Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind — Balter 2008 (128): 2 — ScienceNOW: “Don’t take that hammer for granted. Using tools may seem like second nature, but only a few animals can master the coordination and mental sophistication required. So how did primates learn to use tools in the first place? A new study in monkeys suggests that the brain’s trick is to treat tools as just another body part.”
Oooh, this is so activity theory!
creating an mpeg file with VLC–from the VLC wiki
With friends like these … Tom Hodgkinson on the politics of the people behind Facebook | Technology | The Guardian: “And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.”
How Hot Did The Jet Fuel Heat The World Trade Center?: “‘In the mid-1990s British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington to investigate the behavior of steel frame buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900� C (1,500-1,700� F) in three of the tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600� C (1,100� F), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.'”
Gates bids farewell to tech gathering – MarketWatch: “In particular, he predicted that a key element in the next decade will be ‘natural-user interface,’ in which consumers interface with their devices in more natural ways. He even mentioned the iPhone – the iconic touch-screen wireless phone introduced last year by longtime Microsoft rival Apple Inc. (AAPL:
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AAPL 177.64, -2.41, -1.3%) – as a key development in that area, and predicted that touch-screen and voice commands will play a much larger role in future electronics devices.”
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