried employees."
Estimated reading time: 6 min
Manuela Hoffmann recommended this story.
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mobile.slate.comTo speak meaningfully of living in a period of abnormally fast change, we need to have some meaningful (if rough) measure of how quickly science is really moving. And I don't think we do. These things are just incommensurate. How does the development of Facebook compare with that of the telephone? The Times article likens new iPhone models to new car models, which is comparing Apples with Camaros.
Dario Lowin recommended this story.
The Mysteriously Memorable 20s
mobile.slate.comWhat is it about twentysomethings in general? Why are we so fixated on the no-man’s-land between childhood and stable adulthood? A little-known but robust line of research shows that there really is something deeply, weirdly meaningful about this period. It plays an outsize role in how we structure our expectations, stories, and memories. The basic finding is this: We remember more events from late adolescence and early adulthood than from any other stage of our lives. This phenomenon is called the reminiscence bump.
Estimated reading time: 8 min
tjunkie recommended this story.
Fox News Claims Solar Won't Work in America Because It's Not Sunny Like Germany
mobile.slate.comJoshi's jaw-dropping response: "They're a smaller country, and they've got lots of sun. Right? They've got a lot more sun than we do." In case that wasn't clear enough for some viewers, Joshi went on: "The problem is it's a cloudy day and it's raining, you're not gonna have it." Sure, California might get sun now and then, Joshi conceded, "but here on the East Coast, it's just not going to work."
Estimated reading time: 2 min
Adam Pavlukov recommended this story.
Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains the Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction
mobile.slate.comIt’s the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change. That’s the best definition we’ve come up with. The important word there is diegetic. It means you’re thinking very seriously about potential objects and services and trying to get people to concentrate on those rather than entire worlds or political trends or geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories.
Estimated reading time: 3 min
jkleske recommended this story.
Stay Out of My Kitchen, Robots
mobile.slate.comTechnology, used with some imagination and without the traditional geek fetishism of efficiency and perfection, can actually make the cooking process more challenging, opening up new vistas for experimentation and giving us new ways to violate the rules.
Estimated reading time: 6 min
jkleske recommended this story.
Why Did Google Reader Die?
mobile.slate.comAnd if a particular tool is indispensable to you—your project management software, for instance—you might want to think about choosing one of those incredibly old-fashioned software companies that will allow you to pay for its stuff.
Estimated reading time: 6 min
efrane recommended this story.
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mobile.slate.comIt’s hard to overstate how thoroughly this move will shake up the retail industry. Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail of Internet retailers, something that dozens of startups have tried and failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon is investing billions to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers.
joao recommended this story.
