Thursday’s Big Idea
Today's Big Idea: Crowdsourcing Consciousness
Is technology a kind of external brain? Tech writer William Powers sees computers as an extension of the human mind, expanding our capacity for memory storage and information retrieval. True, your Blackberry can remember your parents' phone number for you, but it can't make the connections and associations that result from creative freethinking.
Tiffany Shlain is working on ways to make that happen. She uses the web to participate in what she calls "cloud filmmaking," in which images and sounds sent in from around the world are edited into one group project. It's the future of video, she says, and it's making us better human beings.
Maria Popova looks at how collaborative storytelling can be brought into the classroom. The MIT-designed Never-Ending Drawing Machine allows users to digitally edit paper sketchbooks as a group, enabling virtual co-creation.
The future, it seems, will be a beautiful place.
