Sunday, February 26, 2006
Collective Intelligence
"The collective intelligence of the swarm emerges in a decentralized way from the actions of individual insects responding to local stimuli from the environment and, most importantly, from other members of the swarm. There is no “boss” in charge. No individual insect grasps the big picture. Yet in the aggregate, the local actions of each insect based on the local stimuli available to it can accomplish a collective goal that serves the interests of the whole community." /Apple/
Patternhunting "Bad Things"
Google.org's Larry Brilliant: "The best thing the TED community can do is to take our servers and search engines and venture capital and build something that can last forever that has international independence," Brilliant said. "The goal is to have the earliest possible warning of all bad things. Specifically that we find the first cases of pandemic bird flu, the first cases of new diseases like SARS or bioterror and we contain it with early response."/Wired News/
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Patternhunting the Glass Bead Game
"I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbol led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang holiness is forever being created." /Glass Bead Game/
Monday, February 06, 2006
Internet Satirists Feast On Cultural Icons
"Cyberpunk author William Gibson's 2003 novel, "Pattern Recognition," rotates on this point when he writes that somewhere in the Web ether, an unknown and hidden auteur is posting a series of fleeting and wildly popular video images that seem to tell a story. An ad guru launches a global hunt for the filmmaker in an effort to monetize the clips and the phenomenon." /Internet Satirists Feast On Cultural Icons/
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Writing Email That Gets Read
Here is an excellent summary of suggestions for writing email that people acutally read from startup guru and former Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki: "Because of my recent post about schmoozing, you might think I'm a warm, fuzzy, and kumbaya kind of Guy. Most of the time I am, but I have strong feelings about email etiquette and what it takes to get your email read--and answered. As someone who gets dozens of emails every day and sends a handful of emails every day to get strangers to do things (“digital evangelism”), I offer these insights to help you become a more effective emailer." /Let the Good Times Roll/
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Alternate Reality Gaming
Here is a fascinating interview with Sean Stewart regarding alternate reality gaming: "I modestly or immodestly think that we got some things fundamentally right about the way the web and the internet want to tell stories in a way that not everyone had gotten quite when we lucked into it. What people do on the web is they look for things and they gossip. We found a way of storytelling that has a lot to do with looking for things and gossiping about them." /Encyclopedia Hanasiana/
