Category Archives: web2.0

Incantations for Muggles

I love Etech. This year, i had the great opportunity to keynote Etech (albeit at an ungodly hour). The talk i wrote was entirely new and intended for the tech designer/developer audience (warning: the academics will hate it). The talk is called:

“Incantations for Muggles:
The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life”

It’s about how technologists need to pay attention to the magic that everyday people create using the Web2.0 technologies that we in the tech world think are magical. It’s quite a fun talk and i figured that some might enjoy reading it so i just uploaded my crib notes. It is unlikely that i said exactly what i wrote, but the written form should provide a good sense of the points i was trying to make in the talk.

I should give infinite amounts of appreciation to Raph Koster who took unbelievable notes during my presentation, letting me adjust my crib to be more in tune with what i actually said. THANK YOU! I was half tempted to not bother blogging my crib notes given the fantastic-ness of his notes, but i figure that there still might be some out there who would prefer the crib. Enjoy!

(PS: If you remember me saying something that i didn’t put in the crib, let me know and i’ll add it… i’m stunned at how many of you took notes during the talk.)

web 1-2-3

I’m often asked what “Web 3.0” will be about. Lately, i have found myself talking about two critical stages of web sociality in order to explain where we’re going. I realized that i never succinctly described this here so i thought i should.

In early networked publics, there were two primary organizing principles for group sociability: interests and activities. People came together on rec.motorcylcles because they shared an interest in motorcycles. People also came together in work groups to discuss activities. Usenet, mailing lists, chatrooms, etc. were organized around these principles.

By and large, these were strangers meeting. Early net adopters were often engaging with people like them who were not geographically proximate. Then the boom hit and everyone got online, often to email with their friends (and consume). With everyone online, the organizing principles of sociality shifted.

As blogging began to take hold, people started arranging themselves around pre-existing friend groups. In this way, the organizing principle was about ego-centric networks. People’s “communities” began being defined by their friends. This model is quite different than group-driven structures where there are defined network boundaries. Ego-centric system are a (mostly) continuous graph. There are certainly clusters, but rarely bounded groups. This is precisely how we get the notion of “6 degrees of separation.” While blogging (and to a lesser degree homepages) were key to this shift, it was really social network sites that took the ball to the endzone. They made the networks visible, allowing people to put themselves at the center of their world. We finally have a world wide WEB of people, not just documents.

When i think about what’s next, i don’t think it’s going more virtual, more removed from everyday life. Actually, i think it’s even more connected to everyday life. We moved from ideas to people. What’s next? Place.

I believe that geographic-dependent context will be the next key shift. GPS, mesh networks, articulated presence, etc. People want to go mobile and they want to use technology to help them engage in the mobile world. Unfortunately, i think we have huge structural barriers in front of us. It’s not that we *can’t* do this on a technological level, it’s that there are old-skool institutions that want to get in the way. And they want to do it by plugging the market and shaping the law to their advantage. Primarily, i’m talking about carriers. And the handset makers who help keep the carriers alive. Let me explain.

The internet was not *made* for social communities. It was not *made* for social network sites. This grew because some creative folks decided to build on the open platform that was made available. Until recently, network neutrality was never a debate in the internet world because it was assumed. Given a connection (and time and literacy), anyone could contribute. Gotta love libertarian idealism.

Unfortunately, the same is not true for the mobile network. There’s never been neutrality and it’s the last thing that the carriers want. They want to control every byte and every application that can be put on the handsets that they adopt (and control through locking). In short, they want to control *everything*. It’s near impossible to develop networked social applications for mobiles. If it works on one carrier, it’s bound to be ignored by others. Even worse, the carriers have a disincentive to allow you to spread bytes over the network. (I can’t imagine how much those with all-you-can-eat plans detest Twittr.) Culturally, this is the step that’s next. Too bad i think that inane corporate bullshit is going to get in the way.

Of course, while i think that people want to move in this direction, i also think that privacy confusion has only just begun.

SXSW, ICWSM, and Etech

March is rearing up to be insane and i want to invite you to come along for the ride. At SXSW-Interactive, i will be on a panel about youth on Saturday and doing an on-stage interview with my dear friend and mentor Henry Jenkins on Monday. I am an invited speaker at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media and i will be presenting there before rushing off to Etech where i will be doing a keynote on Wednesday currently called “Incantations for Muggles.” These are some pretty huge talks and i’m both terrified and ecstatic. They’re going to force me to sit down and write some new material. Tehehe.

