Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam: Digital generation has less and less contact with traditional culture

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam: Digital generation has less and less contact with traditional culture

The generation of young people who were born into the digital era may
be more connected to each other, but less connected to their cultural
heritage, warns sociologist Jos de Haan of Erasmus University
Rotterdam. They are "chatting" more but reading less; playing more, but
researching and learning less than preceding generations.

Though adept at finding their way around the virtual world, digital-era
youth are not finding their way to institutions that connect them with
the cultural riches of their past, according to de Haan.

The Internet is perceived as a rival to traditional culture, but it
could become an ally: De Haan challenges museums, libraries, archives,
and other institutions to do more to connect with the digital
generation than merely digitize their collections.

39070305.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

39070305.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

The availability of statistical indicators of economic, social, and environmental outcomes and their dissemination to citizens can contribute to promoting good governance and the improvement of democratic processes. It can strengthen citizens’ capacity to influence the goals of the societies they live in through debate and consensus building, and increase the accountability of public policies..

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature - Steven Pinker - Books - Review - New York Times

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature - Steven Pinker - Books - Review - New York Times: "The dialectic of creativity and reality-testing has taken us far beyond other animals and can take us farther. The next step is to dump our most natural and mistaken metaphor — education as the filling of empty minds — and recognize that we learn by extrapolating, testing, modifying and recombining mental models of the world."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Although U.S. robot numbers are not yet measured in millions, the industrial automatons are nonetheless playing strategic roles in U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, with more than 171,000 robots now at work in U.S. factories, placing the U.S. second only to Japan in overall robot use. Read Original Article>>"

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

Fading superpower? – (LA Times – September 9, 2007)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18347.htm
Whether it is imperial Rome, imperial Spain or imperial Britain, economic strength and political strength have always gone together. Because no one denies that the U.S. will decline in comparative terms economically (though it will almost certainly remain one center of the world economy), the only way one can believe that geopolitics will not also become multipolar is to believe that the U.S. is somehow exempt from what seems one of history's few ironclad laws. However, that is not analysis; that is faith.

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

The Future of the Workplace: No Office, Headquarters in Cyberspace – (August 27, 2007)
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3521725&page=1
Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all. 42% of IBM's 350,000 employees rarely comes in to an IBM office. IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn't need the offices. The work force at the Accenture management consulting firm is so mobile not even the CEO has an office with his name on the door. However, maintaining a community is essential at IBM, where isolation can be a "significant" issue. There's even a joke at the company that the name stands for "I'm by Myself."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "A Planet Under Stress: Rising to the Challenge — We need to restructure our economy with lower income taxes and increased taxes on environmentally destructive activities, such as use of fossil fuels, says one environmental advocate."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "The productivity boom in the U.S. economy during the twentieth century created a massive consumer culture--people made more money, so they bought more stuff. In the twenty-first century, however, workers will increasingly choose to trade higher salaries for more time with their families. Nearly a third of U.S. workers recently polled said they would prefer more time off rather than more hours of paid employment."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "For the first time, the United States will see a significant proportion of its population emigrate due to overseas opportunities. According to futurists Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner, Generation Y, the population segment born between 1978 and 1995, may be the first generation in U.S. history to have many of its members leave the U.S. to pursue large portions of their lives, if not their entire adult lives, overseas."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Life expectancy rates in the United States are at an all-time high, with people born in 2005 projected to live for nearly 78 years, up from 69.6 in 1955, a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics finds. Despite the upward trend, the United States still has a lower life expectancy than some 40 other countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The country with the longest life expectancy is Andorra at 83.5 years."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, according to the '2007 State of the Future' report, published by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon. The report called organized crime one of the most pressing global issues that needs to be addressed in the next 10 years, along with global warming, terrorism, corruption, unemployment, and income disparities. But the report noted success in tackling other issues, saying the world has made progress on ending poverty, improving access to education and settling conflicts. It also says the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off."

