Ci costruiamo delle narrazioni di comodo. Una fra queste è relativa al collasso (e alla nascita, se è per questo) delle cività. La fine dei Maya, dell'Impero romano, del popolo dell'Isola di Pasqua, di quelli collassati in India oppure in Vietnam, Indocina e Corea.

Inoltre, troviamo ragioni sempre più spesso vicine alla nostra sensibilità odierna: mutamento climatico, cattivo uso delle risorse naturali, mancanza di responsabilità e capacità di previsione e gestione delle trasformazioni. Insomma, affermiamo cosa sia successo a loro ma in realtà parliamo di noi e del nostro bisogno di una etica ambientalista e dei consumi responsabili che ci permetta di sopravvivere alla nostra stessa civiltà globale.

Bello, ma se facciamo un passo indietro però scopriamo che forse forse - anzi senza forse - le cose non stanno proprio così.

Money quote: "But are these stories right? Is that really what happened to the Maya and the Easter Islanders? In the view of many archaeologists, collapse is not quite so simple – the silver-bullet theories grow less convincing the closer they are scrutinised. As the eminent archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler sagely pointed out in Civilisations of the Indus Valley and Beyond (1966): ‘The fall, like the rise of a civilisation is a highly complex operation which can only be distorted by oversimplification. It may be taken as axiomatic that there was no one cause of cultural collapse.’"

https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-idea-of-civilisational-collapse-says-about-history

La campagna anti-net neutrality negli Usa era un fake news? - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/la-campagna-anti-net-neutrality-negli-usa-un-fake/

Il costo segreto dei Bitcoin è la bolletta energetica - il mio articolo per Macitynet

https://www.macitynet.it/costo-segreto-dei-bitcoin-la-bolletta-energetica/

Quando ho letto l’ultimo romanzo postumo di Michael Crichton, completato da un baldo ghostwriter, mancavano purtroppo molte cose ma per fortuna non il “tocco” del maestro. La vita minuscola sulla superficie del nostro pianeta. Ecco, immaginate che quello di “Micro” fosse solo l’antipasto. Perché la vita sotto la superficie terrestre è qualcosa da sconvolgere il difficile equilibrio psico-zoologico che avete costruito nel corso della vostra vita.

Money quote: “We are also beginning to map the different ecosystems and populations of the deep Earth. Generally speaking, the older subterranean fissure water is brinier (saltier) and has higher concentrations of dissolved hydrogen. Our studies and those by some of our colleagues have shown an apparent trend that the microbes living in older, more brackish water are distinctly different from ones in the younger, less saline water.”

https://aeon.co/essays/deep-beneath-the-earths-surface-life-is-weird-and-wonderful

La manipolazione è una cosa che non ci piace, anche se ci sono sistemi e ragioni per cui può avere una valenza addirittura positiva.

Il problema è che le tecnologie diventano olistiche e pervasive, con una grande differenza: essendo programmate portano con loro molto più di quello che i limiti di una tradizionale tecnologia meccanica può portare.

Le tecnologie digitali invece entrano nella nostra vita e stanno assieme a noi, con un progetto e un modo per farci fare le cose che è stato esplicitamente progettato da chi forgiangli algoritmi e che ci manipola cambiano la nostra natura e le nostre abitudini. E noi non abbiamo ancora creato anticorpi per quello.

Money quote: “Unfortunately, our moral compass has not caught-up with what technology now makes possible. Ubiquitous access to the web, transferring greater amounts of personal data at faster speeds than ever before, has created a more addictive world. Addictiveness is accelerating and according to Paul Graham of Y Combinator, we haven’t had time to develop societal “antibodies to addictive new things.” Graham puts responsibility on the user: “Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction — the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations — we’ll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how.””

https://medium.com/the-mission/the-morality-of-manipulation-c3115fb2bb3d

I podcast sono una gran cosa e c’è chi si è appassionato e ne ascolta a decine. Ma questo richiede tempo. A meno che non pratichiate anche voi lo sport estremo dell’ascolto accelerato.

Money quote: “Kenny's listening habits may be extreme, but she's not alone. Meet the podfasters, a subset of podcast obsessives who listen to upward of 50 episodes a week, by, like Kenny, listening extremely fast. They're an exclusive group: According to Marco Arment, creator of the Overcast podcast app, only around 1% of Overcast listeners use speeds of 2x or higher. (An app called Rightspeed, which costs $2.99, allows you to listen at up to 10x.)”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/meet-the-people-who-listen-to-podcasts-at-super-fast-speeds

Tra religione e superstizione: tutti i culti della Silicon Valley - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2017/11/24/tecnologia/idee/tra-religione-e-superstizione-tutti-i-culti-della-silicon-valley-xAcl2s8nyrf24dhzk3mYPL/amphtml/pagina.amp.html

Ah, finalmente dieci buoni consigli per gli aspiranti scrittori. Non gli autori, i saggisti, i creatori di codice o qualsiasi altra attività vi venga in mente che coinvolge una tastiera. No. Scrittori. Neanche poeti. Scrittori.

Money quote:

“2- The beginning of the book should rope the reader in. It has to be exciting and fun to read in order to hook the reader into reading on.

Again, complete crap. The reader should have to work hard to get into the book. Don’t make things too easy to comprehend. Overcoming difficulties and struggling makes things more worthwhile. Make the reader sweat a little; it might do her some good.”

https://curiosityneverkilledthewriter.com/the-worst-good-advice-ever-given-to-novelists-5c258dc2f1cd

I programmatori? Negli Usa a rischio, come gli scrittori - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/programmatori-negli-usa-rischio-gli-scrittori/

La cosa più bella vista in tv da parecchio tempo: BetterThings “Dance”

Ci risiamo, ecco di nuovo quelli che vogliono laptop iOS. E addirittura fisso... (con il presupposto che riescono a lavorare con iPad come se fosse un portatile).

