During the winter of 2007, a UCLA professor of psychiatry named Gary Small recruited six volunteers—three experienced Web surfers and three novices—for a study on brain activity. He gave each a pair of goggles onto which Web pages could be projected. Then he slid his subjects, one by one, into the cylinder of a whole-brain magnetic resonance imager and told them to start searching the Internet. As they used a handheld keypad to Google various preselected topics—the nutritional benefits of chocolate, vacationing in the Galapagos Islands, buying a new car—the MRI scanned their brains for areas of high activation, indicated by increases in blood flow.

The two groups showed marked differences. Brain activity of the experienced surfers was far more extensive than that of the newbies, particularly in areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with problem-solving and decisionmaking. Small then had his subjects read normal blocks of text projected onto their goggles; in this case, scans revealed no significant difference in areas of brain activation between the two groups. The evidence suggested, then, that the distinctive neural pathways of experienced Web users had developed because of their Internet use.

The most remarkable result of the experiment emerged when Small repeated the tests six days later. In the interim, the novices had agreed to spend an hour a day online, searching the Internet. The new scans revealed that their brain activity had changed dramatically; it now resembled that of the veteran surfers. “Five hours on the Internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains,” Small wrote. He later repeated all the tests with 18 more volunteers and got the same results.

When first publicized, the findings were greeted with cheers. By keeping lots of brain cells buzzing, Google seemed to be making people smarter. But as Small was careful to point out, more brain activity is not necessarily better brain activity. The real revelation was how quickly and extensively Internet use reroutes people’s neural pathways. “The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate,” Small concluded, “but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains.”

What kind of brain is the Web giving us? That question will no doubt be the subject of a great deal of research in the years ahead. Already, though, there is much we know or can surmise—and the news is quite disturbing. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain. (…)

What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from cultivators of personal knowledge into hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest. In the process, we seem fated to sacrifice much of what makes our minds so interesting.

{ Nicholas Carr/Wired | Continue reading }

In an ideal world, I would sit down at my computer, do my work, and that would be that. In this world, I get entangled in surfing and an hour disappears. (…)

For years I would read during breakfast, the coffee stirring my pleasure in the prose. You can’t surf during breakfast. Well, maybe you can. Now I don’t have coffee and I don’t eat breakfast. I get up and check my e-mail, blog comments and Twitter.

{ Roger Ebert/Chicago Sun-Times }

photo { Stephen Shore }

An earworm is a song going around in your head that you can’t get rid of. Some claim that earworms are like a cognitive itch, we scratch them by repeating the tune over and over in our heads.

In new research, Beaman & Williams (2010) asked 103 participants aged 15-57 all about their earworm experiences. Here’s what they found:

• Many earworms were pop songs, although adverts and TV/film themes and video game tunes were also mentioned.

• One-third generally experienced the chorus or refrain over and over again, but almost half said that it varied.

• 10% of participants reported that earworms stopped them doing other things.

• Contrary to popular belief those with musical training were no more likely to experience earworms. (…)

For most of us earworms are relatively untroubling. And if you are tempted to moan then just be thankful you’re not the 21-year-old described in a case report by Praharaj et al. (2009). This man had had music from Hindi films going around in his head against his will for between 2 and 45 minutes at a time, up to 35 times a day, for five years. Unfortunately even powerful drugs couldn’t stop the music.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

It sometimes feel like our minds are not on the same team as us. I want to go to sleep, but it wants to keep me awake rerunning events from my childhood. I want to forget the lyrics from that stupid 80s pop song but it wants to repeat them over and over again ad nauseam. (…)

Perpetual thoughts of food drive people to obesity, persistent negative thoughts cue depression and traumatic events push back into consciousness to be relived over and over again. (…)

Although it makes perfect intuitive sense to try and suppress unwanted thoughts, unfortunately the very process we use to do this contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more we try and push intrusive thoughts down, the more they pop back up, stronger than ever.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

photos { Kate Moss photographed by Michael Thompson, 1993 }

related { Kate Moss shows off six piercings after visit to tattoo parlour, 2009 }

bonus:

{ Richard Avedon, Richard Garber, drifter, Interstate 15, Provo, Utah, 1980 }

In open water, there is often no place to hide. Some sharks have overcome this problem by making themselves invisible to both prey and predators, according to a new study. (…)

Lead author Julien Claes explained to Discovery News that about 50 different shark species, or more than 10 percent of all known sharks, are luminous. This means they can produce and emit light from their bodies. (…)

“I believe that what most surprised and excited me about this paper was the finding that the emission of light on the ventral surface of the sharks closely resembles the environmental light,” Coelho said, “allowing the sharks to efficiently camouflage themselves by counter-illumination, remaining invisible to both possible predators and potential prey.”

{ Discovery News | Continue reading }

{ Kathy Grayson }

{ Thanks JJ }

The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history.