OECD Observer: Foreign class

OECD Observer: Foreign class: "Some 82,900 foreign scholars were in teaching or research at US higher education institutions in the 2003-04 academic year. Most were engaged in research, although the share in teaching has increased. Two-thirds are engaged in scientific or engineering fields, with a fast-growing proportion in life and biological sciences."

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

AUGMENTED/ARTICIAL INTELLIGENCE Unmanned "Surge": 3000 More Robots for War – (Wired – August 13, 2007)
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/3000-more-bomb-.html
U.S. military robots ran 30,000 missions in 2006 -- hunting for, and getting rid of, improvised explosives. Now, the military has launched a crash project to radically increase its unmanned ground forces. 1000 machines are supposed to be enlisted by the end of the year, with two thousand more in five years. Word of the robot recruitment comes just weeks after the military revealed it had deployed armed robots to Iraq

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute
China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People – (New York Times – August 12, 2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12security.html?ex=1188532800&en=
09f8aa49c390745d&ei=5070
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by American-financed company will be issued to most citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

Ian Ayres

Ian Ayres: "Here are some applets that give you a sense of the kinds of things that Super Crunching can help predict. Use them at your own risk (The lawyer in me feels compelled to emphasize that I make no representation as to their accuracy). ."

Technology Review: Higher Games

Technology Review: Higher Games: "Yes, but so what? Silicon machines can now play chess better than any protein machines can. Big deal. This calm and reasonable reaction, however, is hard for most people to sustain. They don't like the idea that their brains are protein machines. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, many commentators were tempted to insist that its brute-force search methods were entirely unlike the exploratory processes that Kasparov used when he conjured up his chess moves. But that is simply not so. Kasparov's brain is made of organic materials and has an architecture notably unlike that of Deep Blue, but it is still, so far as we know, a massively parallel search engine that has an outstanding array of heuristic pruning techniques that keep it from wasting time on unlikely branches."

Technology Review: Higher Games

Technology Review: Higher Games: "In an editorial written at the time of the Deep Blue match, 'Mind over Matter' (May 10, 1997), the New York Times opined: The real significance of this over-hyped chess match is that it is forcing us to ponder just what, if anything, is uniquely human. We prefer to believe that something sets us apart from the machines we devise. Perhaps it is found in such concepts as creativity, intuition, consciousness, esthetic or moral judgment, courage or even the ability to be intimidated by Deep Blue. The ability to be intimidated? Is that really one of our prized qualities? Yes, according to the Times: Nobody knows enough about such characteristics to know if they are truly beyond machines in the very long run, but it is nice to think that they are."

Tar Sands Fever | Worldwatch Institute

Tar Sands Fever | Worldwatch Institute: "It's well known that the United States consumes more oil per capita than any other country in the world, absorbing two-thirds of global oil production. This heavy dependence has often, and aptly, been described as an addiction; even U.S. President George W. Bush trotted out the metaphor in his 2006 State of the Union address ( America is addicted to oil )."

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
As the world moves toward ubiquitous computing
with collective intelligence for just-in-time knowledge,
decisions should improve. Decisionmaking
will increasingly be augmented by the integration
of ubiquitous sensors, a more intelligent Web,
and institutional and personal intelligence software
that helps us receive and respond to feedback for
improving decisions.
The world is expected to produce more data in
2007 than it can store. According to the IDC, the
world produced 161 exabytes (billion gigabytes)
in 2006 and had 185 exabytes of storage capacity.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
If much of the global complexity
cannot be managed efficiently by current systems,
then new decisionmaking systems may emerge.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
According to Freedom House, the number
of free countries grew from 46 to 90 over the
past 30 years, accounting for 46% of the world's
population, and for the past several years 64% of
countries have been electoral democracies. Since
democracies tend not to fight each other and
since humanitarian crises are far more likely under
authoritarian than democratic regimes, the trend
toward democracy should lead to a more peaceful
future among nation states. Unfortunately, massively
destructive powers will be more available
to individuals. Future desktop molecular and
pharmaceutical manufacturing and organized
crime's access to nuclear materials give single
individuals the ability to make and use weapons
of mass destruction—from biological weapons
to low-level nuclear (“dirty”) bombs. The IAEA
reported 149 confirmed incidents of illicit use
of radioactive materials in 2006. Only 10% of
the 220 million sea containers that transport 90%
of the world’s trade are inspected, giving organized
crime and terrorism easier supply lines.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
According to UNESCO, in 1970 about 37% of
all people over the age of 15 were illiterate. That
has fallen to less than 18% today. Between 1999
and 2004 the number of children without primary
education fell by around 21 million to 77 million.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

