I just found this great blog post about the “Monkeysphere.” In his “Pointless Waste of Time” blog, David Wong talks about our incapacity to think of other humans beyond our direct sphere of 150 people. Based on Darwinian biology, humans are incapable of thinking of other people as individuals beyond the 150 or so people we know directly. That’s how we can say things like, “Man, I really hate that group of people (insert derogatory term of your choice).”
Basically, the post is a call to stop thinking of people in terms of stereotypes, and try to bring our thinking of people beyond our spheres of influence as individuals. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think I’m a jerk, but I’ve caught myself ranting about some faceless driver on the highway in a way that I would never even consider if I was sitting across a table from them.
Andy Grant from afgrant.com sent me a link to a video about Photosynth - a new tool from Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas - that hyperlinks photos from across the Internet to allow virtual tours with rich relevance for different places. Sounds confusing, but think of it this way…
This software will search photo sharing sites for photos tagged with the same place names. For example, in this YouTube video, it pastes together a bunch of photos of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to give a virtual tour of the site from a ton of different angles and perspectives. Check out the video first:
Next, here’s a link to Blaise speaking at the TED conference on the same software. This video is a bit longer, but it has some very interesting ideas on how this could be used for advertising or marketing.
Just took this IQ test I found. I doubt it’s accurate, but it looks good so I’m posting it…
IQ Test
Your IQ is 182—Universal Genius Your intelligence is unmatched by many. You are unbelievably smart and your intelligence is far above that of every other persons.
Wow, caffeine inhalers. What a really bad concept! As it is, I can’t imagine inhaling cigarette smoke into my lungs. Now, I’m going to inhale whatever chemical concoction they’ve come up to deliver caffeine directly into my bloodstream via my lungs? Have we become that lazy as a society that we can’t wait to drink our coffee or energy drinks to consume caffeine?
There’s a new clock sheriff in town, and his name is Clocky. This new alarm clock will actually run and hide after you hit the snooze button once so you can’t keep hitting the snooze button again and again. It can even jump 3 feet to get out of your way.
This is a pretty cool way to wake up, although it might scare the shit out of the cats and dog! You can find it at the nanda web site.
Chuck
Makes you think about some of the other things that you might be able to do with this type of material. Toys that could be used once, temporary art, who knows…
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