Thursday, March 24, 2005
Mirror Neurons
"Healthy human beings are intensely social. We meet, greet, eat, and talk alot according to this excellent NOVA scienceNOW presentation—moderated by Robert Krulwich—on mirror neurons." /NOVA/
The 'In' Social Network
"Social-networking sites are getting heavily involved in marketing themselves. To draw new members, they're finding it helps to present themselves as the virtual equivalent of belonging to the 'in' crowd." /Wired News/
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Satisfaction of Small Groups
"(T)here is a dip in (group member) satisfaction level of groups at around the size of 15. Unfortunately, I could only offer anecdotal evidence that this threshold existed. My personal belief was that this dip was caused by not enough 'attention' being given to everyone and that group gatherings of this size risk becoming too noisy, too boring, too long, or some combination thereof. Yet groups of this size are not large enough to allow for different perspectives (i.e. insufficient requisite variety) or for other group processes to come into play." /Life With Alacrity/
Monday, March 14, 2005
State of the Blogosphere
"We are currently seeing about 30,000 - 40,000 new weblogs being created each day, depending on the day. Compared to the past, this is well over double the rate of change in October, when there were about 15,000 new weblogs created each day. The remarkable growth over the past 3 months can be attributed to the increase in new, mainstream services such as MSN Spaces, and in increases of use of services like Blogger, AOL Journals, and LiveJournal." /Boing Boing/
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Andy Clark, Cyborg
"It was a friend’s birthday party and I was trying to convince a very nice historian about how the internet and Google and so on might be thought of as a kind of extension to our minds. “You’re looking at it so unhistorically,” she said. “The internet’s no different really to a library. It’s a place where information is stored and retrieved.”... I put to [Clark] my historian adversary’s point - that the internet is nothing more than a fancy library. “Not at all,” he replied to my e-mail. “Portable access and great search engines transform a mere library into a cognitive prosthetic. /IFTF's Future Now
Neuromancer Radioplay
Here is a "link to a BBC World Service radio play of William Gibson's first and imho, best creation, Neuromancer." /Neuromancer Radioplay/
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload
"Fortunately, being buried alive under electronic missives forced me to develop coping strategies. Let me share some of the nonobvious ones with you. Together, maybe we can start a revolution." /HBS Working Knowledge/
Human Interactions in Space
This would have made Timothy Leary excited: Human Interactions in Space is "a research program dedicated to identifying and characterizing the psychosocial issues that affect the health and well-being of space crewmembers and the mission control personnel that support them. The program goal is to develop countermeasures that will enhance the safety and success of people involved with long-duration space missions." /Human Interactions in Space/
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
P2P and Human Evolution
Michel Bauwens writes an ambitious essay: "The following essay describes the emergence, or expansion, of a specific type of relational dynamic, which I call peer to peer. It's a form of human network-based organisation which rests upon the free participation of equipotent partners, engaged in the production of common resources, without recourse to monetary compensation as key motivating factor, and not organized according to hierarchical methods of command and control." /P2P and Human Evolution/
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Review of "The Illuminati Papers" by Robert Anton Wilson
This review of The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson is actually more of a summary: "The book is essentially a collection of informative essays, with more light-hearted material interspersed throughout as a kind of information overload relief valve (e.g. 'Conspiracy Digest'), usually with additional generous helpings of erudite Wilsonian wit." /Dalyboy's Book Reviews/
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Evolution as a Team Sport
"There's a disturbing fundamentalism brewing in the counterculture these days - an aching towards apocalypse as dangerous as that of our counterparts in the reddest of states, and understood just as literally. " /Douglas Rushkoff/
Typical of the Internet?
This error message was so thoroughly bizarre that I had to read it twice to determine if it was a joke or not:
"Access to the requested object was denied.
"Due to some inconsiderate people linking directly to our multimedia we were forced to take the content offline since it generated too much traffic.
"This kind of careless linking to high-profile sites is typical of the internet where people no longer respect that such links could make free content less available.
"We will never charge money to pay for the bandwidth, so if people are going to expect high-quality content they should make their own copy of the large file and share it from their own server. Questions can be sent to support@korea-dpr.com for technical advice.
"Thank you and have a nice day." /Korea DPR:
"Access to the requested object was denied.
"Due to some inconsiderate people linking directly to our multimedia we were forced to take the content offline since it generated too much traffic.
"This kind of careless linking to high-profile sites is typical of the internet where people no longer respect that such links could make free content less available.
"We will never charge money to pay for the bandwidth, so if people are going to expect high-quality content they should make their own copy of the large file and share it from their own server. Questions can be sent to support@korea-dpr.com for technical advice.
"Thank you and have a nice day." /Korea DPR:
Friday, March 04, 2005
Interview with William Gibson
William Gibson asks, "If I give you my email, will you keep it a secret?" /KFX Studios/
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Are Social Networking Sites Useful?
"I've read several very interesting stories about social networking recently. In 'From Contact to Contract' (neat title), Employee Management writes that many entrepreneurs and even professional recruiters are using services such as LinkedIn, Ryze.com, Spoke.com, or one of the two other dozen social networking sites to fill professional positions, even executive ones. Of course, human resources consulting firms are still also relying on more traditional tools, like their 'real' social networks." /Smart Mobs/
