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Perhaps Johnson delved into this in the book that grew out of his Brill's piece. I haven't read it, but I did see his essay on weblogs in the Wired cover series I featured here last month. Blogs, he wrote, are a way to apprehend the Web through human minds, as records of a person's pattern of thought. Blogs have become the most helpful way to mine the Web, since we trust human agents as guides more than we trust machines in that role. What would have been interesting is if Johnson had tied this Wired essay to his earlier piece in Brill's, and tackled the resulting questions: Are blogs a triumph of human consciousness over "artificial intelligence"? Will individual human brains continue to command the mind of machines, and not the other way around?
Related:
- Steven Johnson's weblog
- Excerpt from Johnson's new book on the brain and neuroscience
- From B&C: "Computer Control: Who's in Charge?"
- From the Los Angeles Times: Search engines find less as Web grows
From the Chicago Tribune:
STOCKHOLM — When you peddle drinks in the Ice Bar in Sweden's capital city, smiling—or is it wincing?—at customers' lame ice-related humor is part of the job. So is working in temperatures that hover at minus-5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit), serving up alcoholic refreshment in ice glasses to crowds swaddled in bar-issued parkas and mittens and boots, working behind a bar made entirely of ice, surrounded by solid-ice walls beneath a solid-ice ceiling. . . . The Ice Bar, which may soon expand to locations in other parts of the world including the United States, is advertised as the only bar on the planet constructed entirely of ice, from the infrastructure—walls, ceilings, tables, bar—to the accoutrements: Drinks arrive in glasses made of ice. Ice sculptures are the only decor. Full story*
KEARNEY, Nebraska — Ever since The Movie's release last winter, Phil Kozera has gotten questions about scenes in which Warren Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, rode an enormous escalator to view pioneer exhibits at the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument spanning Interstate Highway 80 here. . . . Other than [some] curious college kids, the About Schmidt effect on Nebraska tourism was negligible, at least until now. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's a blip in summer sightseeing. But with the help of the DVD released in June, [archway manager] Kozera believes About Schmidt has brought people to the archway and given a boost to annual attendance figures for the struggling attraction. . . . Director Alexander Payne, a native of Nebraska, originally planned for Pioneer Village, another tourist stop 12 miles south of here in Minden, to get the lion's share of shooting with Nicholson. But Payne grew enamored of the archway, and it joined the state's landmarks and landscapes immortalized in films, starting with the Spencer Tracy-Mickey Rooney smash Boys Town in 1938. Full story*
SCRAPBOOKFrom the June edition of Harper's Index:
Amount by which total U.S. personal debt in 2002 exceeded total disposable income: $628,000,000,000
Days that AT&T ceased its TV advertising last March "out of respect for the U.S. military operation in Iraq": 3
Days that it ceased its telemarketing: 1
Ratio of the top weekly fee paid a Munchkin in 1939's The Wizard of Oz to the weekly fee paid for Toto: 4:5
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