# The Blogs and Feeds I Follow July 15, 2015 **Related:** [[wiki/Edge.org|Edge.org]] · [[wiki/Santa Fe Institute|Santa Fe Institute]] · [[wiki/CERN|CERN]] · [[wiki/MIT Media Lab|MIT Media Lab]] · [[wiki/Long Now Foundation|Long Now Foundation]] · [[wiki/Institute of Noetic Sciences|Institute of Noetic Sciences]] _This is a living reading-list entry. I am placing it in the summer of 2015 because that is where this mode of reading belongs in my life, but the list preserved in my Blogger dashboard was accumulated and expanded over many years. Some sources below are later additions. This is therefore a map of the intellectual neighborhood I have built through RSS, not a claim that every subscription was already present on this exact date._ RSS is one of the quiet ways I construct an intellectual environment around myself. Instead of waiting for an algorithm to decide what is important, I can choose the laboratories, writers, scientific institutions, conversations and odd little personal blogs whose work I want flowing past me. The result is not one subject. It is a deliberately mixed signal: physics beside consciousness research, biotechnology beside conservation, computation beside astronomy, institutional news beside the traces of individual lives. That mixture matters to me. New ideas rarely arrive wearing the label of the field in which they will eventually become useful. ## Conversations Across Disciplines - **[[wiki/Edge.org|Edge.org]]** — [organization](https://www.edge.org/) · [All Conversations feed](https://www.edge.org/conversations/topic/system/lightbox2/feed) · [books by Edge contributors](https://www.edge.org/library/feed) · [Annual Question updates](https://www.edge.org/edgenews/question/feed). Edge brings scientists, technologists and other consequential thinkers into sustained conversation at the boundaries of established knowledge. I follow it because I want to hear difficult ideas while they are still being tested in public, before they have been reduced to slogans or disciplinary consensus. - **[[wiki/Complexity|COMPLEXITY]] from the [[wiki/Santa Fe Institute|Santa Fe Institute]]** — [podcast](https://complexity.simplecast.com/) · [SFI podcast archive and RSS](https://web-prod.santafe.edu/culture/podcast-archive). This is where emergence, adaptation, networks, evolution and collective behavior meet. It is useful to me because the same structural questions recur in biology, technology, culture, economics and civilization. - **Big Picture Science from the [[wiki/SETI Institute|SETI Institute]]** — [program](https://bigpicturescience.org/) · [SETI program page](https://www.seti.org/outreach/bps/). A science program that can move from astrobiology and physics to cognition, technology and skeptical inquiry without losing its sense of wonder is almost perfectly calibrated to my interests. - **[[wiki/Lex Fridman|Lex Fridman Podcast]]** — [site and episodes](https://lexfridman.com/). This is a later addition to the dashboard. I keep it because long-form conversation creates room for technical people to reveal how they think, not merely what conclusion they have reached. ## Laboratories, Experiments and Scientific Institutions - **[[wiki/CERN|CERN]]** — [organization](https://home.cern/) · [news feed](https://home.cern/news/feed). CERN sits at an extraordinary intersection of fundamental physics, planetary-scale collaboration, computation and the history of the Web. I follow the feed for the science, but also for the organizational machinery required to make that science possible. - **[[wiki/ATLAS Experiment|ATLAS Experiment]]** — [experiment and updates](https://atlas.cern/) · [ATLAS blog](https://atlas.cern/Updates/Blog). ATLAS is one of the great instruments of collaborative perception: thousands of people, enormous machines and distributed computational systems organized to detect events no unaided human being could ever witness. - **Fermilab** — [laboratory](https://www.fnal.gov/) · [Newsroom](https://news.fnal.gov/). Fermilab's work in particle physics, accelerators, neutrinos and large scientific infrastructure gives me another view of how humans construct instruments for interrogating the deepest layers of matter. - **[[wiki/ETH Zurich|ETH Zürich]]** — [institution](https://ethz.ch/) · [ETH News](https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news.html) · [official RSS directory](https://ethz.ch/content/main/en/utils/rss.html). I am interested in ETH not only as a great technical university but as an institutional crossroads among computation, engineering, science and European technical history. - **[[wiki/Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory|Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory]]** — [laboratory](https://www.cshl.edu/) · [scientific digital repository and feeds](https://repository.cshl.edu/). The repository is especially valuable because it exposes scientific work as an accumulating, searchable record rather than only as occasional news. Biology becomes an archive with a pulse. - **[[wiki/Weizmann Institute of Science|Weizmann Institute of