Note: registration deadlines are quickly upon us. Feb 9 is the final discount deadline for SXSW and early registration for Etech ends Feb 5. These events are most fun when friends are present so come join me! (Oh, and for those who wish to howl, Jane will be running werewolf at Etech.)

some thoughts on 2007 (advertising, bullying, and mobile)

I love the idea of “social network fatigue.” I can see the Prozac ad now:

Are you tired of your friends? Does reciprocity get you down? Do you dream of blockmodels? Are you afraid of the big bad structural holes? Don’t worry… we can help!

OK… i admit, that was far more for my own entertainment than for yours. But seriously, the concept of “social network fatigue” boggles my mind. I realize that the prediction is really “Users will tire of large-scale, portal-style social network sites like MySpace and Facebook in 2007” but the framing of it as “social network fatigue” reveals the inherent problem in this prediction. Users aren’t going to tire of their friends but they will tire of problematic social spaces that make hanging out with friends difficult.

Now, i’m not one to enjoy spouting predictions (notice discomfort in recent press interview) but i have to say that i agree with 80% of Fred Stutzman’s predictions. Social network sites as we know it are not the end-all-be-all. They will fade and other services will recognize the value in adding social features to their site. Social network structures will become as ubiquitous as search or profiles. They will be a given, either explicitly (“are you my friend?”) or implicitly (your phone contact list). That said, i think there are going to be some blood baths next year and i’m not looking forward to them.

For me, the question is: “are teenagers tiring of the highly-visible social network sites?” and the answer is both yes and no. The level of emotional enthusiasm i hear has dramatically faded over the last six months. It’s taken for granted that it’s the way to reach people, but folks have seen the pros and cons and are no longer slurping it up without thinking. The perceived presence of people who hold power over teens (parents, teachers, etc.) and those who want to prey on them (marketers, pedophiles, etc.) has done unbelievable damage in general teen perception. I’m astounded by how many teens i’m running into who are “scared” to go on MySpace because they’ve been told horror stories by everyone. It doesn’t matter that the stories they repeat back to me are inaccurate – it’s clear that mainstream news coverage had a huge role in shaping social network sites in 2006. I want to scream every time a teen tells me the story of the two alexes or about how Dateline “proved” that predators are going to stalk them. (Instead, i listen patiently and politely.)

More significantly, MySpace has turned into a massive zit full of marketing puss. Most teens don’t mind advertising but when things look more like spam than advertising, you’re in deep shit. Every PR organization and marketing arm is leeching onto MySpace like a blood thirsty vampire. Problem is that vampires kill their prey. Teens who wanna hang with friends are mostly protecting themselves by privatizing their profile (more cuz of the marketing predators than the sexual ones) but this quickly loses the luster, particularly when it’s fundamentally hard to do what you want to communicate with your friends. (Simple things like friend management and better messaging tools would go a long way.) I’m very worried about how, unregulated, spamming and over-advertising will kill even the coolest social hangouts. I keep wondering what the regulation solution will have to be. (Is it law or code cuz it ain’t gonna be market or social norms?)

I believe that teenagers are the reason that mobile will happen sooner than we think. I don’t believe that the first explosion will be US-based. I am very hopeful about Blyk because i think that they stand a very decent chance of getting cluster effects working. (Note: the anti-corporate voice in me screams in horror at the idea of a free mobile service built on ads but there’s no one i trust more in mobile than Marko Ahtisaari. I have much respect for the whole team and i think that a free phone will be extremely popular so long as they get a few things right.) I think that mobile social network-driven systems will look very different than web-based ones but the fundamentals of “friends” and “messages” and some form of presence-conveying “profile” will be core to the system.

