October 2017 – dr.Pep

Stanislas Deheane – Consciousness and the brain

Combining carefully designed experiments with monitoring of brain activity has led to fadcinating insights about consciousness.

Fascinating read about how much progress has been made on the path initiated by Daniel Dennett in “Consciousness explained”.

Michael Smith – Streaming, Sharing, Stealing

For the first time in decades, the simulaneous developments in distribution and production of media give traditional ‘majors’ something to worry about.

Recent move of Disney to boycot Netflixs proves that incumbents are starting to realize the new reality.

Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens

The rise of Homo Sapiens to the top of the food chain has been the result of its remarkable ability to construct a collective imagination of things like God, nations, money, and corporations.

Refreshing evolutionary perspective, emphasizing the cognitive, agricultural, and industrial revolutions as turning points in human development.

Naomi Klein – No is not enough

All “progressives” should unite against Trump, who’s communication strategy is that of a WWE wrestling star.

Solid analysis of politics and mass communication ends in a disappointingly polarized plea for “us v. them”-thinking.

Pedro Domingos – The master algorithm

The author’s invention (“Markov logic networks”) may unify the symbolist, connectionist, evolutionary, Baysian, and analogizing approaches to machine learning.

The brave attempt to cover an inherently deep subject in a non-technical way.