Thursday, December 29, 2011

Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Started in part because of a challenge by the Dalai Lama to Richard Davidson - (my paraphrasing) we investigate unhealthy minds, why not investigate healthy minds?

NYT: TV Prices Fall, Squeezing Most Makers and Sellers

By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: December 26, 2011

It’s a great time to buy a television, and Ram Lall, a television salesman, isn’t happy about it. In a basement showroom of J&R, the huge electronics store in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Lall says the days of making big money from televisions are in the past. Pointing to a top-of-the line, 55-inch Sony television, Mr. Lall said it would have sold for $6,000 a few years ago. The current price? $2,599...


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/business/tv-prices-fall-squeezing-most-makers-and-sellers.html

This demonstrates the invasion of Moore's Law into the consumer electronics business.

This influence is disruptive to manufacturers, retail sellers and consumers.

The Ecojoy connection is the change in media balance. The reason for the change is the compelling drop in price. And as the balance of media changes, the way we think changes.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

How Language Shapes Thought

By Lera Boroditsky  | January 20, 2011 


I am standing next to a five-year old girl in pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York in northern Australia. When I ask her to point north, she points precisely and without hesitation. My compass says she is right. Later, back in a lecture hall at Stanford University, I make the same request of an audience of distinguished scholars—winners of science medals and genius prizes. Some of them have come to this very room to hear lectures for more than 40 years. I ask them to close their eyes (so they don’t cheat) and point north. Many refuse; they do not know the answer. Those who do point take a while to think about it and then aim in all possible directions. I have repeated this exercise at Harvard and Princeton and in Moscow, London and Beijing, always with the same results.

A five-year-old in one culture can do something with ease that eminent scientists in other cultures struggle with. This is a big difference in cognitive ability. What could explain it? The surprising answer, it turns out, may be language.


In Scientific American Lera Borodidsky: How Language Shapes Thought
On Fora TV Lera Borodidsky: How Language Shapes Thought