Melora Zaner from 3 degrees came to speak at Intel about the Net Generation. She had a variety of interesting approaches to the Neg Gen and since i can’t find a meaningful reference, my notes from the theoretical hafl of her talk are contained within.
Category Archives: digitalness
social scientists everywhere
With social software appearing everywhere, the news seems to be more and more curious about social scientists who are working in the digital domain.
SFGate ran an article today entitled Probing tech’s heart: Social scientists seek technology’s human side, focused on Marc Smith (MS – Netscan) and Josh Tyler (HP – email networks).
duncan’s six degrees
More work continues to emerge about Duncan’s Six Degrees Experiment
New Scientist reports “Email experiment confirms six degrees of separation”
Digging for Googleholes
Steven Johnson’s most recent Slate article entitled “Digging for Googleholes” reveals the not-so-omni-present side of Google. One of the problems that Johnson targets is the dreadful synonym capabilities. Interestingly, on “Google Weblog” today, they referenced a new Google advanced feature that allows people to search for synonyms.
i switched
I finally switched. Hurrah!
Of course, now i need to figure out what all one can do with a Mac.
Google cache raises copyright concerns
Google cache raises copyright concerns is an interesting news.com critique of what happens when copyright lawyers realize what Google is doing. [When will we get that our copyright/IP laws need some major revising for the digital age??]
…
As seemingly benign and beneficial as it is, some Web site operators take issue with the feature and digitally prevent Google from recording their pages in full by adding special code to their sites. Among other arguments, they say that cached pages at Google have the potential to detour traffic from their own site, or, at worst, constitute trademark or copyright violations. In the case of an out-of-date news page in Google’s cache, a Web publisher could even face legal troubles because of false data remaining on the Web but corrected at its own site.
For this reason, search experts and copyright lawyers expect the issue to come up in a court of law, joining the leagues of copyright disputes that have surfaced because of technology innovation.
…
gorgeous images
An artist on a psylist that i’m on just sent out a link to new images that he created and they are utterly gorgeous. My favorites:
Perfect timing! I totally fell in love with Sidhi (on the left) and i was thinking about refreshing my art with my upcoming move. Yay for being able to support artists in my community!
The Practical Republic: Social Skills and the Progress of Citizenship
A friend of mine pointed me to a recent Phil Agre paper called “The Practical Republic: Social Skills and the Progress of Citizenship.” It deals with the interrelationship between networks, trust, and social skills as it relates to social capital and different forms of social structures.
is google god?
Thomas Friedman asks “Is Google God?”
The answer is yes, increasingly so. Google is the ultimate bridge between all people and information and its power will only intensify. Perhaps their refusal to be a verb is simply to eliminate all but the Proper references to Google. No blasphemy allowed.
Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com
Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com. This article shares a variety of people’s perspectives on online dating. One paragraph particularly caught my eye:
Two or three decades ago, most American couples met in high school or college, Professor Glenn said. But as more people choose to marry later in life, few social institutions have arisen to replace the role that local communities, families and schools once played.
This confirms my hunch that one of the primary roles of urban tribes are to provide people with the connections to mate. Of course, in areas where you don’t have that type of intimate network, you need to find bridges to groups through alternate means. Digital dating does this, but it’s hard to figure out what you have in common at the more fundamental levels through this mechanism. One of the nice things about schools and shared friends is that you can validate certain similarities in interesting ways.