The global economy grew at 5.4% in 2006 to $66 trillion (PPP). The population grew 1.1%, increasing
the average world per capita income by 4.3%. At this rate world poverty will be cut by more than half
between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction except
in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the majority of the world is improving economically, income disparities
are still enormous: 2% of the world’s richest people own more than 50% of the world’s wealth, while
the poorest 50% of people own 1%. And the income of the 225 richest people in the world is equal to
that of the poorest 2.7 billion, 40% of the world.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, and
increasingly connected and they are living longer, but at the same time the world is more corrupt,
congested, warmer, and increasingly dangerous. Although the digital divide is beginning to close, income
gaps are still expanding around the world and unemployment continues to grow.

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy: "China's environmental problems are mounting. Water pollution and water scarcity are burdening the economy, rising levels of air pollution are endangering the health of millions of Chinese, and much of the country's land is rapidly turning into desert. China has become a world leader in air and water pollution and land degradation and a top contributor to some of the world's most vexing global environmental problems, such as the illegal timber trade, marine pollution, and climate change."

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy: "Summary: China's environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms."

Global trends-The world in 2030

Global trends-The world in 2030: "Clearly, we have known more discoveries from 1945 until today than since the beginning of mankind until 1945. This high flow of discoveries will boost the future growth."

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use: "The existing water-based waste disposal economy is not viable. There are too many households, factories, and feedlots to simply try and wash waste away on our crowded planet. To do so is ecologically mindless and outdated—an approach that belongs to an age when there were many fewer people and far less economic activity."

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use: "In urban settings, the one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is becoming an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages. Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water—both surface and underground—unsafe for drinking. And their toxic wastes are destroying marine ecosystems, including local fisheries. The time has come to manage waste without discharging it into the local environment, allowing water to be recycled indefinitely and reducing both urban and industrial demand dramatically."

Foreign Policy in Focus - A Think Tank Without Walls

Foreign Policy in Focus - A Think Tank Without Walls:

If there were only one factory producing U.S. military armaments located in Rhode Island, there would be a dramatic reduction of congressional support for a rising defense budget. The problem is: virtually all weapons systems have been broken down into a supply chain that turns the 50 states into an assembly line for the military-industrial complex. Almost every member of Congress therefore supports the whole hog in order to bring home some of the bacon to their home district.

State of the World 2007: Notable Trends | Worldwatch Institute

State of the World 2007: Notable Trends | Worldwatch Institute: "* In the last half-century, the world’s urban population has increased nearly fourfold, from 732 million in 1950 to more than 3.2 billion in 2006. (p. 7)

* Africa now has 350 million urban dwellers, more than the populations of Canada and the United States combined. Asia and Africa are expected to double their urban populations to roughly 3.4 billion by 2030. (p. 4)

* The vast majority of net additions to the human population—88 percent of the growth from 2000 to 2030—will be urban dwellers in low- and middle-income countries. (p. 7)"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Yet, contrary to what many in India might think, China is not a malevolent, sinister international entity out there to demolish India, but a state which is simply pursuing its own strategic interests in a hard-headed fashion on its way to great power status. It is time for India to realize that India's great power aspirations cannot be realized without a similar cold-blooded realistic assessment of its own strategic interests in an anarchic international system where there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "There is also nothing extraordinarily benign in China's attempts to improve its bilateral relations with India in recent times. After cutting India down to size in various ways, China does not want India to move closer to the United States in order to contain China. On this geopolitical chessboard, while both Washington and Beijing are using India toward their own strategic ends, India has ended up primarily reacting to the actions of other."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "This is not much different than the stated U.S. policy of preventing the rise of other powers that might threaten its position as a global power. Just as the United States is working toward achieving its strategic objective, China is pursuing its own strategic agenda."

