140 plot points or less

The time machine came to a halt. Was this paradise at last? "You're under arrest for being an irresponsible, time-traveling blockhead."

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petrg @hotmom4 bury the body under floorboards.
4 minutes ago
hotmom4 @petrg waaat! they found me how did they know???
1 minute ago

I have a dream.

Technology is changing faster than our perception of technology is changing. Additionally, new technologies are beginning to be invented faster than we know what to DO with them! The World Wide Web is 20 years old, and we are even now seeing revolutionary phenomena like on-demand-TV, flashmobs, and political protest co-ordination in suppressed countries. And I believe that we are far from seeing the end of new utilizations of the Internet's capabilities. It's been said that a technology's full potential only becomes realized when it becomes universal, transparent, and boring.

One of the greatest advances in 21st Century is the utilization of technology already available: the social revolution that has resulted from Internet technology.

As the size of a social group increases linearly, the complexity of that group increases factorially. This is a big deal, because it means the overhead cost of co-ordination, management, and communication of very large groups in monumental. For nearly ALL OF HISTORY, people have dealt with this problem by using the hierarchy system: manageably sized groups are formed; then, each group is given a leader, which acts representatively for that group, as if the entire group were one simplified entity, one person. A group is then formed from these entities. This process can continue recursively.

Now, however, the overhead of organization is dwindling: user-based groups do not have to be efficient, they only have to be effective. Communication is almost limitless and free. Each person takes care of their own organizing overhead. In a parody of the words of Mr. King Jr., "I have a dream, that one day people will no longer will people be organized by the location of their homes, but by the content of their 'about me' box." That dream is today!

Reference: Shirky: Here Comes Everyone

conTextual Revolution

Internet and SMS social networking has changed us forever. Or has it? Have we really changed that much? And if so, is it for the worse?

Social networking has not change the basic nature of the way we socialize. It has just allowed us to do it faster, across any distance, and at any time.

A person may now carry out a conversation with another user without the constraint of being expected to reply within a short amount of time and without needing to set time aside to engage in conversation.

In Japan, studies showed participants rated friendships in which they communicated face-to-face and through text messaging as being more intimate than those in which they communicated solely face-to-face.

Which makes sense, because you can think about what you’re going to say and you can form your answers really easily.

I am a fan.

Ishii, Kenichi. "Implications of Mobility: The Uses of Personal Communication Media in Everyday Life." Journal of Communication 56 (2006): 346–65.

Texting? Bah, humbug.

Online Social networking has changed, revolutionized the way in which we interact as humans, as anybody can see. Many think that this is in large part cause by the 1. the anonymity available on the internet, and 2. the distantness / detachment inherent in online communication.

Protected by anonymity, people can behave differently. They can express ideas that don't truly epitomize their average feelings and attitude. They also become more detached. Not having to see someone face-to-face, and being able to disconnect in an instant? Kinda makes it easy. And a lack of spacial/social context, along with a lack of body language, creates miscommunication.

http://universe.byu.edu/node/15293

Copybright

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy just doesn't work." Kent Brockman may have had an insight here, but what is truly broken is Copyright Law™.
Myth: Copyrights lasts as long as they should.
My take: Copyrights were originally 52 year, later 20 years past the artist's death (to account for an increase in life expectancy). Today they are owned by corporations which have no death date.

Myth: Copyrights protect the artist
My take: Copyrights may marginally benefit the artists, but usually benefit the distribution companies

Myth: File sharing is killing the record industry
My take: File sharing often helps sales, and the drop in the record industry sales is likely due to really stupid decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy.

For more information, see: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html

For more information on fair use, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

Women: Know your Bigots

Men outnumber Women in the "hard sciences", particularly in the Computer Sciences, by orders of magnitude. Why? This has been discussed extensively, and with (as far as I can tell) no solid conclusion. Ideas include not enough daycare services at universities, and making the field hyper-theoretical to accommodate a non-tinkering personality. As I am not a woman (suprise!), I will not pretend to be an authority on this subject. I will say that this will likely not change in the near future, as women seem to be opting out (at least in part).
This makes me sad.

Family Bliss-tory

Although most love their family, not many know of their fore-bears preceding their grandparents. It seems ironic, but our world-wide journey into the future has brought us closer to the past. FamilySearch and other genealogical research and database resources have begun to connect the family tree of the whole human race at a pace never before imagined. And many people find themselves drawn to this work of genealogy, to find out who they are and where they've come from, and simply because they love their precursors.

