hackr abt. quoted

We speak of social media, but rarely of social machines. On the Network, the machine is virtualized and hidden in the cloud. For a machine to operate at full efficiency, each of its cogs must do its part reliably and be able to repeat its performance exactly each time it is called upon. Generally some form of operant conditioning (game mechanics) will need to be employed as a form of crowd control. Through a combination of choice architecture and tightly-defined metadata (link, click, like, share, retweet, comment, rate, follow, check-in), the behavior of individuals interacting within networked media channels can be scrapped for input into the machine.

echovar über crowds, social machines und social media.

After getting one step ahead of the pack, he remained ahead not by superior innovation, but by superior exploitation of the legal system.

Mises Daily via langreiter

Building your success on being more in sync than everyone else is a sharp edge to walk on. You’ll always be near the edge of perfect sync, but never there.

The alternative is to be a lot out of sync.

The entertainment is not packaged; it is intrinsic.

cluetrain via exciting commerce

A space, unlike a place, is an electronically created environment. It is where more and more of the economy happens. Unlike place, space has unlimited dimensions. Entities (people, objects, agents, bits, nodes, etc.) can be adjacent in a thousand different ways and a thousand different directions. A person in an electronic space can communicate to 10 million people at once, or interact in a game with 20,000 others—things that would be impossible in physical space.
…
The invention of communication allowed life to evolve from globular organisms into fantastic beings, just as networks allow place-based firms to blossom into fantastic spaces.

kevin kelly in seinem new rules reblog

hui, Nova Spivack legt seinen Text zur Physik der Ideen/Meme aus dem Jahr 2004 neu auf (via), was die damals schon wussten.

(durchaus ein grosser wurf mit einer ganzen reihe von guten gedanken und ansätzen, ein bisschen beigeschmack hat für mich allerdings (1) eben diese grösse des projekts (zu gross bedeutet immer auch gleichzeitig, dass man die realisierung immer auf morgen verschieben kann, siehe die probleme mit dem semantic web, welches ja nur ein müdes subset von seinem ansatz ist), (2) die grösse der metapher (physik sagt sich leicht, ist aber schwerer zu verstehen und noch schwerer zu implementieren; gleichzeitig ist es leicht zu übertreiben, er deutet das eh mit der quantenmechanik, die man eigentlich bräuchte, an, aber natürlich bräuchten wir mindestens eine allgemeine relativitätstheorie der meme etc.), (3) die utilitaristische haltung, wie man die ergebnisse auswerten könnte (was könnte man nicht alles machen: börsenprognosen, auswertung der effektivität von werbekampagnen, hyperdemographie und -targeting, usw.))

This is the one that was made before you even showed up. This is the one that sets the agenda, determines the goal and establishes the frame. The decision before the decision is the box.

mal wieder seth godin

But Twitter didn’t start with blogging or blogging tools as its central metaphor, it began with the message streams that flow through dispatching systems. The tweet isn’t a small blog post, it’s a message in a communications and logistics system. There’s a tendency to say that the tweet is a “micro” something— a very small version of some normally larger thing. But tweets are full sized, complete and lack nothing. Their size allows them to flourish in multiple communications environments, particularly the SMS system and the form factor of the mobile network device (iPhone).
…
Like the tweet, the post-it note doesn’t have a specific purpose. Arthur Fry, one of the inventors of the post-it note, wanted a bookmark with a light adhesive to keep his place in his hymnal during church choir. The rapid acceptance of the yellow sticky, in part, had to do with not defining what it should be used for. It’s hard to imagine someone saying that you’re not using a post-it note correctly, although people say that about Twitter all the time.

echovar über twitter und pretty much das kompaktbeste, was ich bisher über twitter gelesen habe.

(das grösste problem bei der beschreibung von twitter sind ja die ähnlichkeiten, die zwar nicht völlig falsch sind, die aber das wesentliche verpassen und dann serien von falschen schlussfolgerungen triggern. die abgrenzung zu dem, was es nicht ist, ist fast wichtiger als die beschreibung von dem, was es ist)

But there’s something important to note about all these curatorial roles I enjoy: none of them are coercive. … The beauty of noncoercive curation is that there are so many reasons we value things, it’s really impossible to imagine that any one place will serve as a one-stop shop for our needs.
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Two categories in particular won’t ever be fulfilled by a curator: first, the personal.
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Second, the tailored. I have loads of little scripts, programs, systems, files and such that make perfect sense to me, even though they’re far from elegant or perfect. There’s the script I use for resizing and uploading images to Boing Boing, the shelf I use to organise my to-be-read pile, the carefully-built mail rules that filter out spam and trolls and make sure I see the important stuff. I am a market of one … But again, these are the nuts and bolts that hold my life together and I can’t live without them.