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic: "So what drives up crime rates? Researchers can agree upon little beyond the general notion that crime soars in places where there is a combination of a high percentage of young males, ample drugs, and easy access to guns. Economic inequality and urbanization also accelerate crime rates (but experts disagree by how much). And, once criminal behavior takes root in a neighborhood or city, it takes a long time and an immense effort to reclaim the streets.

It is easy to dismiss growing crime rates as either a local problem or one that has been with us since time immemorial. But that would be a major mistake. Because, though we may have recently lost ground, the problem has the potential to be a far greater global nightmare. Consider China and India. They have growing populations of young males, growing levels of economic inequality, and rapid urbanization. And, though drugs and guns are still relatively hard to come by, they’re becoming easier to obtain every day. If these two nations become more like other poor countries in this regard, too, their crime rates could soar to unimagined levels. Suffice it to say, the crime pandemic would never be hidden from anyone again."

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic: "The world is experiencing a crime pandemic. Crime rates are on the rise almost everywhere, and these statistics typically are distinct from the death and mayhem that comes with terrorism, civil war, or major conflict. The data reflect the booming number of civilians assaulted, robbed, or murdered by other civilians who live in the same city, often in the same neighborhood. Frequently, the victims are as poor as the criminals."

Europe of 2057: A big future is seen in poll - International Herald Tribune

Europe of 2057: A big future is seen in poll - International Herald Tribune: "PARIS: The Europe of 2057 is a larger place, its borders stretched eastward to encompass Turkey and, probably, Russia. It is a greener place, where wind and sun power have supplanted fossil fuels. It has been the battleground for at least one new war. And the dominant language is English.

This vision of Europe's future emerges from a new trans-Atlantic poll timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the European Union. The results are not uniform across the six countries polled — Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States — but, as through a hazy crystal ball, images of the world to come take shape."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #9: Companies will see the age range of their workers span four generations. Workers over the age of 55 are expected to grow from 14% of the labor force to 19% by 2012. In less than five years, 77 million baby boomers in the United States will begin reaching age 65, the traditional retirement age. As a result, the idea of 'retirement' will change significantly."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #1: Generation Y will migrate heavily overseas. For the first time, the United States will see a significant proportion of its population emigrate due to overseas opportunities. According to futurists Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner, Generation Y, the population segment born between 1978 and 1995, may be the first generation in U.S. history to have many of its members leave the U.S. to pursue large portions of their lives, if not their entire adult lives, overseas."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #3: Workers will increasingly choose more time over more money. The productivity boom in the U.S. economy during the twentieth century created a massive consumer culture--people made more money, so they bought more stuff. In the twenty-first century, however, workers will increasingly choose to trade higher salaries for more time with their families. Nearly a third of U.S. workers recently polled said they would prefer more time off rather than more hours of paid employment."

Planet Gets a Lemon as Global Car Industry Revs Up | Worldwatch Institute

Planet Gets a Lemon as Global Car Industry Revs Up | Worldwatch Institute: "The world’s auto manufacturers produced a record 67 million vehicles in 2006, putting more cars on the road than ever before, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. While global production grew 4 percent last year, China increased its production by nearly 30 percent, overtaking Germany to become the third largest producer.

'America’s car addiction is becoming a global phenomenon with no sign of reversing,” says Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, who authored the update. “This trend begs immediate and innovative transportation solutions to address the consumption of fossil fuels that is harming our climate.”

China’s rise represents the most dramatic change in the world auto industry, with production there more than quintupling in the last decade. Sales within China surpassed the 3 million mark in 2005, with nearly 9 million passenger cars on the country’s roads. While this is still a comparatively small fleet, it is likely to grow rapidly in coming years, and China is expected to become a major exporter within the next four years."