Science]]** — [institution](https://www.weizmann.ac.il/pages/) · [Wonder Wander science news](https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/). Weizmann's feed ranges across biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics and scientific culture. I like following an institution broadly enough to notice relationships that a topic-specific feed might conceal. - **[[wiki/BRAIN Initiative|NIH BRAIN Initiative]]** — [initiative](https://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/) · [research overview](https://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/research/research-overview). The effort to develop new ways of recording, imaging and modulating neural activity touches nearly everything I care about: mind, identity, interfaces, medicine, representation and the limits of observation. - **Simons Foundation** — [foundation](https://www.simonsfoundation.org/) · [about its scientific programs](https://www.simonsfoundation.org/about/). Its support for mathematics, physical sciences, life sciences, autism, neuroscience and scientific culture makes it a useful signal for where deep basic research is being given enough time and resources to mature. ## Computation, Engineering and Infrastructure - **[[wiki/DARPA|DARPA]]** — [agency](https://www.darpa.mil/) · [news](https://www.darpa.mil/news/). DARPA is worth watching because it deliberately searches for breakthroughs at the seams between fields. Its programs also show how speculative technical possibility can become funded research, operational capability and, sometimes, civilian infrastructure. - **[[wiki/Google Research|Google Research]]** — [research organization](https://research.google/) · [research blog](https://research.google/blog/). This is where papers, large-scale systems and products repeatedly cross-pollinate. I follow it to see which research ideas are becoming deployable and what changes when experiments meet billions of users. - **[[wiki/MIT Media Lab|MIT Media Lab]]** — [laboratory](https://www.media.mit.edu/) · [news and updates](https://www.media.mit.edu/). The Media Lab has historically treated art, science, design and engineering as materials that can be worked together. That willingness to build strange prototypes before a category is ready for them is deeply familiar to me. - **MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems** — [MIT LIDS video channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJJyewrDiBKhmmJO6y6WwlA) · [[wiki/MIT|MIT]]. LIDS works in information, systems, control, optimization, networks and decision-making. I follow it because these are the formal structures beneath intelligent behavior, coordination and complex technological systems. - **[[wiki/International Telecommunication Union|International Telecommunication Union]]** — [organization](https://www.itu.int/) · [RSS directory](https://www.itu.int/rss/). Standards can look dry until one notices that they are agreements about how the world will be allowed to connect. The ITU feed helps me watch the usually invisible layer where communications infrastructure, access, spectrum, security and interoperability are negotiated. - **EurekAlert! Science Communication Blog** — [science-news service](https://www.eurekalert.org/) · [SciComm blog](https://blog.eurekalert.org/). I am interested not only in what science discovers, but in how discoveries are described, distributed, misunderstood and turned into public knowledge. - **[[wiki/The Open University|The Open University]]** — [university](https://www.open.ac.uk/) · [news](https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/news). Open access to serious education is a civilizational technology. I follow the Open University because distribution, teaching and intellectual opportunity matter as much as invention. ## Mind, Life and Long Horizons - **[[wiki/Institute of Noetic Sciences|Institute of Noetic Sciences]]** — [institute](https://noetic.org/) · [blog](https://noetic.org/blog/). IONS occupies a difficult and interesting border between consciousness research, profound human experience and scientific method. I want that territory investigated with curiosity, but also with standards strong enough to distinguish a meaningful anomaly from a desired conclusion. - **[[wiki/Jane Goodall Institute|Jane Goodall Institute]]** — [organization](https://janegoodall.org/) · [Good for All news](https://news.janegoodall.org/). Jane Goodall's work joins patient observation, animal minds, conservation, human communities and moral responsibility. It is a reminder that attention can become both science and care. - **[[wiki/Long Now Foundation|Long Now Foundation]]** — [organization and ideas](https://longnow.org/). Long Now asks what changes when civilization thinks in centuries and millennia rather than election cycles and quarterly reports. I follow it because durable systems require imagination at the scale of inheritance. - **[[wiki/Vatican Observatory|Vatican Observatory]]** — [observatory](https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/). One of the world's oldest active astronomical observatories is also a living meeting