Continuing with the awesomeness from 99U Conference…

They say there are two types of people in this world… those who divide the world into types of people, and those who don’t.

Gretchen Rubin falls into the first group and she’s been giving a lot of thought lately to how we think about rules.

As such, she’s divided the world neatly into 4 types based on how we feel about rules: Upholders, Questioners, Rebels, and Obligers.

Self-awareness being a good thing, I thought I’d share and think about how these types effect our ability to get shit done.

Read More…..

“Escaping success is how I stay in a state of wonder”
– Joshua Davis

I just got back from the 99U Conference, which was filled with amazing speakers, but my absolute favorites were the ones who stood out as the scrappiest of the lot. The ones who stood on stage and you wondered briefly if they’d ever presented before as they stood up there so raw and authentic.

At the end of the second day, after hearing from a number of well-known authors and founders, this big, biker looking dude walks out on stage in jeans and a t-shirt, tattoos down his arms, on his neck – starts screaming "HEY!" … "HEY!#@$!" and then laughing with this total little kid’s smile and screaming some more.

And then proceeds to tell us that he’s going to talk to us today about… Escaping Success.

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A couple of months ago, Fantasy Magazine approached me to write a non-fiction piece for them on how computers in the real world compare to those in the movies. I decided to write about some of the really mind-blowing technologies we’ve got that would blow those sci fi writers away.

Had a ton of fun writing it – hope it’s as fun to read as it was to write:

Indistinguishable From Magic

This is the story of two worlds and the beings that inhabit them. One of these is our world. The one we can see and feel. The world of the “users.” It lies on our side of the video screen.

The other, an electronic micro-civilization, lives and breathes just beyond our grasp. This is the world of the programs. Because we, the users, have created this new world, part of us lives there too… On the other side of the screen.
– TRON

When it came out in 1982, TRON introduced us to a flashy, neon-drenched world of computers and hackers. A world where computer programs were fantastical beings with minds of their own that we could interact with.

Continue reading…

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-nonfiction/indistinguishable-from-magic/

What do YOU think are the coolest new technologies that we’re seeing here on this side of the screen?