Traffic congestion, road accidents, air pollution, climate change, and peak oil are all challenges the world faces from car-centered transportation, according to the Institute’s State of the World 2007 report. On average, urban car travel uses nearly twice as much energy as urban bus travel.

Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News

Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News: "Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity"

Saving Earth From the Ground Up - washingtonpost.com

Saving Earth From the Ground Up - washingtonpost.com: "Exactly 250 years after the Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus gave science the means to catalogue the living Earth, with his system of scientific sorting and naming, 'we may have discovered at a crude guess 10 percent of the life forms on Earth,' said Wilson. 'We are flying blind in many aspects of preserving the environment, and that's why we are so surprised when a species like the honeybee starts to crash, or an insect we don't want, the Asian tiger mosquito or the fire ant, appears in our midst.' In other words: Start thinking about the bugs."

Change to gene theory raises new challenges for biotech - International Herald Tribune

Change to gene theory raises new challenges for biotech - International Herald Tribune: "Last month, a consortium of scientists published findings that challenge the traditional view of the way genes function. The exhaustive, four-year effort was organized by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world. To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a 'tidy collection of independent genes' after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, like a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease.

Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists 'to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.'"

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - Odd Arne Westad

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - Odd Arne Westad: "The Cold War began and ended in Europe, but some of its most severe effects were felt in the Third World. Despite the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union could claim impressive anticolonial credentials, they viewed the upheavals set in motion by decolonization as an extension of their confrontation. The consequent interventions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America tended to extend and accentuate local quarrels, with dismal consequences for all."

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman: "A look back over recent decades reveals that the United States is by no means always the most ready to resort to armed force. The recently published Human Security Report, a study of modern conflict financed in part by the Canadian government, contains a table ranking countries according to their participation in international wars since 1946. The United Kingdom tops the list with 21 instances, followed by France (19) and the United States (16). Many of the British and French entries refer to attempts to hold on to or stabilize their former colonies (while the British were staying out of Vietnam, they were heavily engaged in Malaysia). But colonialism is only part of the story. Since the end of the Cold War, the United Kingdom and France have been regularly involved in humanitarian interventions. The war in Iraq was the fifth military operation Blair has authorized, after air strikes against Iraq in 1998 and operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan. This is not to mention the small contingent the British sent to East Timor."

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman: "The incident serves as a reminder that the policies of major powers reflect a calculation of interests and an analysis of the dynamics of conflict -- and that the policies adopted by the United States are a product of shifting power balances within a particular administration as much as a product of any built-in ideological disposition."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Critics say questions about dangers that could arise with manmade organisms -- which can reproduce on their own -- remain unaddressed.

'The notion is that, as we engineer more complex systems, our ability to predict their behavior diminishes,' said Boston University microbiologist James Collins. 'How can we ensure that we don't create something dangerous? Now is the time to start thinking about it.'"

The Singularity Institute Blog : Blog Archive : The Power of Intelligence

The Singularity Institute Blog : Blog Archive : The Power of Intelligence: "Well, one trick cured smallpox and built airplanes and cultivated wheat and tamed fire. Our current science may not agree yet on how exactly the trick works, but it works anyway. If you are temporarily ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about your current state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon. A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory. If one does not quite understand that power which put footprints on the Moon, nonetheless, the footprints are still there - real footprints, on a real Moon, put there by a real power. If one were to understand deeply enough, one could create and shape that power. Intelligence is as real as electricity. It’s merely far more powerful, far more dangerous, has far deeper implications for the unfolding story of life in the universe - and it’s a tiny little bit harder to figure out how to build a generator."

Swarm Behavior - National Geographic Magazine

Swarm Behavior - National Geographic Magazine: "Where this intelligence comes from raises a fundamental question in nature: How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group? How do hundreds of honeybees make a critical decision about their hive if many of them disagree? What enables a school of herring to coordinate its movements so precisely it can change direction in a flash, like a single, silvery organism? The collective abilities of such animals—none of which grasps the big picture, but each of which contributes to the group's success—seem miraculous even to the biologists who know them best. Yet during the past few decades, researchers have come up with intriguing insights. "