What worries me most is that my gut says that 2007 will involve far too many hyper-visible examples of bad-teen-behavior. You think Nicole and Paris’ fight is public? Wait until every teen in America videotapes their cat-scratching, hair-pulling, nut-kicking, all-out brawls and uploads them to YouTube. Those who hold power over teens are primed to obsessively stalk their behaviors and i don’t think it’s gonna be pretty. Forget dirty laundry, we’re talking a full inversion of the house. (Personally, i can’t wait until kids start videotaping their parents’ fights or otherwise disrupting the power dynamics – that’s going to make things super messy. ::shudder::)

I think 2007 is going to be spent working through issues of public life and privacy mixed together complicated power dynamics between generations and between producers and consumers. We’re going to see legal battles, big corporate power plays (a.k.a. “bullying”), and media panic coverage meant to distract us from Iraq. We’re going to see a disgusting increase in consumer advertising that will aim to saturate everything possible. (This is what you get for getting “old media” and “old business” online finally.) Personally, when i turn up the futurism dial, i wanna hide under a rock in 2007. Of course, it shall be interesting and i won’t be able to resist peeking.

ephemeral profiles (cuz losing passwords is common amongst teens)

Sara created a MySpace using an email address that she made specifically for that purpose. After vacation, she couldn’t remember her MySpace password (or her email password). She created a new MySpace page using a new throwaway email address. When i asked her if she was irritated that she had to do this after investing time in the previous profile, she said, “nah.. I had too many Friends that I didn’t know anyways.”

This snippet from my fieldnotes depicts an attitude that i keep hearing from teens that completely contradicts adult norms. Many teens are content (if not happy) to start over with most of their accounts in most places. Forgot your IM password? Sign up again. Forgot your email address? Create a new one. Forgot your login? Time for a change.

While adult bloggers talk about building an identity through extended blogging, i keep finding teens who got locked out of Xanga and responded by making another Xanga (or a Blogger or a LiveJournal). They have expressions scattered across numerous services with numerous handles. Some teens chew through IM handles like candy; their nicks are things like “o-so-funny” rather than the first name, last name standard that seems to pervade professional worlds. It’s not seen as something to build an extensive identity around, but something to use to talk to friends in the moment.

Teens are not dreaming of portability (like so many adults i meet). They are happy to make new accounts on new sites; they enjoy building out profiles. (Part of this could be that they have a lot more time on their hands.) The idea of taking MySpace material to Facebook when they transition is completely foreign. They’re going to a new site, they want to start over.

While this feeling of ephemerality is not universal amongst teens, it’s far more prevalent than you’d ever see in adult culture and it has some significant implications for design:

  • Focusing on “lock-in” will fail with these teens – they don’t care if they lose track of something they put hours into building.
  • Teens are not looking for universal anything; that’s far too much of a burden if losing track of things is the norm.
  • Paying for an account can help truly engaged teens remember their accounts (i haven’t found any teen who permanently lost their MMO login) but it can also be a strong deterrent for those accustomed to starting over.
  • The numbers that people cite concerning accounts created are astoundingly inaccurate and are worthless for talking about usage or unique participants. (added tx to a comment by Rich)

I should note that i don’t think that the answer is “help teens remember passwords.” I actually think that this tendency to shed is advantageous in the way that we shed clothes every year because the “old me” is no longer relevant. Technology is a bit too obsessed with remembering; there’s a lot of value in forgetting.

Of course, i do expect everything to change with the mobile. While i don’t expect teens to care about number portability (like their parents), losing a phone is a far more expensive proposition than losing a login (although it seems to be just as common amongst teens). I expect there to be a lot less turnover when accounts are tied to a phone. It’ll be interesting to see if strong identity is loved or hated.

Clarification: This post is not intended to negate or devalue my previous work on how people use different nicks to represent different facets of their identity. This latter practice is common to people of all ages and has great value for impression management. How you represent yourself on LinkedIn is very different from how you represent yourself on Friendster and you don’t want these collapsed. This post is meant simply to highlight another aspect of shifting handles amongst teens that is not common amongst adults; it is not intended to say that this is the only reason for new handles. (While losing passwords is common amongst adults as well, starting over happily isn’t.)

on being virtual

Lately, i’ve become very irritated by the immersive virtual questions i’ve been getting. In particular, “will Web3.0 be all about immersive virtual worlds?” Clay’s post on Second Life reminded me of how irritated i am by this. I have to admit that i get really annoyed when techno-futurists fetishize Stephenson-esque visions of virtuality. Why is it that every 5 years or so we re-instate this fantasy as the utopian end-all be-all of technology? (Remember VRML? That was fun.)

Maybe i’m wrong, maybe i’ll look back twenty years ago and be embarrassed by my lack of foresight. But honestly, i don’t think we’re going virtual.

There is no doubt that immersive games are on the rise and i don’t think that trend is going to stop. I think that WoW is a strong indicator of one kind of play that will become part of the cultural landscape. But there’s a huge difference between enjoying WoW and wanting to live virtually. There ARE people who want to go virtual and i wouldn’t be surprised if there are many opportunities for sustainable virtual environments. People who feel socially ostracized in meatspace are good candidates for wanting to go virtual. But again, that’s not everyone.

