Russian Power Plants and the Problems with E-Books and Web-Libraries

Recently I wrote a piece in Psychology Today about how e-books and web-libraries fail to tap into our innate spatial navigation powers, and so don’t serve to harness our brains very well. It has sparked a lively conversation, one heavy on “crazy” Russian power plants and their thousands of real live non-virtual dials and buttons.

• Christopher Mims has written a nice piece about it at Technology Review.
• John Pavlus has great little piece at FastCodesign.
• Maggie Koerth-Baker has posted about it at BoingBoing.
• And Maia Szalavitz also takes up the matter at TIME.

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Mark Changizi is Director of Human Cognition at 2AI, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books, 2009) and the upcoming book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella Books, 2011).

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What’s Next, After Humans?: My new “manifesto” on our future.

I’ve argued there’s no imminent singularity, and I’ve thrown water on the idea that the web will become smart or self-aware. But am I just a wet blanket, or do I have a positive vision of our human future?

I have just written up a short “manifesto” of sorts about where we humans are headed, and it appeared in Seed Magazine. It serves not only as guidepost to our long-term future, but also one for how to create better technologies for our brains (part of the aim of the research institute, 2ai, I co-direct with colleague Tim Barber).

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Mark Changizi is Director of Human Cognition at 2AI, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books, 2009) and the upcoming book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella Books, 2011).

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