From Edison To Apple, Innovation Is Always About Copies And Remixes [Video]

From Edison To Apple, Innovation Is Always About Copies And Remixes [Video]

How do breakthroughs happen? Despite what you may have been led to believe, they generally don't result from pure genius, divine inspiration, or apple-falling-on-your-head events. According to a wonderful video by Kirby Ferguson, they are the culminations of a process that begins with something we usually treat with scorn: the act of copying. No one starts out an original genius, Ferguson says. Take Bob Dylan, for instance: One wouldn't label him a derivative artist now, and yet his first album contained 11 cover songs.

Studio Dror’s Nightclubby Soho Synagogue Aims To Draw Young Worshippers

Studio Dror’s Nightclubby Soho Synagogue Aims To Draw Young Worshippers

You don't have to know your Kaddish from your Kodesh to recognize, when you step into the recently opened Soho Synagogue in New York, that you're in the presence of some divinely inspired design. Run by Rabbi Dovi and wife Esty Sheiner, the 1,600-square-foot synagogue is reintroducing orthodox Judaism to the downtown scene with yoga classes, cocktail parties, and relaxed Friday-night services. And the newly redesigned space itself looks like a nightclub.

HyperReality Helmet Uses Kinect To Create An Out-Of-Body Experience

HyperReality Helmet Uses Kinect To Create An Out-Of-Body Experience

We take our first-person visual perspective for granted every second of the day -- we have to, because our eyeballs are attached to our heads. But what if you could detach your personal "camera angle" at any moment and float away from your own body while still inhabiting it, like an on-demand out-of-body experience? Designer Maxence Paranche has created the next best thing in his HyperReality system, which uses a Microsoft Kinect to scan your physical environment and display it inside a virtual-reality helmet, so you can rotate the visual angle any way you like.

Infographic of the Day

Infographic Of The Day: Does Twitter Make Our Politics More Partisan?

Infographic Of The Day: Does Twitter Make Our Politics More Partisan?

We've heard for years and years that our nation's politics are more polarized than ever, creating two parallel echo chambers that simply crank up the vitriol over time. And that's plainly true, based on anecdotal evidence: At Tea Party rallies the idea that Obama's some sort of Fascist/Socialist is dropped casually, as if it were beyond dispute; Hard lefties still drone on about charging Bushies with war crimes, oblivious to the fact that it would never happen in a million years. But we've never before been able to see exactly how polarized we've become.