If you look at the rise of social tech amongst young people, it’s not about divorcing the physical to live digitally. MySpace has more to do with offline structures of sociality than it has to do with virtuality. People are modeling their offline social network; the digital is complementing (and complicating) the physical. In an environment where anyone _could_ socialize with anyone, they don’t. They socialize with the people who validate them in meatspace. The mobile is another example of this. People don’t call up anyone in the world (like is fantasized by some wrt Skype); they call up the people that they are closest with. The mobile supports pre-existing social networks, not purely virtual ones.

That’s the big joke about the social media explosion. 1980s and 1990s researchers argued that the Internet would make race, class, gender, etc. extinct. There was a huge assumption that geography and language would no longer matter, that social organization would be based on some higher function. Guess what? When the masses adopted social media, they replicated the same social structures present in the offline world. Hell, take a look at how people from India are organizing themselves by caste on Orkut. Nothing gets erased because it’s all connected to the offline bodies that are heavily regulated on a daily basis.

While social network sites and mobile phones are technology to adults, they are just part of the social infrastructure for teens. Remember what Alan Kay said? “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.” These technologies haven’t been adopted as an alternative to meatspace; they’ve been adopted to complement it.

Virtual systems will be part of our lives, but i don’t think immersion is where it’s at. Most people are deeply invested in the physicality of life; this is not going away.

paris and Le Web 3

First off, Paris rox! I was not expecting to love it as much as i did. I mean, i *hate* cold weather and it’s always a bit disconcerting to be in a city where it’s impossible to understand 99% of what’s going on. What surprised me is that my 2 years of high school French meant that i could follow basic things. Knowing simple words like “gauche” and “droit” were unbelievably useful (given how frequently i get lost). Plus, i could make enough sense of the menu to find duck (mmm… duck). Of course, my pronunciation of said words is ATROCIOUS. Anyhow, i could totally live in Paris (with some French lessons)… that was surprising to me.

Now, onto the controversial Le Web 3 conference… For those who don’t follow tech gossip, it seems as though many people were outraged at how the conference was handled (and it seems to have provoked amazing amounts of juicy web drama of the teenage boy type). The dominant complaint concerned the fact that three politicians showed up, took the stage, and gave stump speeches. Others were upset because the tech talks were pretty generic.

Personally, i found the whole political thing utterly entertaining. I came to France expecting generic talks. We’re talking a tech conference of 1000 people. Since most of these people haven’t heard any of the presenters before, most of the presenters went with one of their solid talks instead of something more risque; plus, a lot of the program was panels and Loic reached out to us based on what we’re known for. So, while i was stoked to see some of my favorite people speak, i didn’t really expect to learn a lot from the talks themselves. (That said, i LOVED the talks by Marko Ahtisaari and David Weinberger; both gave me lots of ideas to chew on.)

I realize that folks didn’t like the politicians because they felt as though they didn’t pay to hear propaganda. I had a totally different take. For me, they were the best part. Why? Precisely because they didn’t say anything. Everyone’s always telling me that politicians now understand the web, want to be a part of it, want to listen to their constituents. I found the French politician’s attitude proof that they were just as clueless as American politicians. They know that this tech thing is important but they don’t actually understand it, and still they want to find a way to manipulate it to make them look good. I was particularly humored by the old media person who got up to be a complete contrarian, arguing that new media has no value. To solidify this point, he wouldn’t let Loic actually translate what he was saying – he wanted to dominate the airwaves his way. Of course, this was all complicated by the fact that there were press – old and new – EVERYWHERE. I couldn’t walk ten feet without getting interviewed by someone for a podcast, a newspaper, a live TV show, a blog, etc. It was obscene to see how many people wanted to “cover” the event… in fact, it seemed like there were more there to cover it than to listen to it. In that way, it felt like a political convention… Only the primary actor (“technology”) was a concept instead of a person. Since we were talking about tech, talking about the agency tech had, i thought that the fact that the politicians were there making a mess of things was FANTASTIC.

