The Authors@Google program welcomed Dr. Gary Marcus to Google's New York office to discuss his new book "KLUGE: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind". Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature. Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience -- memory, belief, decision-making, language, and happiness -- Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us in knots even...
My 100th video! :-) A couple of interesting discussions pertaining to science. First, is the human brain an intelligently and elegantly designed mission control center *or* the product of a...
The Authors@Google program was pleased to welcome philosopher, professor and author Simon Critchley to Google's NY office to discuss his new book "On Humor". Simon Critchley studied philosophy at...
Author Michael Chorost visits Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to discuss his book "Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human". This event took place on June 30, 2008, as a...
Armistead Maupin discusses his new novel "Michael Tolliver Lives" as part of the Authors@Google series.Michael Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the...
The Authors@Google program was pleased to welcome author Ginger Strand to Google's NY office to discuss her new book "Inventing Niagra". Ginger Strand grew up in Texas, Missouri, Illinois,...
When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to...
For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and...
The definitive biography of one of the most important American writers and cultural intellectuals of the twentieth century—Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man.In 1953,...
Douglas Engelbart is the inventor of the computer mouse and led research teams at Stanford Research Institute that developed hypertext, networking computing and early graphical user interfaces. He...
Authors Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger discuss their book "Breakthrough" as part of the Authors@Google series. Breakthrough is the awaited follow-up to the original essay, the authors give...