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Cell Biology (washingtonpost.com) |
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| Topic: Society |
5:58 pm EDT, Jul 31, 2002 |
Swarming is a classic example of how once-isolated individuals are discovering a new way to organize order out of chaos, without guidance. It reverses the idea that geography, in an Internet age, has become irrelevant -- the whole point is to bring people together in one location for face-to-face contact. Swarming is also leading to such wondrous social developments as "time-softening," "cell dancing," "life skittering," "posse pinging," "drunk dialing," and "smart mobs." Cell Biology (washingtonpost.com) |
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CASPIAN Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering |
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| Topic: Society |
1:54 pm EDT, Jul 30, 2002 |
"In the eyes of many consumers the pricing issues surrounding supermarket "loyalty" card programs can be summed up in one simple concept: those who don't have a card pay more at the register. The stores portray it in a similar manner, but call it "rewarding loyal customers" with lower prices. But few things in life are truly simple, and supermarket cards are no different." This website offers a really good analysis of SuperMarket cards. Unless you happen to be a "good" consumer ("good" consumers nominally being a minority) you will loose something when you give up your privacy. You DO have something to hide. Unfortunately, the guy then trys to frame the whole thing as a class warfare issue, so I can't give the site a full endorsement. Grocery stores in different neighborhoods with different income levels already stock different products at different prices, and usually the prices are cheaper in lower income neighborhoods where consumers are more price concious. This issue is far more complex then that. At issue here is WITHIN a store; WITHIN a particular socio-economic group, who are the "good" customers and who are not. CASPIAN Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering |
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Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold |
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| Topic: Society |
2:16 pm EDT, Jul 26, 2002 |
Howard Rheingold has a new book coming out in October. (Amazon claims it will be November.) Included here is Howard's summary of the concept. There are links to a recent NYT article and a longer article at Edge.org. Also included is the table of contents for the new book. There is an entire chapter on "the evolution of reputation." Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible ... Media cartels and government agencies are seeking to reimpose the regime of the broadcast era. Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users or consumers? Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold |
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Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp |
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| Topic: Society |
12:36 pm EDT, Jul 25, 2002 |
"David Holtzman, editor in chief of GlobalPOV, a privacy Web site, said that the notion of privacy was "undergoing a generational shift." Those in their late 20's and 30's are going to feel the brunt of the transition, he said, because they grew up with more traditional concepts of privacy even as the details of their lives were being captured electronically." The culture grapples with the loss of anonymnity online. How long before people turn to keeping multiple aliases for different contexts? Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp |
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Study: Brains Want to Cooperate |
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| Topic: Society |
12:40 pm EDT, Jul 24, 2002 |
"A team from Emory University in Atlanta says they have resolved a question philosophers have been debating for centuries: Why do people cooperate with one another even when it is not in their best interests to do so? " Is this why using MemeStreams is so much fun? I've been having conversations for years the people about this very problem. Everyone has philisophical convictions, and they differ. Are humans fundamentally good or evil? Study: Brains Want to Cooperate |
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SF Guardian on current 'Reputation Systems' (SIC) |
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| Topic: Society |
1:30 am EDT, Jul 20, 2002 |
"And yet I can't help thinking the reputation system is less about creating communities of friends than it is about building cults of personality around popular, "reputable" individuals... What happens to ideas that are smart but unpopular? In a reputation system, it's too easy for them to be exiled, cast beyond the bounds of what the community deems expressible... Sometimes we need to listen to people who have bad reputations. Often they are the critics, the people with a talent for seeing flaws and problems none of us want to face. Communities can't thrive if they never answer to the least reputable of their members. So, for now I'm waiting for a new community system, one whose wisdom will destroy reputations and replace them with something more meaningful. " Annalee Newitz is waiting for MemeStreams. SF Guardian on current 'Reputation Systems' (SIC) |
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US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies - smh.com.au |
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| Topic: Society |
1:31 pm EDT, Jul 15, 2002 |
The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity". Read the background of the author at the bottom... The thing is that this really isn't new. In the 80's American school children were told to inform the police if they discovered that their parents were using drugs. This sort of program becomes a problem when the people at large decide that they trust the government more then their neighbors. How far are we from that? US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies - smh.com.au |
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| Topic: Society |
1:21 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2002 |
The FBI's investigation into The Farm (Tennessee). An important read for anyone who still thinks that increasing domestic surveillance via the FBI is a good idea. (The Farm's website is interesting in and of itself.) Hoover and The Farm |
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Imitation Is the Mother of Invention |
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| Topic: Society |
1:01 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2002 |
When Fran Lebowitz cracked, at the awards ceremony of the Council of Fashion Designers of America last month, that "homage is French for stealing," her remark got a laugh but also some yawns. That Ms. Lebowitz's quip itself had a shopworn ring might be expected at a time when nearly every aspect of the culture somehow benefits from re-use. The idea is essential to post-modernism. In music it's called sampling. In high culture circles, where it's known as appropriation, it's ancient history. It was two decades ago when the art critic Craig Wright observed that appropriation, accumulation, hybridization and other "diverse strategies" had come to characterize "much of the art of the present and distinguish it from its predecessors." Now, those diverse strategies have become so institutionalized that when Moby turned Alan Lomax's 1930's tapes of Southern spirituals into a best-selling album of ambient music, he won Grammys and made millions. When Paul Thomas Anderson channeled Robert Altman's oeuvre, he was awarded the Palme D'Or at Cannes. When Sherrie Levine made stroke-for-stroke copies of watercolors by Mondrian, postdoctoral students lined up to write dissertations on her attenuated ironies. ... Half of fashion, in fact, seems to owe its professional existence to a single truism: one is as original as the obscurity of one's source. But isn't this as it should be? What is originality, anyhow? In spite of the current embrace of sampling and appropriation, "we persist as a culture in our commitment to the ideal of originality. The artist who admits to working in the manner of another artist will likely stand accused of being second rate." Wouldn't it be better to scrap the originality fetish and treat the creative act as "a combination of copyings, various and multiform"? Pablo Picasso: "Mediocre artists borrow; great artists steal." Copying is for artists, not consumers. Imitation Is the Mother of Invention |
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IP: Response to John Gilmore from Joe Sims |
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| Topic: Society |
2:59 am EDT, Jul 6, 2002 |
Joe Sims has responded to criticism from John Gilmore, on Dave Farber's Interesting People-mailing list. Sims states that Gilmore "doesn't have a clue about most of what he is talking about, and thus his views are basically worthless." Sims writes: "Since John Gilmore chooses to use my name in his imaginary history of how we got to where we are, I thought it would be appropriate to lay out the real facts. ... Perhaps Gilmore once had something to offer of value, but that does not include either political science or history. ... [Gilmore's] greedy lawyer canard ... simply reveals [his] lack of understanding of the law business. Drama Drama Drama IP: Response to John Gilmore from Joe Sims |
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