検索キーワード： 歴史・文化

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI.

ドローン「ファントム」のＤＪＩ。スマホや通信機器のファーウェイ。

新しいものが世の中に広まり定着する「条件」とは何か．新商品やサービス，新しいアイデアの普及を阻害する「摩擦」の存在，普及を決定づける消費者や企業の個々の選択から，普及する条件を考える．

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.

Audible editor Sam Danis delves into spatial audio with Dolby Atmos: what it is, what makes it so immersive, and what the future holds for audio entertainment. Featuring conversations with experts in sound design and production, as well as samples from some of the most unique Audible productions available in Dolby Atmos. Listen in to discover the storytelling magic this innovative technology can offer.

Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the best-selling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.

先日、とある雑誌の企画で、いわゆる「お掃除ロボット」を使わせていただく機会がありました。正直、これまであまり必要性を感じたことはなかったのですが、使ってみると非常に面白かった。 ただ、僕の自宅で使い続けるにはひとつだけ、大問題がありました。それはお掃除ロボットが部屋を動き回るたびに、インコの「おもち」が、引きつけを起こしそうなぐらいに怖がってしまうということです。お掃除ロボットも捨て難いけれど、「おもち」はまぁ義理のある以前からの同居人（鳥）ですからね。残念ながら我が家で使い続けるのは不可能！　ということになり、大阪出張のついでに、母親に譲ることにしました。 私の母親も80歳を超えていて、僕としては「お掃除ロボットなんて、使い方わかるのかなぁ？」と半信半疑だったんですが、ふたを開ければすごく喜んでくれました。よく考えてみればうちの母親は掃除や洗濯といった家事が大の苦手。彼女にとっては、「勝手に掃除をしてくれるロボット」というのは、文字通り夢のような家電！　ということなのでしょう。(本文より） 名越康文の生きるための対話（dialogue）はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/nakoshi.html

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. It is innovation that will shape the 21st century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike. Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan.

For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: The union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

기술 혁신보다 중요한 것은 '일하는 방법'의 혁신이다! 가장 중요하지만 아무도 말하지 않는 4차 산업혁명의 본질과 핵심 인공지능, 플랫폼, 블록체인, 증강현실 등이 어느덧 익숙한 말이 됐다. 그래서인지 많은 이들이 이런 새로운 기술을 알면 4차 산업혁명을 제대로 이해하는 것이라고 생각한다. 누구보다 빠르고 정확하게 변화를 감지해야 하는 비즈니스맨조차 4차 산업혁명을 기술적 측면에서만 바라본다. 그러나 급속히 달라지는 비즈니스 생태계에서 승패를 좌우하는 것은 기술 혁신이 아니다. 4차 산업혁명은 100개의 레고 조각을 가지고 놀다가 갑자기 레고 조각이 1억 개로 늘어난 것과 같다. 이런 상황에서는 '노는 방법'을 완전히 달리해야 한다. 스포츠에 비유하자면 야구를 하던 선수들이 농구 선수로 뛰어야 하는 상황이다. 지금까지 9명이 공을 던지고 받는 연습을 하며 정교한 작전을 짰다면, 이제부터는 5명이 몸싸움을 해가며 순발력을 발휘해야 하는 것이다. 그래서 필요한 것이 바로 '일하는 방법의 혁신'이다. 신생 스타트업에서 '유니콘 기업'으로 성장해 기존의 강자들을 위협하고 있는 몇몇 기업을 살펴보면 '일하는 방법을 완전히 바꿨다'는 공통점이 있다.

Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

After Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin dropped out of college and launched Bitcoin Magazine, he wrote the Ethereum white paper, which proposed an open source protocol that would take what Bitcoin did for money and do it for everything else: contracts, social networks, and sharing economies. Now, less than a decade later, his idea is valued at about half a trillion dollars, and it is the foundation for the weird new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate, and decentralized autonomous organizations.

We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.

T2Vの開発元の株式会社プログマインド代表取締役の 濁川武郷氏にインタビューしています。

現在の日本経済を覆っているデフレは、たんなる景気循環による不景気ではない。かつての驚異的な高度成長のベースにあった産業資本主義が形を変え、ポスト産業資本主義に変質しつつある大転換に、日本の「会社」がうまく対応できないために起こっているのだ。日本が二十一世紀を生き抜くためには、産業資本主義時代のまま生き残っている個々の「会社」の仕組みを根本から洗い直し、新しい資本主義にふさわしい形にしていかなければならない。本書は、会社の仕組みを基礎の基礎からやさしく説き起こし、経営者、サラリーマン、そして、これから就職する学生諸氏が、新しい資本主義にふさわしい会社のあり方、新しい働き方を考えるヒントを提供する。第1章　なぜいま、日本の会社はリストラをするのか

1984年のMacintosh登場から40周年となった本年。そして今年発表された Appleの空間コンピューティング戦略を司る Apple Vision Pro。40年を経た二つの製品、その二つに共通する思想、ビジョンとはどのようなものなのか。

現在の日本経済を覆っているデフレは、たんなる景気循環による不景気ではない。かつての驚異的な高度成長のベースにあった産業資本主義が形を変え、ポスト産業資本主義に変質しつつある大転換に、日本の「会社」がうまく対応できないために起こっているのだ。日本が二十一世紀を生き抜くためには、産業資本主義時代のまま生き残っている個々の「会社」の仕組みを根本から洗い直し、新しい資本主義にふさわしい形にしていかなければならない。本書は、会社の仕組みを基礎の基礎からやさしく説き起こし、経営者、サラリーマン、そして、これから就職する学生諸氏が、新しい資本主義にふさわしい会社のあり方、新しい働き方を考えるヒントを提供する。第3章　会社の仕組み

この高木利弘スペシャルインタビュー「GOROman VRの未来を語る」では、VRエバンジェリストとして活躍中のGOROman氏こと、近藤義仁さんに、VRの未来についてお聞きした。VRエバンジェリストGOROmanはどのようにして誕生したかや、そもそもVRって何なのかや、ペーパー・パラダイムから空間パラダイムへの転換の話など、今後の展望について語って頂きました。

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.

In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control.