The Artifact: Edible Currencies

In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the form and evolution of the horse hoof, as well as related adaptations. (originally published 06/13/2023) 

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In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss William Malone’s 1985 “Alien” knock-off “Creature,” starring Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Lyman Ward, Diane Salinger and Klaus Kinski. 

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In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rob and Joe explore the world of the periodical cicada, from their curious lifecycle to their mythological and culinary roles in human cultures. 

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In a rapidly evolving world, we need to balance the fear surrounding AI and its role in the workplace with its potential to drive productivity growth. In this special live episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell is joined onstage by Rob Thomas, senior vice president of software and chief commercial officer at IBM, during NY Tech Week. They discuss “the productivity paradox,” the importance of open-source AI, and a future where AI will touch every industry.

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In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rob and Joe explore the world of the periodical cicada, from their curious lifecycle to their mythological and culinary roles in human cultures. 

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Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

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In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the form and evolution of the horse hoof, as well as related adaptations. (originally published 06/08/2023) 

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In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the glorious world of 80s Charles Band productions with 1984’s “The Dungeonmaster,” a supernatural dreamscape with eight directors starring Jeffrey Byron, Richard Moll and Leslie Wing. It’s time to reject the devil’s reality and substitute your own! 

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In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rob and Joe explore the world of the periodical cicada, from their curious lifecycle to their mythological and culinary roles in human cultures. 

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Smart Talks with IBM returns with a new season on Tuesday, June 25th. This season, we’re diving back into the world of artificial intelligence, but with a focus on the powerful concept of “open,” and how it applies to AI. Host Malcolm Gladwell will invite curious colleagues from Pushkin Industries to explore how openness is already reshaping industries, ways of doing business, and our very notion of what's possible.

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Professor Ayellet Tal is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Israeli Institute of Tech.

Technology is the symbol of our age, nevertheless, some fields have been left out of the revolution. One of these is archaeology, where many tasks are still performed manually - from the initial excavations, through documentation, to restoration. It turns out that some of these activities are classical computer vision tasks, such as puzzle solving, shape completion and edge detection. In this talk, Professor Tal describes some of the techniques her team has developed to replace manual restoration and documentation.

Originally published in January, 2020.

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Fei-Fei Li is a professor at Stanford University and one of the world’s pioneering researchers in AI. Her work focuses on human-centered artificial intelligence. Hear her ideas about everything from visual intelligence to cognitive neuroscience.

Everyone talks about different species going extinct. And for good reason. Anytime a species goes extinct, something unique and unrepeatable has been lost. While most don’t stop to think of it, the same is true for languages. 

Over the course of human history, a great many languages have been lost to the sands of time. When a language disappears, it takes away more than just a few words or sounds, it takes with it a way of thinking, of seeing the world and expressing thoughts about it. When a language is lost, we lose the most important tool for understanding a culture. In fact, you could say that when a language dies, a culture dies with it. That’s because every culture has certain concepts or ways of putting thoughts together that are simply lacking in others. Just as an example, German has a feature that lets people string multiple words together to create one new word that represents a new concept. 

There are numerous old fishing villages in Ireland. In many ways, these villages are the last vestiges of the old Irish language. Not only are there still those who speak the language of their ancestors, there are words and concepts used that are unique to each village, words for the different waves and for different tools that might not exist anywhere else. 

There are a lot of different ways languages are lost. Sometimes, a language evolves so much that it becomes an entirely new one for all intents and purposes. Just try to read a copy of Beowulf in the original Old English. In the past, it was not unheard of for conquering power to outlaw the language of their defeated enemy in order to destroy their culture and assimilate them into that of the victor. Other times, the loss of language is a function of trade. As an upstart company or industry to move in, people will adopt the language that opens up the most economic opportunity. Coupled with the fact that shifting economics can do away with the need for certain concepts, it’s easy to understand how people might unconsciously let the old words and concepts disappear.           

What can be done to preserve languages that are on the verge of being lost? There must be something behind finding the couple of villages that are still speaking Gaelic and putting them in an isolated biosphere. What if we could actually use machine learning to help us preserve at-risk languages?  

These old words can be collected into databases, like giant digital dictionaries. Not only the words and their meanings but the concepts and histories of them can be stored in an easily searchable format. Not only that, but (as has been previously discussed here) machine learning is very good at recognizing patterns. As such, it can be used to help fill holes in the language. To determine the meaning of words whose definition no one recalls, or even point the direction towards whole words that have gone missing. Even better, machine learning can help researchers determine how words were pronounced or how entire sentences might have been put together and so not only preserve a dying language but resurrect one already dead. 

Why, though? Why is any of this important? Because these languages, these cultures are a part of our past and anyone with a hint of historical knowledge will tell you that if you want to know where we are heading, we need to know where we have been. If we want to preserve anything of our own culture, we had best learn why others disappeared in order to prevent ours from taking the same route. 

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