All of that chaos meant that i got more out of Le Web 3 than i’ve gotten out of a conference program in years. Of course, there were downsides to this… I had to figure out how to cut my 30 minute talk to 15 on the fly on stage and i feel like i wasn’t as clear as i wanted to be. That’s unfortunate because i wanted to give a solid talk. Le sigh. Another thing that was uber depressing was that i knew 2/3 of the women in the room. People may bitch about there being no women speakers but at Le Web 3, there were no female attendees (other than femalepress). It was a sea of middle-aged white men dressed in business casual. After 4 days in Paris (a surprisingly diverse city), this was a complete shock. And i thought that American conferences were homogeneous!

The ever-present press also meant that it was really hard to just hang out and catch up with people that i knew. I find hallway conversations to be the highlight of a conference… and they were key to Le Web 3 too, but it was hard to get some privacy to talk to people. At the same time, it was super nice that there was only one stage, one main chitter chat room, and one place where everyone ate lunch. I really really liked the total immersion.

At the same time, i was sick as a dog so i only got to attend part of each day. I spent most of the first day trying not to faint and putting on the best ::blink::smile:: face that i could possibly muster. I couldn’t attend the party, couldn’t eat any food (or drink any wine), or even be a werewolf in Paris. Much to my chagrin, i spent a lot of time in the bathroom trying to stop the dizzy feeling. I had to spend the majority of the first day in bed; the second day was spent trying to ward off the terrible nausea. All of this made it really hard to really engage with folks and i probably came across as a total bitch when i’d fade out and then go run off to the bathroom. (Cuz “excuse me, i have to go to the bathroom” is a pretty known excuse to get out of a conversation… And i was forced to say that to probably 20 people rather than puke on their shoes.) Majorly unfortunate.

Yet, even sick as a dog, i really enjoyed the conference; i would totally go back. And hundreds of people bitching means that people got really worked up. While this is seen as a “bad” thing, i actually think it’s pretty awesome. Then again, i believe in living life by doing things that will be memorable. Le Web 3 will DEFINITELY be memorable. As for Paris, i’d be happy to go back anytime.

making net neutrality relevant

Discussions concerning network neutrality have been occurring in the blogosphere for years now. Yet, at family events like Thanksgiving, i’m reminded of how incomprehensible this issue is to most educated people in this country. I’m curious if others out there are having difficulty explaining this issue (and its significance) to their parents, cousins, and other relatives who think email is a recent invention? What tactics have you taken?

Here’s the best explanation i could muster:

Y’know how when you look at videos online, it’s kinda slow? What if that slowness was intentional to dissuade you from watching those videos? I don’t mean to get all conspiracy theory on you, but what if the cable company thought that the people putting the video up online were cutting into their main business so they choose to slow it down? What if they made it easier for you to acquire content that people paid them to serve to you? In other words, what if the network wasn’t neutral? If you think of this in terms of freeways, what if the rich people were allowed to go faster than the poor people simply because they paid more taxes?

The reason that the Internet is so revolutionary is because (theoretically) anyone can get on that information highway, add information and consume others’ information. While the Internet has not been the great equalizer that everyone wants, it’s really important that the structure is as open as possible so that things can grow.

All around us, market forces are disrupting innovation and access. You know how you hear about neat things that phones do in other countries? The reason your phone doesn’t do that is because people like me can’t add things onto the phone without the permission of the telephone carriers (like Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.). This is because the mobile phone network isn’t neutral. As a result, innovation is majorly hampered and in regions where there aren’t these restrictions, development of new ideas is flourishing.

There are lots of ways to look at net neutrality. From one POV, you can see it as unpatriotic. It is destroying America’s ability to innovate (although, from a global market perspective, you might not care or from a anti-innovation perspective, this might be a good thing). Another POV is that it’s simply not fair (although you might not care about fairness and would prefer that the rich get richer). Another POV is that it closes access to information and makes certain that a few people control what information you get (again, if you’re on a certain side of that equation, you might relish this).

But how do you make net neutrality something that people like my mother want to stand up and fight for? While i’m stoked that this war is going to be Goliath vs. Goliath (Google vs. the cables/carriers), i still think that educated people should understand what is going on. But i don’t think that they do. And i don’t think that our rhetoric around net neutrality makes any sense to them. How would you fix this?

open hack day at Yahoo!

Continuing on the geek thread, i’d like to invite everyone to Hack Day at Yahoo! on September 29. The way hack days work at Yahoo! is that you come with an idea of how to mashup different tools at Yahoo! and then you hack like mad for 24 hours. It’s super fun and very geeky. You have to signup to go so make sure to visit the website!

