An Eye to the World, an Eye to the Net
Ho iniziato a leggere questa intervista sul corriere.
Poi ho pensato a tante cose. E volevo scrivere tante cose.
Poi l’ho finita ed ho pensato a tante altre cose.
Poi forse la questione è più complicata di quello che sembra. Quindi vi lascio solo il link.
Io ho avuto paura. Tanta.
Siccome vi voglio bene e metto anche il trailer del film preferito da quel tipo lì.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnlKM7NNUC4]
Come si può vedere dal comunicato di Terna, non serve costruire nuove centrali, ma basta investire sulla distribuzione per recuperare vagoni di energia che vengono invece buttati per la cattiva distribuzione.
Un esempio? Secondo il comunicato di Terna, con
3,1 miliardi gli investimenti in 5 anni che a regime sbottiglieranno tra i 2.500 e i 4.500 MW di produzione più efficiente, equivalenti al doppio del consumo di picco di una città come Roma, porteranno un risparmio annuo per le bollette di 600 milioni di euro ed una riduzione delle emissioni di CO2 di 2,5 milioni di tonnellate/anno.
Le fantomatiche centrali nucleari del governo fanno 1.6 GW . Così ne recuperiamo 2.5 GW. Prima. E con meno soldi. E senza il problema delle scorie. Capisc?
La democrazia diretta, da sempre cavallo di battaglia di parecchie persone, può essere anche negativa. Perchè?
Perchè per decidere di problemi complessi serve una conoscenza approfondita del problema e non di scelte umorali. Non è il televoto di San Remo solo, ma è tutto il sistema.
Immaginate questo scenario, scritto da Gramellini sulla Stampa:
«Popolo di Raiuno! Popolo di Canale 5! Benvenuti a Decide il Poppolo, il programma a reti unificate che da oggi sostituisce il Parlamento. (Vivissimi applausi dalla platea). Basta Casta, gli onorevoli adesso… siete voi!!! (boati). Ma veniamo al tema di questa sera. Si vota sui lavoratori clandestini: regolarizzarli o rispedirli indietro? Chiamo sul palco Malik Barak, che ci esporrà in tre minuti le ragioni per cui andrebbero accolti… Grazie, Malik… E ora, per i fautori del rimpatrio forzato, Giasone Pecoracci… Grazie anche a te, Giasone… Popolo! Pensate di aver acquisito una conoscenza approfondita del problema? (Coro: Sììììì!)… Allora… si decide! Se volete regolarizzare i clandestini come Malik, il codice di televoto è lo 01. Se invece volete cacciarli come proposto da Giasone, il codice è lo 02… Notaio, push the botton! Stop al televoto…
Inquietante, molto inquietante.
Scientific data must be open. Everyone should be able to check them, reuse them. More over they should be always available in a easy way.
That’s why the panthon principle have been launched:
Science is based on building on, reusing and openly criticising the published body of scientific knowledge.
For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data be made open.
Data is not code and data is not artistic work. This means all the classic licence that we love and we always use like the GNU Public Licence or the Creative Commons (except CCZero) are not good enough for data. Data does not belong to anybody in particular but belongs to everybody. That’s why it’s really important to use the right license. A list is available here .
Ask if isopendata.
La classica soluzione dell’edilizia per far ripartire l’economia è una gran balla. Viene consumato territorio (in maniera irrecuperabile) per ottenere il nulla. Soltanto per ingrassare i classici cementificatori.
In questo post di Carlo Bertani un’ottima descrizione della situazione.
[via Crisis]
Attention is finite, time is finite. With an increasing number of stimuli how do you discriminate within important and not relevant informations?
Anything that is not important falls back into the noise category. For example, within all the inputs you can collect from facebook/reader/twitter and now also buzz, how do you discriminate?
In this post attention is compared to a currency.
In this other post (ita) attention is compared to energy.
Instead I like to think about attention more like a rack of spotlights. (Yeah I know it doesn’t make any sense, but follow me for a bit more).
From Rissygirl16 @ deviantart.com
It’s a rack of spotlights, which you can direct to illuminate a black sky. Everything is under your attention is illuminated, all the other stuff is in a gray or black area.
It’s a rack, and not just one, because focus comes into play as well. When you concentrate on something is like if you are beaming your current interest with more then one spotlight. This of course requires a lot of energy and it’s very difficult. Why?
Let’s broad the view a bit.
The brain has evolved a very efficient system to discriminate within different kind of stimuli. Basically anything which can be a direct danger for your survival takes the priority, reshuffling any previous priority list.
To do that your brain is always processing all the signals coming from the environment around you. This is a background process, which does not cost fatigue, or at least not the on you are fully aware. I think this is the key point.
While you need to use a bit of your attention (remember the spotlights rack?) to process the inputs that maybe will be interesting for you, you still need to get the job done, so a big amount of the spotlights should beaming to the current activity you are doing.
Now, think about this scenario: you have a finite amount of spotlights (let’s say ten for clarity) and then you are doing one activity (let’s say reading this post). How many free spotlights do you have to take care of your current activity? One? Two? Where are my other spotlights?
Your other spotlights are taking care of something else. The main difference with sensory inputs is you need to be aware of that, and you need to “drive” them in a conscious way.
This require a lot of energy. More over keeping the focus sharp with only one spotlight there takes a lot of energy more.
The question is: do you want to spend all that energy to that? Are you hitting an overhead problem, which is taking care of things which are just noise for you? Can you keep your focus sharp on your “primary” activity? This is not a multitasking problem, because we are still in the deciding period, when you think if that hings is interesting or not. So the action is not yet in itinere.
Let’s say you can do that. You need only a bit of your spotlights to illuminate your current activity and to be aware of what is going on around you. Now you find something interesting.
In which way you switch the attention? There are any difference from children which grew up with internet and all the stimuli in full swing and people who were never exposed to that? We follow some kind of rule to reshuffle our priority list?
This is a big field of investigation, in the mean time use a strategy. Or don’t.
A volte una frase riassume in maniera precisa tutto il dibattito sulle ideleogie.
the funny thing to be in academia is to know things a bit before they will happen, and to have no power to change them.
Like for example the peak oil, or in another name the oil crunch.
I’ll partecipate to this initiative : to read, to read, to read
For the non italian speaking community I’ll try to sum it up:
The majority of the people do not read. They don’t read books. Reading books is a way to grew, to know new things, and even though it’s not the ultimate solution, it’s something which can’t hurt. It’s not demonstrated but if people will read more there should be less crap around. Or at least is what we want to believe.
Most of the commuters share the same space, but even if they are only few cm of space dividing them, they will not talk to each other. Never. Only if something hilarious or really funny will happen able to “break the ice”.
The proposed initiative consists in one action: give a book as a gift to a complete stranger. You can either buy the book (or took one of your old one). You can write a personal message inside or not. There is an official facebook group here.
This will happen the 26th of March. I’ll do it. It looks fun.
Official video (in italian only. Sorry)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7hetpEIC8M]