Voyager 1 & 2 Weekly Reports

Nasa still makes available the Voyager probes Weekly Reports 30 years later. Take that you short term minded people.

Voyager 1 was 16 billion kilometers away on september, 12th.

Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration

Most institutions were at the denial stages in 2005, what about now?

YouTube – Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration.

Rick Warren: Living a life of purpose

What’s in your hand?

YouTube – Rick Warren: Living a life of purpose.

Do schools today kill creativity? (Ken Robinson, TEDTalks)

Do schools today kill creativity? by Ken Robinson at TED

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Forget TV, there is now enough material online to spend intelligent evenings with outstanding people.

YouTube – Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

The (recent) origin of consumerism

It all boiled down to a vision elaborated after World War II and most clearly expressed by a retail analyst of the era, Victor Lebow:

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”

For more details and ressources on the subject, go see the very good 20 minutes cartoon by Annie Leonard.

What is wrong with the google blog?*

Why is the google blog so unnerving to read? It never gets to the point, always start with a story about some innane details about ideal life and frankly is very tedious to read. How many times did I go to Techcrunch instead to get the gist of today’s Google annoucements?

*Of course I know why: it is because this blog is open to almost anyone in google wishing to write there with little or no censorship. They are just not always good writers.

Of Web 2.0 experts and the written medium

On september 17th, 2007 took place the Techcrunch 40 conference, allowing the newest and smartest web startups to show off their ideas and projects.

While browsing the presentations I noticed a funny thing. Below is a picture of a panel of experts asserting the merits of the projects showed up that day. Can you tell what caught my eye?

Where are the laptops and other ultra slim pda? The members of the panel still use pen and paper to take notes.

Writing 1.0 is not dead.

Whose side are you on?

Nature? Or the people?

I rarely see these two together.

The hobbits are back!

But this time they live in Wales and this is for real.

Nice looking house by the way.