Note: much to my utter sadness, i won’t be able to go since i will be presenting a paper in New York that day.

geeks and werewolves (some notes on FOO)

This past weekend, i went to FOO Camp – Tim O’Reilly’s annual sleepover gathering of geeks in the backyard of his office. (Yes, i camped in an office park.) Because some consider it an elite event (you must be invited), i get squirmy about screaming, OMG this weekend was unbelievable! But the truth is, it was. I can’t do justice in providing a recap, but the conversations were quite illuminating and i felt refreshed, especially because i got to meet so many new and interesting people. One of the most fascinating of such new connections was Moshe Cohen from Clowns Without Borders. Laughter really is the best medicine. Speaking of which, there was much werewolf and a reverse scavenger hunt in cahoots with Ms. Jane. I even got to see Greg Stein give birth to a baby girl to break a tie! I’m really a big fan of connecting people through play and i love watching Jane do magic in engaging an audience. It really is great when people who should know each other first meet through play. One of the coolest things about Werewolf is that there is an intimacy that provides furtile ground for future professional conversations. I’m a strong believer that meaningful ties require more than just a work connection.

While i may have hosted far too many hours of Werewolf, i did also help host a session on teens misbehaving and attended many other talks. My favorite was a broad discussion about the future of IM hosted by Master Artur. I also got a prototype of a Chumby to hack. I haven’t fucked with it yet but i’m super impressed by the cutsie-ness of the device, the shwag, the octopus, the name. There’s just something that’s so endearing about it. And it’s fuzzy! Speaking of fuzzy, how much do you love Tim wearing my hat?? But anyhow, i will play with the Chumby and get back to you.

To get to FOO this year, i did a roadtrip with Kareem and Graeme from Fox. The conversation was unbelievably fun and uber geeky (in that delicious kind of way). Plus, we stopped at In-N-Out twice and i got to play with a really fun GPS toy that Kareem calls Peaches.

Returning for a moment to the issue of elitism, i want to highlight Bar Camp. Bar Camp started out as an alternative for FOO and some framed it as the gathering for people who are not “cool enough.” There was animosity, jealously, and disappointment attached to it. It made me feel all guilty for going to and loving FOO. And then i moved to LA and connected to the Bar Camp folks here who have used that concept to build a community of geeks who gather monthly for food and are stoked to find ways to connect. Regardless of its origins, Bar Camp is an unbelievable mechanism for members of local communities to get to know the geeks amongst them. I’m completely in awe of how rapidly this meme has spread to cities around the world. During Bar Camp Earth this weekend, there were Bar Camps in Lithuania and India! In the next couple of months, there will be Bar Camps in places like Johannesburg and Shanghai. There may even be one near you.

One of the main reasons that FOO is closed is that it needs to be small to work. It was definitely pretty big this year, but still manageable. But it wouldn’t work with 1000 people even though there are certainly thousands of geeks who would benefit from such community building. The cool thing about Bar Camp is that it’s allowing many more people to enjoy the #1 benefit of FOO: connecting with interesting people. While FOO certainly has many Internet celebrities, Bar has people in your local community. The biggest value of both types of events is that they are doing so much to develop and enrich the geek community. While blogs and online connections are great, there’s nothing like physical co-presence.

Update:

For those interested in what was contained in this year’s scavenger hunt, Jane posted the complete rules as part of her write-up on FOO:

Please find the following objects:
1. A fully installed functional body modification (demo, please)
2. Spiritual computing object (demo, please)
3. A prop from the set of the 2042 Japanese remake of Snakes on a Plane (scene, please)
4. A viable alternate energy source (demo, please)
5. The new Third Life interface
6. When ThingLinks Go Wrong
7. Evidence of the most insidious viral marketing effort of the year 2007
8. The FOOFRACK™ Continuous Partial Attention Device
9. Proof that one of your team members is actually a Cylon, a Werewolf or a VC in disguise
10. A craft object from the BRAINS! Issue of Make Magazine (Vol. 13)

Rules:You have 60 minutes to “find” these objects.You can only use the 10 objects your team already has-no trading, no substitutions.You can hack and mod your objects any way you want.You cannot use an object to represent more than one item on the list.
Your success in finding these objects will be judged based on your live demonstrations and explanations. Prepare to be persuasive!In the case of a tie, teams will play a 60-second death-defying, single-object tiebreaker round.