Money quote: “I don’t know what they’d call it—can we bring back the iBook?—or what they’d charge for it. But I’d love to see it. And while we’re at it, yes, I’d also like Apple to make an iOS desktop in the style of the Microsoft Surface Studio. With all the improvements in iOS 11, it’s time to start considering all the places iOS can go that it hasn’t been able to go before”

https://www.macworld.com/article/3238186/laptop-computers/why-apples-next-laptop-should-run-ios.html

Una sorta di diario del Casanova nero, che nasce per il timore della di lui madre che le ragazze bianche possano approfittarsene (mandandolo in galera o peggio: negli Stati del Sud chi crede al ragazzo nero se la ragazza bianca si mette a urlare?) e finisce, beh finisce bene per tutti, direi, ragazze bianche incluse.

Money quote: “Okay, hold-up. I worry this confession may start to sound like a casual manual for female manipulation, one penned by a pickup artist. But you must understand, my goal was different. Which makes all the difference. You see, rather than figure out how to use women for my sexual gratification, rather than con women into bed, rather than mentally trick women into feeling some form of attraction, or worse coerce or flat-out debate their consent, my goal was to figure out how to offer myself to women to use for their sexual gratification. My thinking was simple: since I was a man, and thus far easier to arouse, I figured I’d be sexually gratified somehow in the process of getting her all the way off. And this approach worked very well. All it required was a small shift in perspective.”

https://medium.com/@zaron3/a-gentlemans-guide-to-sexual-misconduct-and-enthusiastic-consent-9a0b750bc93e

Non so se lo sapevate, ma Second Life è ancora viva e lotta assieme a noi

Money quote: "Second Life has no specific goals. Its vast landscape consists entirely of user-generated content, which means that everything you see has been built by someone else—an avatar controlled by a live human user. These avatars build and buy homes, form friendships, hook up, get married, and make money. They celebrate their “rez day,” the online equivalent of a birthday: the anniversary of the day they joined. At church, they cannot take physical communion—the corporeality of that ritual is impossible—but they can bring the stories of their faith to life. At their cathedral on Epiphany Island, the Anglicans of Second Life summon rolling thunder on Good Friday, or a sudden sunrise at the moment in the Easter service when the pastor pronounces, “He is risen.” As one Second Life handbook puts it: “From your point of view, SL works as if you were a god.”"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/

Apple, ecco come dovresti fare i tuoi MacBook Pro - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/apple-ecco-come-dovresti-fare-i-tuoi-macbook-pro/

Sta scoppiando la bolla del bike-sharing?

Money quote: “Just two days after China’s number three bike sharing company went bankrupt, a photographer in the south-eastern city of Xiamen captured a bicycle graveyard where thousands have been laid to rest. The pile clearly contains thousands of bikes from each of the top three companies, Mobike, Ofo and the now-defunct Bluegogo”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-share-graveyard-a-monument-to-industrys-arrogance

Wired Usa spiega bene cosa vuol dire la fine della Net Neutrality negli Usa - e in parte anche nel resto del mondo.

Money quote: "Because many internet services for mobile devices include limits on data use, the changes will be visible there first. In one dramatic scenario, internet services would begin to resemble cable-TV packages, where subscriptions could be limited to a few dozen sites and services. Or, for big spenders, a few hundred. Fortunately, that’s not a likely scenario. Instead, expect a gradual shift towards subscriptions that provide unlimited access to certain preferred providers while charging extra for everything else."

https://www.wired.com/story/heres-how-the-end-of-net-neutrality-will-change-the-internet/

Perso quasi quattro milioni di Bitcoin su poco più di sedici.

Money quote: “In the future, more bitcoins will be lost. But the rate at which they disappear will be much lower than in the past since, now that they’re so valuable, people will be more vigilant about keeping track of them (unlike this poor fellow out who threw away a hard drive with the key to 7,500 bitcoins). Meanwhile, there is a question of whether the Chainalysis findings mean bitcoin is more scarce than people assume—or if the market has already priced the missing coins into the currency’s current value.”

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

“Shangri-La”, la space opera di Mathieu Bablet | il mio articolo per Fumettologica

http://www.fumettologica.it/2017/11/shangri-la-mathieu-bablet-mondadori-recensione/

Confondiamo gli effetti con le cause. Il problema non sono i movimenti e i leader populisti o il crollo della consapevolezza e del tessuto sociale, ma l’ignoranza alla quale ci stiamo abbandonando.

Questo articolo, che noi etichetteremmo come “bla bla bla sull’analfabetismo funzionale oltretutto americano” (credetemi, penso di sapere come ragiona un giornale), è una delle letture più importanti del 2017. Dentro c’è tutto quello che ci servirebbe.

Questa è la premessa:

Money quote: “Many of these poor readers can sound out words from print, so in that sense, they can read. Yet they are functionally illiterate — they comprehend very little of what they can sound out. So what does comprehension require? Broad vocabulary, obviously. Equally important, but more subtle, is the role played by factual knowledge”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-your-mind-to-read.html

Questa è la cosa interessante:

Money quote 2: “Don’t blame the internet, or smartphones, or fake news for Americans’ poor reading. Blame ignorance. Turning the tide will require profound changes in how reading is taught, in standardized testing and in school curriculums. Underlying all these changes must be a better understanding of how the mind comprehends what it reads.”