Excellent stuff. Via this Quora discussion, which is worth a read.
Tag: research
Dialect Survey Results
This is one of the coolest things on language dialects that I’ve ever seen. A whole bunch of tiny differences all mapped out across the USA. Just change the question in the dropdown menu on the left, and look at the map on the right. Both composite and individual maps are available.
Via kottke.
Bootstrapping the Industrial Age
Bootstrapping the Industrial Age
Let’s take a very sophisticated item: one web page. A web page relies on perhaps a hundred thousand other inventions, all needed for its birth and continued existence. There is no web page anywhere without the inventions of HTML code, without computer programming, without LEDs or cathode ray tubes, without solid state computer chips, without telephone lines, without long-distance signal repeaters, without electrical generators, without high-speed turbines, without stainless steel, iron smelters, and control of fire. None of these concrete inventions would exist without the elemental inventions of writing, of an alphabet, of hypertext links, of indexes, catalogs, archives, libraries and the scientific method itself. To recapitulate a web page you have to re-create all these other functions. You might as well remake modern society.
Open source is taking over the software world
Open source is taking over the software world
Survey results that are not surprising at all, and yet help me have a smile on my face when I fall asleep…
