While anti-conformists may, at first, succeed in devising their own personal brand of sartorial rebelliousness, it’s followed by an inevitable, if unintentional, synchronization around a single appearance. Touboul’s study looks at how such people seem to inevitably become synchronized. He suspects that a major influence on the way it happens may be the speed of propagation of styles through a culture.
Category Archives: foresight
Brian Eno’s New Collective Wants to Save the World From Climate and Political Collapse
Hard Art is led by musician, artist, and climate activist Brian Eno (who, among other initiatives, is crediting the Earth as a songwriter on his releases, with the planet’s earnings going to his climate charity EarthPercent). Among the dozens of other participants are visual artists like Jeremy Deller, Cornelia Parker, and Gavin Turk, as well as writer Jay Griffiths (author of the fictionalized Frida Kahlo biography A Love Letter From a Stray Moon), actor/director Andrea Arnold (who directed the beloved TV series Transparent and I Love Dick), designer Es Devlin, writer Jon Ronson (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed), filmmaker Asif Kapadia (director of the Amy Winehouse biopic Amy), and rapper Louis VI.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/hard-art-brian-eno-2461394/amp-page
Generative AI can turn your most precious memories into photos that never existed
Dozens of people have now had their memories turned into images in this way via Synthetic Memories, a project run by Domestic Data Streamers. The studio uses generative image models, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E, to bring people’s memories to life. Since 2022, the studio, which has received funding from the UN and Google, has been working with immigrant and refugee communities around the world to create images of scenes that have never been photographed, or to re-create photos that were lost when families left their previous homes.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/10/1091053/generative-ai-turn-your-most-precious-memories-into-photos/
Culture Mapping: A Strategic Primer
We are launching our Culture Mapping Primer this week. In this guide, we explain our method of multi-modal research considering various factors like structure, time, language, context, patterns, and narrative. We also discuss our semiotic matrix as a structured analytic technique.
We hope our primer sparks wider use of structured analytics, especially now with the advancements in AI putting serious pressure on forecasting to deliver. By mapping correctly, the potential applications are endless.
Our intention in crafting this primer was twofold: to provide insight into our operational methodology and to highlight noteworthy advancements in the various stages of iteration we engage with. Recent studies in these realms have sparked compelling inquiries and discussions, underscoring their significance.
This ebook can be purchased and downloaded at the following link:
https://lnkd.in/eRRRZb9b
Solarpunk started out as a speculative fiction genre. Now it informs sustainable architecture and design
Solarpunk is a futurist movement that began in speculative fiction and sci-fi films and has since spread to architecture and design. Practitioners envision a clean and green future built on principles of sustainability, social justice, and collective action.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-07/solarpunk-design-architecture-sustainable-future/103667452
Apple Explores Home Robotics as Potential ‘Next Big Thing’ After Car Fizzles
Engineers at Apple have been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the skunk-works project is private. The iPhone maker also has developed an advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around, they said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/apple-explores-home-robots-after-abandoning-car-efforts
Sorry, But Joe Biden Can’t Build Your EV Charger (Op Ed)
Picture a future of electric cars everywhere, including your driveway, along with the charging stations necessary to keep them running. Head downtown to mail a letter and pick up a latte? Slow chargers on every corner. Go to the mall to raid the Sephora? Chargers all over the parking garage. Go to work? There’s a place to plug in your car. Take a highway trip, say to visit an annoying family member, let’s call him Steve? You’ll pass Wawa fast-charging islands where gas pumps used to be. You might want to stop at one of those because, when you get to Steve’s house, he probably won’t let you use his charger.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-04/sorry-but-joe-biden-can-t-build-your-ev-charger
How Not To Predict The Future
The first scientific study of judgmental1 forecasting was conducted in the 1960s by a gentleman at the CIA named Sherman Kent. Kent noticed that in their reports, intelligence analysts used imprecise phrases like “we believe,” “highly likely,” or “little chance.” He wanted to know how the people reading the reports actually interpreted these phrases. He asked 23 NATO analysts to convert the phrases into numerical probabilities, and their answers were all over the place — “probable” might mean a 30% chance to one person and an 80% chance to another. Kent advocated the use of few consistent odds expressions in intelligence reports, but his advice was largely ignored. It would take another two decades for the intelligence community to seriously invest in the study of prediction.
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/how-not-to-predict-the-future?ueid=c643ce38d00192ac3af250b1f893d410&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Today%20Explained%202024-03-12&utm_term=Sentences
The magic of the mundane
Goffman’s ‘microsociology’ reveals that even the most incidental of social interactions is of profound theoretical interest. Every encounter is shaped by social rules and social statuses; ‘whether we interact with strangers or intimates, we will find that the fingertips of society have reached bluntly into the contact’. Such interactions contribute to our sense of self, to our relationships with others, and to social structures, which can often be deeply oppressive. Never mind the dealings of the courtroom, the senate, or the trading floor, it is in the mundane interactions of everyday life, Goffman thought, that ‘most of the world’s work gets done’.
https://aeon.co/essays/pioneering-sociologist-erving-goffman-saw-magic-in-the-mundane
Young people becoming less happy than older generations, research shows
Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they suffer “the equivalent of a midlife crisis”, global research has revealed as America’s top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling”.
Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/20/young-people-becoming-less-happy-than-older-generations-research-shows
Analyzing Trends 