Cory Doctorow über die Vorzüge des wilden, nicht hegemonial/exklusiv kuratierten Webs.

But when the margins of the urban environment grow larger than the traditional center, there’s a good chance that it’s in the improvisational economies of the favelas, shanty towns and slums that these new disruptive financial services will take root.

echovar sinniert über kommende financial services.

Clearly some filters, algorithms and agents will be better than others, but none of them will think, none will have intelligence. If part of thinking is the ability to make new analogies, then we need to think about what we do when we create and use these software machines. It becomes an easier task when we start our thinking with augmentation rather than a separate individual intelligence.

As Machines May Think…

… is almost as irrelevant as the continual stories which gleefully report Twitter has more users than media outlets like The New York Times. One’s a network, the other’s a news publisher – this is not comparing like with like.
In the same way, one can’t group Twitter together with web search services and proclaim: “Twitter has taken the title.” Sure, both such services have a search function, but each indexes a very different kind of material – one, rapid-fire conversations and news updates; the other, deeper, more static and longer-lasting information.

der guardian über den x-kills-old-y hubbub pt. 1

Of course, none of those media are dead, and neither is blogging. Instead, what’s happened is that they’ve been succeeded by new forms that share some of their characteristics, and these new forms have peeled away all the stories that suit them best.

cory doctorow im guardian über den x-kills-old-y hubbub pt. 2

You’ve already guessed the punchline—if just one player enters the field and works to make people smarter, the competition has a hard time responding with a dumbness offensive.

Betting on smarter or betting on dumber

Here’s what I like about Bolder : it turns the relationship between companies and people inside out and upside down. Instead of activists pressuring companies to do something responsible, companies ask people to take small steps with them.

umair haque (im ersten eintrag einer neuen hyperkonkreten serie namens green shoots)

Everything we create becomes a de facto data storage device and brain accessory.

Scott Adams via Kottke

The right question is: are organizations and markets making decisions that help make people, communities, and society better off in the long run, by allocating their scarce resources to the most productive uses? The correct role of governance is to shape the decisions of markets, by breathing life into social preferences and expectations.

Umair Haque mit einem seminalen Text über die Rolle von Governments und diy innovators in Bezug auf den (dysfunktionalen, vampirischen) ökonomischen Komplex.

Ein Denken des Denkens, dass die Möglichkeit der Zukunft mit einschließt, muss sich der Nichtmenschlichkeit, der Artifizialität seiner Voraussetzungen jederzeit bewusst sein.

mspro via mauszfabrick

(mspro antwortet auf einen text von david ‘lifestream’ gelernter, in dem dieser die vorstellungen von künstlicher intelligenz problematisiert. beide texte sind lesenswert und auf jeweils interessante art sinnlos. gelernter macht im grunde eines: er koppelt den begriff intelligenz per definitionem an den säugetierischen körper und spricht in der folge computern/dem web intelligenz (wenn man die annahme schluckt folgerichtig) ab. (wenn man will mit lacan: das symbolische traut er den computern noch zu, aber das imaginäre, das können sie nie). das kann man machen, aber dadurch gewinnt man auch nichts (ausser jedem, der von ai schwafelt, sagen zu können: i ist das nicht). mspro kritisiert dann diese anthropozentrische grundannahme, allerdings pickt er sich ein argument heraus, das gelernter nicht macht (es gibt keine natürliche menschliche intelligenz, medien haben immer schon auf uns und unsere gedankenwelt eingewirkt usw. – aber gelernter behauptet ja nirgends das gegenteil; dass sich unser denken verändert ist ihm schon klar, nur bleiben die menschen das, was denkt). in der folge ist sein ‘schaun wir mal’ natürlich richtig, bringt uns aber auch nicht weiter.)

@david_lynch via @konterfai

There is no easy way to get through a media revolution of this magnitude; the task before us now is to experiment with new ways of using a medium that is social, ubiquitous and cheap, a medium that changes the landscape by distributing freedom of the press and freedom of assembly as widely as freedom of speech.

Does the Internet Make You Smarter?

What does it matter who is speaking, someone said, what does it matter who is speaking?

Samuel Beckett via echovar