Category: Innovation

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Science of Storytelling

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. A British author, journalist and former photographer, Will has been a contributing editor at Esquire and GQ Australia.

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

Will has been featured in The Guardian Weekend, The Telegraph Magazine, The Times Magazine, The Observer Magazine, and The Sunday Times. Will has been named New Journalist of the Year, Feature Writer of the Year and has won a National Press Club award for excellence.

Storytelling is the true cornerstone of a presenter. Since the launch of PowerPoint this narrative shifted to the digital era. In fact, too many presenters forgot about storytelling and spent too much time playing with fonts and bullets.

In order to recapture the audience, it is critical for anyone to understand the craft of storytelling. There have been a good set of references that can guide you to present effectively. Most ask you to move beyond fiddling with fonts and bullets.

Will is able to move this effort forward. So this book reveals the essence of storytelling as a science, focusing on a topic that not many others have attempted. So Will is going deep inside our minds to help us learn how to achieve via psychological research and neuroscience to deliver powerful stories.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: What Is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does It Work?

What Is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does It Work? by Stephen Wolfram. Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist and physicist. He was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science.

What Is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does It Work? by Stephen Wolfram

He holds a PhD in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology. Steven then began teaching at Caltech and was the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship at age 21.

In 1987 he created Wolfram Research and continues to serve as CEO developing both Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine. Recently the company announced that Wolfram Alpha would integrate with ChatGPT.

In short, this book is perhaps the first worthy book to address ChatGPT with a full understanding of AI technology. Plus, Steven holds the ability to explain AI, algorithms and equations which will help the reader gain a much better (perhaps the best) understanding of ChatGPT.

Since the first public introduction in late 2022, many have simply asked how does this AI service function? Stephen in fact, lays out in very readable form, the background and basic understanding of neural net technologies. As a scientific discovery, this AI technology has certainly holds great potential to change computing with a potential huge downstream impact to society.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Why We Sleep

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker. Matthew is a British scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Previously, Matthew was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Matthew is the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. His research focuses on the impact of sleep on human health and disease.

I found this to be a very insightful book and it has sharpened how I view my own sleep requirements. It would not be odd to say that many of us have in our younger years pulled all-nighters on a regular basis. We had not idea how damaging this would be in our later life. In fact, I can recall this in some detail over the beginning of my career. In fact, I would say the American culture is shaped around this type of sleep loss.

Matthew has the data to prove that our culture has in fact, robbed our health. In addition, for anyone with medical conditions may in fact be at greater risk due to the lack of sleep impacting their health. Too many Americans do not yet quite understand the severe ramifications. This book will enlighten them and easily demonstrate how powerful eight hours of sleep can shape your life.

Penguin Books UK | How To Improve Your Sleep
The lack of sleep can shorten your life

For many readers perhaps this is the first time they can understand the impacts of neglecting sleep. Shortcomings in our brain functionality is easily at less than 100%. In addition, our body’s physical and mental health including our emotional well being suffers.

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading

Latest Read: A Brief History of Equality

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty. Thomas is a French economist and Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics. In addition, he is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

Thomas previously taught as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a French economist, Thomas documents a global progress regarding equality by tapping into historical data.

This book is certainly addressing wealth redistribution, and is a continuation from his books Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Capital and Ideology (2020).

However, the most interesting discoveries for Americans is how Thomas addresses colonialism. This obviously brings America’s slavery into a world view within Chapter 3: The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism. In fact, we see that Europeans began their colonial rule around 1450–1500 with Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India. This was the initial Portuguese trading post on the coast of Africa. Thomas includes Columbus’s expedition to America. However this all ended in the 1960s with the French defeats in Indochina (Vietnam) and Northern Africa (Algeria). Yet, Thomas certainly brings South African apartheid into focus as these are not so long ago transformations.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval holds a PhD from the University of Oxford. He is a professor at the Department of History in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is an amazing book about the history of humans that should be in every K12 school. The topics he is documenting is certainly stunning. In fact, Yuval is addressing the entire evolution of human kind.

At first glance anyone would not consider that an entire history of anthropology, geography, psychology, religion, ideologies, and even how sapiens will evolve with robotic parts. This is a compliment to Yuval’s efforts.

In fact, by retracing human history, some key lessons emerge regarding historical folklore. On example is both chimps and sapiens can only organize into groups at a maximum of 150. So, humans have long believed in many myths that have ultimately sidelined the truth.

By documenting sapien migrations from eastern Asia moving into Alaska, Yuval obviously reveals movement south through Canada and down the west coast of America into Mexico culminating into South America’s southern tip roughly 150,000 years ago.

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