Perspective Agents: August 7
Notes on imagination engines, flight trackers, tools for thought, and more
EDGE NEWS + VIEWS
More backstory on my recent post about AI and creativity. In the early 80s, Steve Jobs called personal computers a bicycle of the mind. Dave Holz, CEO of Midjourney, recently called auto generators an “engine for the imagination.” The quotes reflect a generational transition. Moving from an age of optimized thought to an age of re-imagination.
Contrarian take of the week. Forget disruption. Innovators should fetishize stability.
Watch a top-secret government flight live? Track a drug kingpin’s movements in real-time. Determine how much Taylor Swift’s jets pollute the air. It’s streaming live on a sleeper hit of the summer: online flight trackers. Last week Nancy Pelosi took tracking to a whole new level.
Here’s a different interest map. This tracks the most notable people everywhere in the world. It comes from a cross-verified database of over two million people. The subjects span culture, science, leadership, and sports.
Related: Publishing
org chartspower structures of powerful companies is now an editorial thing.An essay on tension between the centralized and decentralized structure of the Internet. An example of opportunity cost living between two worlds.
Solana co-founder says NFTs already have more than 50 different use cases.
Related: Not getting resale value from its publications, Pearson plans to sell textbooks as NFTs.
One for design geeks. The Economist now has a newsletter about its cover design. They were the first to sell a cover as an NFT last year.
Overlooked in all the hype around Web3 and Metaverse. Tools for thought as a category of innovation and investment. Check the thread here on what it’s about.
And a counter-argument. A great essay on the value of pen and paper thinking.
An in-depth study published this week shows what reduces poverty: Friendships between rich and poor.
Why do the wealthy increasingly seek silence? It’s more than the absence of noise. “It is an aesthetic to be revered.”
Fake nets continue to proliferate. Researchers just found a network of at least 72 fake news sites pushing Chinese propaganda in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Related: 60 Minutes did a story last week on deep fakes, saying they could soon change our way of life (or at least our perception of it).
More here on how disinformation metastasizes. In this case, a recent flood of low-grade books about Taiwan.
Spreading lies now comes with a cost. Will the Alex Jones verdict make bullshit spreaders take pause?
Some notes on the mind. New research calls cheerfulness a dark ‘shadowy emotion.’ The age of brain-computer interfaces is on the horizon. COVID may accelerate brain aging. And a new study questions whether depression is really caused by a chemical imbalance.
There’s a growing belief in TikTok claims that ‘brown noise’ can cure anxiety. Check what the science says.
The question of what causes us to itch has scientists scratching their heads for centuries. Compared to pain, “itch is understudied.” That’s about to change.
A long-considered question: How long is an optimal nap? Here’s what the Whoop data says.
Weird question. Can chess be an alternative to alcohol? See this story below to find out.
Alt earth news. The Western US is built on snow. That snow is vanishing. What happens to 70 million Americas whose lives depend on it? An Arizona city will paint streets gray to curb climate effects. Something is making the Earth spin faster and days shorter. Can siestas help Europeans survive deadly heat waves?
In other hardcore news. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was taken out last week by a sword bomb, or referred to here as ‘flying Ginsu drone.’
‘The Jetsons’ is said to be the most imaginative piece of 20th-century futurism.” Here’s what the Jetsons got right and wrong about the future.
Thanks for subscribing to Perspective Agents. The links come from research informing my book on making sense of disruptive events. It will be published early next year.
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