In a vivd example of the blur between culture and nature, players using an online game called Foldit have helped solve complex questions for researchers about enzyme models. The solution, which eluded researchers for more than 10 years was solved by gamers in only a few days, contributing towards research into anti-AIDS drugs. Giving credit where it's due, researchers have named the gamers as co-authors in the study published in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.


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  • These lines are not as prophetic as they sound. McLuhan somehow recognised that new participation models to what Sigfried Giedion called anonymous history were about to emerge under electronic conditions. At that time, anyone could make a phone call to a random number and get an answer that may solve a brain lock, millions of people were participating in television quiz shows and felt grudged when it was discovered that the popular shows were rigged, conventions were growing larger and larger.

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  • <i>In a 1966 lecture at the Kaufmann Art Gallery of the 92nd St. Y in New York City, [McLuhan] said, </i>“Robert Oppenheimer is fond of saying, ‘There are kids playing right here on the sidewalk who could solve some of my toughest problems in physics; they have modes of perception that I lost forty years ago.’ Oppenheimer realizes in that remark that most scientific problems are really not concept problems but percept problems, that most scientists are blocked in their perceptions and prepossessions. When you’re dealing simultaneously with several million people, it’s obvious that somebody in that audience is going to have a perceptual perforation into the problem without any difficulty whatever. Eight scientists working on a problem for fifty years might not get through, but ten million people working on the problem for ten minutes might get through.” in http://www.davidcogswell.com/Essays/RediscoveringMcLuhan.html

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