"evolution" entries

A Darwinian theory of beauty

Denis Dutton's TED talk uses evolution to explain beauty.

I love this TED talk by Denis Dutton of Arts & Letters Daily fame. As you’ll see the accompanying video, he uses evolution to explain beauty.

Skinner Box? There's an App for That

The very technology that makes our collective integration possible also distracts us from advancing it. In equilibrium, distraction and ambition square off at the singular point of failed progress. If the next generation of Moores, Joys, and Kurzweils are half as distracted as I am, we are going to find ourselves frozen right here, nodes in a wormy borg that never becomes a butterfly. My computer is turning out to be the interface to a giant network Skinner Box. But maybe Twitter is just God's way of making sure we're too distracted to destroy ourselves.

George Dyson's "Among the Machines" in Mountain View

Science historian, author and Make columnist George Dyson will give a lecture tonight on the "Evolution of Technology: Darwin Among the Machines." The talk will be at 7 p.m. at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Mountain View. The talk is part of a series hosted by NASA Ames centered around the concept of evolution in…