Frank Pasquale

In a recent editorial in Nature entitled Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy, distinguished contributors have endorsed a “presumption that mentally competent adults should be able to engage in cognitive enhancement using drugs.” Against various Luddites who worry about the rat races such drug use could spark, the editorialists argue that cognitive enhancement is here to stay: “From assembly line workers to surgeons, many different kinds of employee may benefit from enhancement and want access to it, yet they may also need protection from the pressure to enhance.” Instead of the regulation encouraged by Francis Fukuyama, they would have us rely on robust professional standards to guide “appropriate prescribing of cognitive enhancers.”
Read More »Towards Responsible Use of Cognition-Dulling Drugs

If you like aleatory music, you’ll love the new iPhone app RjDj:

The application includes a set of entrancing songs that go on forever, using the iPhone’s internal microphone to ‘listen’ to the noises and voices heard in your proximity to dynamically create music.

I earlier blogged about this type of unexpected fixation of sound in the context of overheard conversations; I wonder if this raises any new copyright issues. It’s certainly more transformative than “Overheard in New York.”

The RjDj app reminds me a bit of Thich Nhat Hanh’s advice to approach both “garbage and flowers” with equanimity. It promises to turn even the most annoying loudmouth on the sidewalk into an instrument in an electronica symphony. I’m hoping it will be more popular than bubble wrap and less. . . er. . . edifying apps.

Sample song below the fold . . . .
Read More »John Cage Lives

Here’s a nice passage from a piece by Alistair Duff entitled “The Normative Crisis of the Information Society.” The piece… Read More »The Great Convergence