Here's a talk I gave at the Long Now Foundation about my optimistic hopes that the advent of the internet will mitigate threats that brought down previous civilizations.
This is an idea I've been working on for several years. It started as a short piece in Nature, then a short essay on Edge.org, and finally debuted as an iPad app called Why the Net Matters. For over a week this was the most watched video on fora.tv.
Lately we've heard the concern about the ease with which disinformation spreads -- the problem of fake news. But is our era meaningfully different from previous eras?
Can we reproduce our brains on other media (say, on computers, or out of beer cans and tennis balls)?
Hear British rocker Jarvis Cocker read the short story "Descent of Species" from Sum.
Our drive to come together into groups yields a survival advantage — but it has a dark side.
New Scientist magazine features David Eagleman's time perception research as their cover story.
Barnes and Noble selected SUM as one of the Best Books of the Year.
SUM was chosen as the best book of 2009 by Chicago Tribune's Pulitzer-winning literary critic Julia Keller.
