Things of note for the week ending Friday May 1st, 2015.
1. WHY CAN’T WE READ ANYMORE?
My two-year old daughter, dance recital. Pink tutu. Cat ears on her head. Along with five other two-year-olds, in front of a crowd of 75 parents and grandparents, these little toddlers put on a show. You can imagine the rest. You’ve seen these videos on Youtube, maybe I have shown you my videos. The cuteness level was extreme, a moment that defines a certain kind of parental pride. My daughter didn’t even dance, she just wandered around the stage, looking at the audience with eyes as wide as a two-year old’s eyes starting at a bunch of strangers. It didn’t matter that she didn’t dance, I was so proud. I took photos, and video, with my phone.
There is so much relevance here I feel like copy and pasting the whole article word for word. You wanna talk about neuroplasticity?
Try this:
So, every new email you get gives you a little flood of dopamine. Every little flood of dopamine reinforces your brain’s memory that checking email gives a flood of dopamine. And our brains are programmed to seek out things that will give us little floods of dopamine. Further, these patterns of behaviour start creating neural pathways, so that they become unconscious habits: Work on something important, brain itch, check email, dopamine, refresh,dopamine, check Twitter, dopamine, back to work. Over and over, and each time the habit becomes more ingrained in the actual structures of our brains.
How can books compete?
This is a recurring theme [for me] at the moment. I saw the amazing neuroplasticity talk (#neurobrand) at SXSW (y’know, the one I mentioned during item number two last week) and ironically enough, it’s been playing on my mind ever since.
Neurons that fire together, wire together – right?
Email is bad.
Digital dopamine is bad.
Unplug.
…
I’ve recently signed up to Headspace (cheers Jed) maybe you should too.
Also: read the whole article quoted above.
All of it.
In one sitting.
GO.
2. STEALING FROM MH17
Jeroen Akkermans is an RTL News Correspondent for Holland. With the still-under-investigation MH17 air disaster on lockdown (dubbed ‘the biggest crime scene in the world’) Akkermans decided to do some investigation himself.
It’s unbelievable that no one, thing, or group has been held accountable for this crime.
If you know anything about the theories behind this ‘accident’ then you’ll know where the main evidence points – and reading Akkermans’ words serves only to underline them further.
‘MH17 Crash: my revealing fragments from east Ukraine‘
3. THE FUTURE OF INFLUENCE
This slideshare document, from one of London’s better looking plannery-shaped pessimists, is really on point. What does the future of influence actually look like?
There be gold in these slides.
4. MORE APPLE WATCH STUFF
This is worth reading: back in Five Things #119 I stated that The Verge had written the definitive review of the Apple Watch. I take it back.
Oh, and this is fun too.
5. STARS
The premise of this photo shoot is simple: ‘What would cities look like if they were lit only by the stars?’ – and the photographer, Thierry Cohen, nails it.
Beautiful.
More.
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Bonuses this week consist of three awesome videos.
- Video 1 is one man’s attempt to save a falling drone. Watch this one to the end.
- Video 2 asks the question: ‘What if Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL’ was in colour?’
- Video 3 demonstrates how dangerous ‘one click’ purchase can really be.
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Hope you’re having a gorgeous weekend, until next time..
Whatley out.