Dear God, thanks for the tactical nukes.

Our technology is a miracle from God. How do we use it? Sometimes well, sometimes horrifically.
If aliens saw our use of technology, what would they think? Let me tell you:
"They wish to have a flood of data & facts, and even then they will not use it to their advantage. They are ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. They have more wisdom than any time in their history, and yet they have less wisdom than ever."

Anarchy makes the Best Organization

The Internet has turned the standard business model upside-down. The Open-Source model, especially, has destroyed many ideas held in resolute, such as Brook's Law. The basic philosophy and tenets held to so zealously by many open-source developers are to blame: be open and honest to the point of promiscuity, release it while it's still crap and get loads of feedback, treat your users as co-developers and as your most valuable resource; and of course, the obvious yet often overlooked fact that many minds are greater than one.

A Treatise: On Stupid-heads

For years, some foresightful people had looked forward to the day when computers could be linked together all over the world, in order to create a database which would propagate information to everybody who accessed it. The phenomenon of the Internet was far from a surprise, and in fact was commonly predicted. What they failed to predict was HOW it would be used.
When ARPA-Net was opened up to universities, it started to be viewed as a research and collaboration tool; it was seen as a digital library. And virtually everybody expected people to treat it like a library as well: one is to be respectful of the library's assets and of other patrons. If one wishes to retrieve information, it can be expected that they will go to reasonable lengths to ensure that they check out the material with the proper procedure, notifying those who need such notification for administrative purposes. And, obviously, one does not do something outright illegal in a library.
The problem with the early Internet lied in the facts that it was one of the only international forums of inter-personal interaction open to the general public at the time. Another, that real personal identification was either voluntary, or virtually non-existent. But most of all, it just sprung up too fast. There were almost no laws concerning the internet; and there were certainly no international laws. People were just expected to behave.
Clifford Stoll found that this was not to be. He tracked an international spy-hacker for months while he wasted staff time, resources, network connection time, and used unpaid for long-distance tolls. But much worse, he trespassed, invaded property and privacy, and conducted espionage. He even risked injuring a medical patient at one point.
The result? The trust of the network community was if not lost than changed forever. The open cooperative character of the research network had been violated.
And it would seem that, once again, a new technology meant to bring in a new dawn of cooperation and mutual benefit gets ruined by one guy.
References: Clifford Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg
Clifford Stoll, Stalking the Wily Hacker

Free-for-All

A humanitarian project is distributing free internet to the whole world.
What is the point of spending giving people computers and internets when they are starving and living in shacks? I think William Kamkwamba's put it nicely: "I Googled windmill [and] I found there was millions of applications! I said, Where was this Google all this time?!"
The collaborative idea-sharing ability of the internet is just as capable of revolutionizing the way villagers grow rice as philosophizing about Glee(TM).

Digital Corsairs

The open source movement provides a win-win situation-- everyone gives to and benefits from the collective knowledge of all. But open, transparent and trusting systems require open, transparent and honest people.
Wolfire Games recently open-sourced their code, and found that it was being used to pirate their game-- for a profit-- on the official Apple app store.
It is an unfortunate truth that the more benevolent a system is, the more it can be taken advantage of; and the people in it, hurt. They can and will bounce back quickly, but only if the trash is taken out.

To be had for good and evil...

Time and again, advances in technology prove to be neither the savior of our society, nor the cause of it's destruction. And yet these exaggerated and myopic perspectives continue to persist. Recent events in Tunisia have shown the Internet, social networking, and streaming media being used for both good and evil. The Atlantic on Tunisia: revolution and mass identity theft.
Whether we prove to be our destruction or find our utopia depends less on The New and Newer Tools, and more on the quality of the human spirit.

Government 2.0

The open-source model that is so popular and idolized in the software and tech community, is now (finally) being adopted in government. The open-source model is the best model, period. It brings the greatest mutual benefit to humanity. And it achieves exactly what the communists we trying to achieve -- except it actually works. It is voluntary on community and individual levels, it keeps governing power in the hands of the people, and it is transparent.

Spiderman's grandpa was right

Have you ever wondered why this age has been so blessed with technological wonders? We have more free time, more longevity, more information at our fingertips; this generation is more powerful than any before, both individually and collectively.
With great power comes great responsibility. While others have done so much with so little, we do relatively little. The solution? Perhaps a little thanks-giving. Or a lot.

[Focus and Priorities, by Dallin Oaks]