place between modern scientific practice, long institutional memory and questions of faith. That combination is far more interesting than the assumption that science and religion can only shout at one another from opposite rooms. - **Vaclav Smil** — [author and researcher](https://vaclavsmil.com/). Smil's work forces grand technological and civilizational claims back through energy, materials, agriculture, scale and physical constraint. I follow him because enthusiasm is more useful after it has survived arithmetic. - **[[wiki/Gates Notes|Gates Notes]]** — [site](https://www.gatesnotes.com/). The reading lists and essays connect technology with health, energy, development, philanthropy and implementation at scale. I am interested in how large ambitions are translated into programs, measurements and institutions. - **[[wiki/Asimov Press|Asimov Press]]** — [publication](https://www.asimov.press/) · [about](https://www.asimov.press/about). This is another later addition. Its long-form work on biology, biotechnology, metascience and the history of scientific progress fits the reading list because it tries to explain mechanisms without surrendering the larger human stakes. - **Asimov biotechnology updates** — [company news](https://www.asimov.com/news). Separate from the publication, this feed lets me follow biological engineering as a working platform: not biology as metaphor, but biology increasingly treated as a design medium. ## Software Archaeology, Craft and Personal Signal - **[[wiki/Riccardo Mottola|Riccardo Mottola's]] _The Art is Long_** — [blog](https://multixden.blogspot.com/) · [Blogger feed](https://multixden.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). Riccardo's record of GNUstep, OpenStep, Vespucci, GWorkspace, old machines, portability work, photography and everyday technical life has become a kind of Rosetta Stone for me—at least for technical history. It preserves history before anyone knew exactly which parts would become historically important. - **Birrificio Via Priula** — [brewery](https://www.birrificioviapriula.it/il-birrificio). A reading list should leave room for place, craft and pleasure. The brewery takes its name from the historic sixteenth-century Via Priula trade route connecting Bergamo through the mountains toward Sondrio and onward to northern Europe. It belongs here as a reminder that infrastructure has always carried ideas, goods, culture and human encounter together. - **Astra Photo** — [blog](http://astraphoto.blogspot.com/) · [Blogger feed](https://astraphoto.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). Photography is another form of disciplined attention. A small visual blog can sometimes reveal more about how someone sees than a polished institutional publication ever could. - **Heron's Perch** — [blog](http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/) · [Blogger feed](https://heronsperch.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). I keep some quieter personal feeds precisely because they are not optimized media properties. Individual observation is part of the Web's value. - **the qualia journal** — [blog](http://qualiajournal.blogspot.com/) · [Blogger feed](https://qualiajournal.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). The title alone sits close to questions I return to repeatedly: experience, perception and the irreducibly first-person character of mind. - **Dr. Robelyn Garcia at Harvard** — [archived blog](https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/robelyngarcia). University-hosted personal blogs preserve the voice around formal work—the ideas, interests and ongoing thinking that do not always fit inside a paper or institutional biography. - **Harvard Blogging** — [blog](http://harvardblogging.blogspot.com/) · [Blogger feed](https://harvardblogging.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). I remain interested in the blog itself as an intellectual form: a place where thinking can be serial, provisional, personal and publicly revisable. - **Applied Research Institute Pathfinder** — [reading-list source](https://pathfinder.theari.us/). I follow applied-research sources because they reveal the middle territory between an idea and a working capability—the methods, decisions and organizational structures that pure theory can leave invisible. ## What the List Says About Me Looking at these subscriptions together, I can see that I am not really following subjects. I am following **transitions**: - thought becoming language; - observation becoming science; - science becoming instrumentation; - research becoming infrastructure; - information becoming interoperable; - biology becoming engineering; - memory becoming archive; - technology becoming culture; - and private curiosity becoming a public body of work. That is why RSS remains so valuable to me. It gives me a personally governed stream across institutions and disciplines without forcing every interest through one platform's theory of who I am. The dashboard may look like a list of blogs. What I have actually been building is a small, evolving observatory.