IF Blog

Forbes: "Listening" among top new jobs

15 May 2012

Forbes lists 10 jobs that didn't exist so much as ten years ago, and among them is work such as mobile app development, user experience design and admissions counseling. Once my young live-in code warriors are done retooling the home network, I plan to tell them about the mobile app thing. Yeah, that sounds interesting.

But the job that really appealed was Chief Listening Officer. Most of the people in my life who fit that description have worn a cleric's collar - come on Forbes, the position is not that new - and the job unfortunately describes social data mining - gah! - but for someone who is made content at the sound of little feet scattering on the forest floor, or the rosined vibrato of nearby frogs on my small farm, for someone who enjoys the reedy breath of wind and the hushed stellar expanse on a truly dark night, it only made sense. In a world that can't seem to stop talking, listening is bound to be in demand.

Thanks for the link Ceci.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by ♪ Sleeping Sun ♪

How the Hippies Saved Physics

14 May 2012

Coming of age when their employment prospects were dim, a group of young physicists migrated to San Francisco and began to explore theoretical physics and consciousness, the potential real-world applications of quantum theory and the big metaphysical questions that had drawn them to the field in the first place.

What did they have to lose?

In this video about his latest book, "How the Hippies Saved Physics," David Kaiser, History of Science professor at MIT, says that their "curious and idiosyncratic explorations" are hard to separate from the cultural ferment of the time. But on the other hand, the members of the “Fundamental Fysiks Group” were doing physics in ways that would be recognized as solid science. Many of the earliest citations for Bell's theorem, for example, can be traced to these beaded scientists, bent on exploring the counterintuitive nature of contemporary physics.

So did the hippies save physics? Find out at IdeaFestival 2012. All-access passes go on sale this week!

Wayne

Stranded two inches from the World

11 May 2012

Interviewed by The Economist, novelist and essayist Pico Iyer discusses the "importance of ambiguity" in this always-on age. This short paragraph describes the need (my words, not his) for the IdeaFestival perfectly.

The problem is that you can only make sense of the world by stepping out of it. More and more, in our age of acceleration and scrolling headlines and breaking news around the clock, we’re standing two inches away from the world, able to see what happened ten seconds ago but not able often to put it in a wider context or to see its long-term implications.

I changed one word for the post title.

Wayne