1. 79 (interesting) theses on technology (and what it means to live in the modern world).

1. Everything begins with attention.
2. It is vital to ask, “What must I pay attention to?”
3. It is vital to ask, “What may I pay attention to?”
4. It is vital to ask, “What must I refuse attention to?”
5. To “pay” attention is not a metaphor: Attending to something is an economic exercise, an exchange with uncertain returns.
6. Attention is not an infinitely renewable resource; but it is partially renewable, if well-invested and properly cared for.
7. We should evaluate our investments of attention at least as carefully and critically as our investments of money.

2. This app turns a picture into words. Just try it on your phone.

"word.camera uses convolutional neural networks (via Clarifai) to extract concept words from images. It expands those initial words (mostly nouns) into sentences and paragraphs using a lexical relationship database (ConceptNet) and a flexible template system."

3. This new book on the subsea telecom networks looks really, really good.

"The Undersea Network is a thrilling work of cultural analysis. Part critical travel writing, part investigative ethnography, part history of technology, Nicole Starosielski's oceanic odyssey takes her readers to out-of-the-way sites like the Honotua cable station on Tahiti, the mega-networked beaches on Guam, and to AT&T's offices on Keawa'ula Beach in O'ahu. She reminds us that the undersea telecommunications infrastructure is haunted by histories of maritime colonial connection, Cold War submarine conflict, and the fluctuating fortunes of finance."

4. A visual history of computer storage.

"Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. Even tiny MP3 players and other handheld devices usually have several gigabytes of storage. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!"

5. The infrastructure undergirding the hardware startup boom.

"Chipmaker Flextronics, which makes products for Apple and Microsoft, in 2013 began offering Lab IX, a service that connects startups with manufacturing partners. There's also HAXLR8R and Wearable World, both based in San Francisco, and Bolt in Boston, all of which have launched in the last few years and do similar things. The end result of all this activity is that once-arcane secrets known only to those with years of experience, oodles of cash and prebuilt relationships overseas are helping to fuel Silicon Valley's hardware-startup craze."

On Fusion: Activists organized the world's first hologram "march" to protest a repressive set of Spanish laws.

 Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip:

droll. (Unintentionally) amusing, queer, quaint, strange. For synonymy see JOCOSE.

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Everything Begins With Attention