The M3 figures - which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance - began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened. (…)

Mr Congdon said the dominant voices in US policy-making - Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz, as well as Mr Summers and Fed chair Ben Bernanke - are all Keynesians of different stripes who “despise traditional monetary theory and have a religious aversion to any mention of the quantity of money”. The great opus by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz - The Monetary History of the United States - has been left to gather dust.

Mr Bernanke no longer pays attention to the M3 data. The bank stopped publishing the data five years ago, deeming it too erratic to be of much use.

This may have been a serious error since double-digit growth of M3 during the US housing bubble gave clear warnings that the boom was out of control. The sudden slowdown in M3 in early to mid-2008 - just as the Fed talked of raising rates - gave a second warning that the economy was about to go into a nosedive.

Mr Bernanke built his academic reputation on the study of the credit mechanism. This model offers a radically different theory for how the financial system works. While so-called “creditism” has become the new orthodoxy in US central banking, it has not yet been tested over time and may yet prove to be a misadventure.

{ The Telegraph | Continue reading }

Europe is in crisis. Austerity measures have been announced in several countries including Greece and Spain, the euro is under pressure and stock markets across the globe have fallen sharply from their recent highs – and it is all due mainly to sovereign debt. (…)

What has caused the debt crisis?

In a word or two, over-borrowing. Sovereign debt is fine so long as the governments have no problem repaying the debt. But several countries have borrowed beyond their means – the ramifications of the financial crisis have left them struggling to repay their debt. This is why the IMF has agreed a financial package to bail them out.

Greece and other countries will struggle to pay off these debts. This has led to a dramatic spike in borrowing costs for these countries, exacerbating the problems further,” Mr Howse added. “Investors have begun to question the future of European Economic and Monetary Union and whether the crisis may spread beyond the peripheral European countries.

{ The Telegraph | Continue reading }

Emily Haines, lead singer of the Canadian band Metric, sings on “Help, I’m Alive,” the hit single from last year’s Fantasies. It’s not so much a rhetorical question as it is a brave reclamation of self-purpose: it’s Haines flipping the bird at the imagined glass ceilings and self-doubt she condemned on previous records. Any why shouldn’t she? Even in a fractured musical climate that doesn’t invite or invent figureheads like it once did, Emily Haines has recently been elevated to the role of indie pop’s cool big sister. At a recent sold-out show at New York City’s Terminal 5, she prowled the stage with the devastating cool of a feline predator. (…)

NIKA: What about the Lady Gaga effect?

HAINES: I can honestly say it makes me laugh and I really don’t care. It has nothing to with music. I mean, it’s fascinating. Show up wearing Kermit the Frog, why not? It’s fun and she has a good time. It has nothing to do with the world that I live in.

{ Colleen Nika interviews Emily Haines | Continue reading }

{ Agency: Buzzman, France }

{ Ali Bosworth, Fall 2009 }

Tell about places you have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of the well stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes.

{ James Joyce, Ulysses, published in 1922 | Continue reading | Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into eighteen episodes. | Wikipedia | Continue reading }

images { Hilo Chen, Beach, 2005 | Huata, Open The Gates of Shambhala EP }

Under such circumstances, we are simply determined in our ideas by our fortuitous and haphazard encounter with things in the external world. This superficial acquaintance will never provide us with knowledge of the essences of those things. In fact, it is an invariable source of falsehood and error. This “knowledge from random experience” is also the origin of great delusions, since we –thinking ourselves free– are, in our ignorance, unaware of just how we are determined by causes.

{ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Continue reading }

Knowledge of the first kind is based on sense experience and imagination. It includes all our knowledge of the moment-to-moment state of our body (warmth, cold, hunger, thirst, desire, etc.) as well as our knowledge of the properties of external bodies. All knowledge of this sort is partial or inadequate.

Knowledge of the second kind is based on reason or understanding. It includes all our knowledge of the common properties of bodies and minds (and of the sciences that concern these). Knowledge of the second kind also includes our knowledge of the definitions of substance, mode, God [Nature], etc. (…) According to Spinoza, this knowledge is always adequate and necessarily true. Spinoza discusses two important characteristics of knowledge of the second kind: 1) reason always regards things as necessary; 2) reason perceives things “in the light of eternity,” i.e. without any relationship to time. (…)

What we do not acquire in this way, however, is an understanding of our own existence “in the light of eternity.” Instead, we are generally caught up in the flow of time–the past, the present and the future–and this, Spinoza believes, often leads to unhappiness. Regarding the present as the only reality, we regret the loss of the past and either hope or fear for what the future will bring. But this is a confused (or inadequate) conception of our existence.

{ Don Rutherford, Notes on Part II of the Ethics | Continue reading }

more { Deleuze on Spinoza, 1978 | Deleuze on Spinoza, 1981 }

A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, with one message negating the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other, so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response. The nature of a double bind is that the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore can neither comment on the conflict, nor resolve it, nor opt out of the situation.

