Our brain throws a lot of information away as it receives far more it can hold onto. It also has to make a trade off between speed and accuracy - a fast but inaccurate answer or a slow but more accurate one.
Most of the time, it opts for speed - interpreting events based on its rules of thumb, which might not always be logical. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for studying these rules of thumb and how they influence real-life behavior. Logical thinking, on the other hand, requires a lot of effort.
The problem of throwing away information, taking mental shortcuts, and inventing plausible stories is termed "change blindness". Our memory of the past is unreliable and our perception of the present is highly selective. Even when you imagine your future, your brain fills in many details, which may be unrealistic, and leaves out many others, which may be important.
Our brain selectively processes details that have historically been most relevant to survival - paying particular attention to events that are unexpected. It rarely tells us the truth, but most of the time it tells us what we need to know anyway!
P.S: The 10% Myth - You use your whole brain every day!
Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life By Sandra Aamodt, Sam Wang
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Welcome to Your Brain - Introduction - Your Brain: A User's Guide
...the amazing three pounds in your skull...
You don't really use only 10 percent of your brain!
Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life By Sandra Aamodt, Sam Wang
You don't really use only 10 percent of your brain!
Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life By Sandra Aamodt, Sam Wang
The Big Switch - Epilogue - Flame and Filament
The wick was one of man's greatest, and also one of the most modest, inventions.
It tamed fire, "the soul of the house", and remained the dominant lighting technology all the way to the nineteenth century. We are still attracted to a flame at the end of a wick but we can no longer know what it was like when fire was the source of all light.
All technological change is generational change. As the older generations die, they take with them their knowledge of what was lost when the new technology arrived, and only the sense of what was gained remains. It's in this way that progress covers its tracks, perpetually refreshing the illusion that where we are is where we were meant to be.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
It tamed fire, "the soul of the house", and remained the dominant lighting technology all the way to the nineteenth century. We are still attracted to a flame at the end of a wick but we can no longer know what it was like when fire was the source of all light.
All technological change is generational change. As the older generations die, they take with them their knowledge of what was lost when the new technology arrived, and only the sense of what was gained remains. It's in this way that progress covers its tracks, perpetually refreshing the illusion that where we are is where we were meant to be.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
Monday, May 5, 2008
The Big Switch - Chapter Eleven - iGod
In the foreseeable future, the human body may become augmented by digital processors and software. We might become programmable, too!
Without going to such extremes, technologies like Amazon's Mechanical Turk allow programs to ask people to perform minor tasks, which are trivial for humans (like recognizing a face) but hard for computers to do currently. We play a similar role in the operation of Google's search engine, without even realizing it! When you link to another document in your web page, you are expressing a judgment. Every time we create a link, we feed a little of our intelligence to Google which works by analyzing this "database of intentions".
We are the web's synapses. The more links we click and more pages we view - the faster we fire - the more intelligence the web collects and the more economic value it gains.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
Without going to such extremes, technologies like Amazon's Mechanical Turk allow programs to ask people to perform minor tasks, which are trivial for humans (like recognizing a face) but hard for computers to do currently. We play a similar role in the operation of Google's search engine, without even realizing it! When you link to another document in your web page, you are expressing a judgment. Every time we create a link, we feed a little of our intelligence to Google which works by analyzing this "database of intentions".
We are the web's synapses. The more links we click and more pages we view - the faster we fire - the more intelligence the web collects and the more economic value it gains.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Big Switch - Chapter Ten - A Spider's Web
The arrival of the PC has been associated with a lack of control. However, any such breakdown of control proved fleeting. It's becoming increasingly easier to track stuff back to people on the internet. The connection of untethered computers into a network governed by strict protocols has actually created "a new apparatus of control". We accept this greater control in return for greater convenience.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
Saturday, May 3, 2008
The Big Switch - Chapter Nine - Fighting the Net
By the end of 2006, 94% of email was spam, driven by extensive botnets. Beyond their moneymaking potential botnets can be used to sow destruction on the Internet itself. As the internet becomes more and more important as a shared global infrastructure, decisions about its governance will take on more weight.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
Friday, May 2, 2008
The Big Switch - Chapter Eight - The Great unbundling
After peaking in 1984 with 64 million copies, the daily circulation of American news papers fell steadily, reaching 55 million in 2004. Newspapers try to bundle a lot of information together. When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. People go directly to the story that interests them, often ignoring everything else.
With the advent of context-based ads, the most successful article is the one which not only draws a lot of readers but also attracts high-priced ads. Unbundling is not unique to newspapers, it's the common feature of most online media. iTunes has unbundled music, services like TiVo are unbundling television, sites like YouTube unbundle video. Amazon and Google book search are unbundling even books, showing articles and snippets.
However, too much transparent personalization might lead to segregation since deliberations among like-minded people leads to "ideological amplification". The economist Thomas Schelling, who won the Nobel Prize eventually for his insight, explained how "small incentives, almost imperceptible differentials, can lead to strikingly polarized results". The view that the web will lead to a greater harmony must be examined with skepticism. Cultural impoverishment and social fragmentation seem equally likely outcomes.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
With the advent of context-based ads, the most successful article is the one which not only draws a lot of readers but also attracts high-priced ads. Unbundling is not unique to newspapers, it's the common feature of most online media. iTunes has unbundled music, services like TiVo are unbundling television, sites like YouTube unbundle video. Amazon and Google book search are unbundling even books, showing articles and snippets.
However, too much transparent personalization might lead to segregation since deliberations among like-minded people leads to "ideological amplification". The economist Thomas Schelling, who won the Nobel Prize eventually for his insight, explained how "small incentives, almost imperceptible differentials, can lead to strikingly polarized results". The view that the web will lead to a greater harmony must be examined with skepticism. Cultural impoverishment and social fragmentation seem equally likely outcomes.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
The Big Switch - Chapter Seven - From the Many to the Few
Youtube, Flickr, Skype and Craigslist are examples of companies that grew extremely fast with very few employees. Their businesses are constructed almost entirely out of software code. These companies also become more valuable (also to the users) as more and more people use them - a phenomenon called 'the network effect'. Such companies benefit from user-generated content - gifts of time and ideas by their huge number of users. Many of these sites were acquired by larger companies for millions, and even billions, of dollars.
The arrival of the universal computing grid might concentrate wealth in the hands of a small number of individuals, rather than a small number of companies. In the Youtube economy, everyone is free to play but only a few reap the rewards.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
The arrival of the universal computing grid might concentrate wealth in the hands of a small number of individuals, rather than a small number of companies. In the Youtube economy, everyone is free to play but only a few reap the rewards.
The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny By Nicholas Carr
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