We Couldn't Believe Anything Was Ever Designed This Way
Remember how I told you about our first live show in Los Angeles last month? Well, we're coming to New York on Monday, September 14 with a brand-new live show called The Real Future of Deceit.
From catfishing to fakecations, our lives online are often far from truthful, but does technology ultimately make it easier or more difficult for us to lie? The Real Future of Deceit will look at the intersection between technology and the human compulsion to deceive. Expect in-depth reporting and interactive stage magic: an admixture of live journalism and theater.
Tickets are $20, including drinks with the crew after the show. The show starts at 7:30pm. We're opening up tickets to you subscribers first, then going out to the general public tomorrow.
1. A gorgeous little piece on the dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
"Cajal, who won the 1906 Nobel Prize for discovering neurons and, more remarkably, intuiting the form and function of synapses, set out to prove Freud wrong. To disprove the theory that every dream is the result of a repressed desire, Cajal began keeping a dream journal and collecting the dreams of others, analyzing them with logic and rigor... Cajal exalted rational thinking and the conscious will. In his autobiography, the scientist described neurons as 'mysterious butterflies of the soul, the beating of whose wings might one day, who knows, reveal the secrets of mental life.' He had a lifelong fascination with dreaming and dreams, despite, or perhaps because of, their tendency to resist all rational explanation."
"Terra Firma Triptych begins in a wilderness in South Sudan. J. M. Ledgard is there in search of a still point, untouched by humankind-a goal complicated by the contingent of armed rangers accompanying him. Next, a trip through Rwanda-taking a borrowed car toward crocodile-infested lakes near the border with Burundi-a road trip that unexpectedly ends up at the site of the country’s proposed future in the sky. And finally Ledgard takes us straight into a vision of that very future, of a continent poised to take advantage of current and near-future technological advances-a vision that feels Star Trek fanciful at first, then not just practical but necessary."
3. The web erodes so quickly, but not this website.
"The site lay more-or-less dormant for the next 14 years. But that changed for good in late 2010, when the Internet, exponentially bigger than it was in 1996, rediscovered the site – almost entirely unchanged from its initial launch. It was reborn as a viral sensation, the web's equivalent of a recently discovered cave painting. We laughed at the site because we couldn't believe anything was ever designed this way, but also because it still existed. It remains one of the most faithful living documents of early web design that anyone can access online. Today, the Space Jam site's popularity has outlived almost everything to which it has been connected."
4. A syllabus on digital death.
"Digital Death: Archives, Memories, Bodies and Decay. This class will cover a range of topics at the intersection of media and memory. In particular, we focus on the concept of death and decay to raise questions about human values, the role technology plays in preserving life, and what the archive means for humanity and history."
5. The military is still out there doing massive drills, Cold War-style.
"A total of 11 NATO nations and 5,000 soldiers are participating in the month-long drill in a training called Swift Response 15. It's taking place in Germany, Romania, Italy, and Bulgaria. The drill began Saturday. A U.S. Army statement says the drill is meant to 'demonstrate the alliance's capacity to rapidly deploy and operate in support of maintaining a strong and secure Europe.'"
On Fusion: We got two dozen Ashley Madison users on the phone and asked them about the big hack.
If you made it all the way down here, we may have a few spots left for a little party we're throwing in Oakland tonight. You can reply to this email if you're interested.
1. nautil.us 2. fsgoriginals.com 3. rollingstone.com 4. docs.google.com 5. popularmechanics.com
We Couldn't Believe Anything Was Ever Designed This Way