A double bind generally includes different levels of abstraction in orders of messages, and these messages can be stated or implicit within the context of the situation, or conveyed by tone of voice or body language. Further complications arise when frequent double binds are part of an ongoing relationship to which the person or group is committed.

Double bind theory is more clearly understood in the context of complex systems and cybernetics because human communication and also the mind itself function in an interactive manner similar to ecosystems. Complex systems theory helps us understand the interdependence of the parts of a message and provides “an ordering of what to the Newtonian looks like chaos.”

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

photo { Charlize Theron and Patty Jenkins photographed by Richard Avedon, 2004 | more }

The commercial makes the point that AT&T’s wireless service covers 90 percent of the country by showing orange fabric being unfurled over natural and man-made landmarks around the nation like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Las Vegas strip. (…)

some viewers have suggested may be based too closely on the work of the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. (…) AT&T spokesman, Steve Schwadron, who works for the Fleishman-Hillard public relations agency, replied with this statement: “The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have had and have no direct or indirect affiliation or involvement with the creation of AT&T’s advertising.”

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

This AT&T spot is not appropriation; it is intellectual theft. Anyone familiar with Christo’s work understands he and Jean Claude have always demanded total control of everything associated one of their works, for two compelling reasons: First, Christo and Jean Claude believe that everything involved in one of their works is an inseparable part of the work. This includes the negotiations and planning leading up to the work’s installation, a prolonged process that often consumes many years and even decades (as was the case with Gates).

Second, to fund this process — a Christo and Jean Claude work is completely paid for by the work itself — Christo and Jean Claude create images, multiples and other things that are sold to collectors. When an advertiser or handbag maker appropriates part of a Christo and Jean Claude work, this devalues the work, blurring the distinct line between art created by an artist and commerce engaged in solely to make money. Note that the AT&T spot steals from Christo and Jean Claude’s entire career, not just Gates: Much of their work involves wrapping or covering large objects, landscapes or seascapes with fabric, which transforms them into something entirely new and fascinating. AT&T, by contrast, is merely claiming to cover most of the world with its cellphone network — hardly transformative, and by no means art.

Sadly, Jean Claude, Christo’s longtime spouse and creative partner, died recently. Of the two, she was the fiercer protector of the work they did together and its legacy. Were she alive today AT&T would be in court with its back against the wall — and that spot would be off the air and every scrap of it destroyed.

AT&T should be thoroughly ashamed of itself, as should its agency, BBDO New York, and everyone involved in this sordid affair.

{ NY Times | Comment by Tom P. }

Seppuku (”stomach-cutting”) is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai honor code, seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment for samurai who have committed serious offenses, or performed for other reasons that have brought shame to them.

The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion. (…)

Women have their own ritual suicide, jigai.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Police searched Wednesday for a porn actor suspected of killing one colleague and injuring two others with a sword that was used as a movie prop at a production studio where the suspect had been living. (…)

“There was no indication that things were going to get violent, there was nothing that provoked this attack, but at some point Steven chose to arm himself with what can be best described as a sword,” Price said. “He then used that sword against those three victims.”

{ AP/Huffington Post | Continue reading | via Craig }

Most people become stressed when lying, but new research shows that people with power feel just fine when lying — and are better at getting away with it.

Lying is costly, extracting physiological and cognitive tolls from most people. The body of research on lying consistently shows that people become stressed when they do not tell the truth. The speed with which they process information slows down, possibly because lying requires keeping track of the lie and the truth while simultaneously trying to suppress nervous habits or other signs that might give the liar away. (So-called lie-detector tests, or polygraphs, can’t actually determine if people are lying, but they can identify signs of physiological stress that are consistent with lying.)

Professor Dana R. Carney, who studies social judgment and decision making, noticed that in a different area of scientific study, psychologists have observed that power — defined as control over others’ social or monetary outcomes and always accompanied by feelings of power — enhances cognitive functions and makes people feel good. The effects of feeling powerful are precisely the inverse of those that most people experience when they lie.

“The overlap is remarkable. When you feel powerful, you feel good, you’re a little smarter in that you process information more quickly and are better at multitasking, and some evidence suggests you may be more physiologically resilient,” Carney says. “When you lie, you feel bad, your cognitive systems are overworked, and you are physiologically taxed. What if you put lying and power together? It’s a match made in heaven or a match made in hell.”

{ Columbia Business School | Continue reading | Thanks Douglas }

Their focus was Project B—Assange’s code name for a thirty-eight-minute video taken from the cockpit of an Apache military helicopter in Iraq in 2007. The video depicted American soldiers killing at least eighteen people, including two Reuters journalists; it later became the subject of widespread controversy, but at this early stage it was still a closely guarded military secret.

Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantánamo Bay, and the “Climategate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account.

The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home. He travels from country to country, staying with supporters, or friends of friends—as he once put it to me, “I’m living in airports these days.” He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. Key members are known only by initials—M, for instance—even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.

{ The New Yorker | Continue reading }