Across broad landscapes of science and technology, the past is eating the present, progress is plunging, and truly disruptive work is hard to come by. Despite an enormous increase in scientists and papers since the middle of the 20th century, the number of highly disruptive studies each year hasn’t increased. - The Atlantic
Are thought, argument, and debate really dying? The picture painted in the media is of a horrified, unqualified yes. But it’s a big country out there. Is wokery crushing free inquiry everywhere? - The New Republic
Ask someone how she thinks and you might learn that she talks to herself silently, or cogitates visually, or moves through mental space by traversing physical space. - The New Yorker
This culturally and linguistically diverse environment gave rise to innovations that would have lasting legacies in fields including algebra, geography, astronomy, medicine and engineering. - The Conversation
If I’m going to choose a non-living interlocutor, why would I choose a Large Language Model – essentially a sophisticated search algorithm performed on an astronomically large database – when I could choose one of the great thinkers of the past? - 3 Quarks Daily
The six-page long memorandum specifically requires John Deere to provide farmers and independent repair facilities with access to the company’s tools, software, and documentation to make repairs to John Deere equipment. - Gizmodo
Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone. - Ars Technica
Drawing on a rich tradition of comics that depict counterfactual and dystopian futures, this graphic novel breathes horrifying visual life into a world in which there was no peaceful transition of power in 2021. - The Conversation
Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push science forward than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend. - Nature
And at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, the argument over how to treat "history" has flared up into fierce battles over relevance - amid fears that the discipline may not survive in many universities. - The New York Times
Think of the Pantheon, for instance. "An ancient manufacturing technique can create self-healing concrete that naturally fills in cracks. Using a similar process now could help shrink concrete’s massive carbon footprint." - Fast Company
Performance and repetition rule: "Songs, settings, movements, dances and concepts are relentlessly rehashed, wringing a measure of soothing predictability from TikTok’s general anarchy. ... Users don’t have to be original to achieve prominence." - Los Angeles Times
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Continued experiments and observations only served to confirm that at scales both large and small, we appeared to live in an empty world. - Nautilus
The most salient social feature of the pandemic was how it forced people into isolation; for those fortunate enough not to lose a loved one, the major trauma it created was loneliness. Instead of coming together, emerging evidence suggests that we are in the midst of a long-term crisis of habitual loneliness. - The Atlantic
"For me, this new AI bot is not scarey, or even revolutionary. It’s just the latest con for those who would seek to dupe me out of my most prized professional possession: passing grades." - 3 Quarks Daily
