I came across an interesting article over at BBC about how plants talk to each other using an “internet of fungus”. While the science itself is interesting, what caught my attention was the headline’s refreshing use of metaphor. It’s much more common to use nature metaphors to communicate technological concepts, e.g. “fertile ground for innovation”, “tech ecosystem”, “computer virus”, than it is to do it the other way around. I particularly love the phrase “Internet of fungus”.
Hidden Figures (2016) is inspiring, eye-opening, and nerdgasmic. The three protagonists — Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan — are heroes who deserve far more recognition than history has given them. I didn’t understand much of the orbital math, but the scenes with the gigantic IBM computer, Fortran, and punch cards made me giddy. Big props to the people behind this movie. We need more of these stories!
72 hours. Millions of people collaborating. 16 colors. The result? A microcosm of the history of human art in a single, huge animated GIF.
This is one the best social experiments combining technology, art, emergence, and human nature I’ve seen in recent years. Read the article about it at Sudo Script.