Neuroscience
Today's New York Times has an article about the engineer, Henry Petroski, who, they say, "seems strangely enthusiastic about failure."
For him, "... failures in design and construction present perfect teaching opportunities. They are object lessons in the history and practice and beauty of engineering. 'Failure is central to engineering,' he said in an interview. 'Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.' "
You can read the introduction to Dr. Petroski's book at the Times' site. You can also listen to David Corcoran (a Times science editor) interview him for the Science Times podcast (podcast iTunes feed).
The podcast interview with Dr. Petroski reminded me of Donald Norman's "Psychology of Everyday Things" -- if you liked that book, or the ideas of how things are designed, then you might like this article or podcast.
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Neuroscience
(Engineering) Success through Failure
Today's New York Times has an article about the engineer, Henry Petroski, who, they say, "seems strangely enthusiastic about failure."
For him, "... failures in design and construction present perfect teaching opportunities. They are object lessons in the history and practice and beauty of engineering. 'Failure is central to engineering,' he said in an interview. 'Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.' "
You can read the introduction to Dr. Petroski's book at the Times' site. You can also listen to David Corcoran (a Times science editor) interview him for the Science Times podcast (podcast iTunes feed).
The podcast interview with Dr. Petroski reminded me of Donald Norman's "Psychology of Everyday Things" -- if you liked that book, or the ideas of how things are designed, then you might like this article or podcast.
- More On Embodied Cognition
Ginger Campbell interviews philosopher Lawrence Shapiro about his new book, Embodied Cognition, on the March 25, 2011 episode of the Brain Science Podcast. Shapiro writes about his new book on his website: I lay out the various research programs within...
- Finding Cogsci Podcasts
In case you're wondering ... here are some ways to find nifty cognitive science & other podcasts. Here's a Google search trick I use to find podcasts of interviews with folks whom I'd like to hear: inurl:podcast + "name of person" (in...
- Dan Dennett On All In The Mind
Natasha Mitchell did a great interview with Dan Dennett which aired a few weeks ago on All In The Mind. He discussed his new book Breaking the spell : religion as a natural phenomenon, and pleasantly asked the tough questions she asked him. They had a...
- More Online Audio
Bob points me to the Internet Archive Audio Archive where there are gobs and gobs of audio files to be downloaded. He warns that the site could cause marital problems, and already I see how that could be possible. Hear Donald Norman, he of the Psychology...
- Interview With Donald Norman
The Fall, 2005 issue of Technical Communication Quarterly features an interview with product design / usability guru Donald Norman. He talks about his latest book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. The article covers lots o’ things...