Technologies of Cooperation

1. Given the situation:

By cooperating with a group you can bring them up thus allowing them to be rewarded. You yourself are also rewarded.
By acting only in self interest you remove any reward from that group, yet you still are rewarded the same as if you were to cooperate with the group.

Given that the outcome for yourself would be the same, why would you choose not to cooperate.

2. Should the hacker's ethic be upheld by everyone? Do you think we would progress more if it were, or does the world evolve more by everyone not upholding this ethic?

3. Do you feel that people should cooperate with each other consistently in order to achieve common goals? Or do you feel that by being selfish we can achieve more for the future.

4. At the rate that society is going, are we moving towards a more cooperative society?

Some links for Chapter 2 - Technologies of Cooperation

marc a smith
Aura Project

mancur olson

elinor ostrom
digital library of the commons

garrett hardin society (tragedy of
the commons)

peter kropotkin
Mutual Aid
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke

John Von Neumann
John Von Neumann
Richard Stallman
Eric Raymond
Marc Andreessen

Brian Behlendorf
early usenet
Steve Bellovin
Barry Wellman
David Reed's Law

Technologies of Cooperation

1. How might the internet have evolved differently without the guidelines of "the hacker ethic?" Would the internet have evolved at all?

2. To what extent do you think the elements of "motivation" or competition/conflict (i.e. the Department of Defense's reaction to Sputnik) interact with cooperation (as seen in open source communities)? Is one factor stronger than the other, or are they both necessary to create a balancing act?

3. It is argued that "eBay won because it facilitated the formation of social groups around specific interests," (pg. 59) which was a driving force behind the formation of Reed's Law. Do you think this ability to grasp the concept of social group formation is what ultimately led to eBay's success?

4. In the end, do you think humans are innately driven more toward cooperative behaviors or self-interests?

We're not well liked in our own field...

According to a recent Library Journal article, that is, wherein ALA president Michael Gorman discusses his distaste for bloggers. From the slashdot newsposting:

"American Library Association president Michael Gorman is not too fond of bloggers and blogging. '[The] Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief... Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.'"

-Bertito

Speaking of ipod shuffles as storage mediums....

This is an interesting article about creating a RAID device using 4 IPOD Shuffles. It's pretty cool because you could create a portable hard drive where the information would be split up over 4 Shuffles and wouldn't be able to comprehendable when plugged in on its own.

To the Article: "iPOD Shuffle Raid"

Putting it all together: Blogging about SMS

jill/txt: i shall sms them

Speaking of how American's don't really SMS... this blogger wrote a quick entry about American's and SMS from a European point of view and it actually mentions Smart Mobs. Cool hunh?

Scroll down to the trackbacks/comments for some good commentary.

Google SMS

Since we're talking about SMS, I thought I'd mention GOOGL SMS. I had a little fun with it when it first came out. Google Labs has more.

Questions for 2/23

Introduction :

1. How do you use SMS? What is your monthly SMS usage? Are some of your friends not able to receive SMS messages? Do you think you don’t use it as much because your phone plan has included minutes or it isn’t part of your social culture? Personally, I hate voicemail and would rather SMS to get my point across.

2. How do you feel about building trust through social networks? Is sharing personal information worthwhile in effort to build meaningful relationships? Rheingold mentions online rating systems such as Ebay’s rating system for sellers. How much do you rely on a person or company’s reputation before interacting with them or doing business with them?

3. Rheingold mentions mobile devices as enabling people to form a social power they didn’t take advantage of before. Do you think this is the same “bottom-up” methodology that Gillmor mentions in “We the Media”? …A sort of empowerment of the people? Do you share experiences on the internet that benefit others?

4. Key breakthroughs don’t come from “established industry leaders” (Rheingold xiiii) but from the “fringes” or from the people. Do you agree with this statement? If this is the case, then why does Japan have a much more popular phone network with more features than we have?

5. How do you feel about always being connected (always having a cell phone or staying online via an instant messaging client). Does it distract you from what you should be doing more than it should? What are the social implications of not just our generation but future generations that have more social demands because of these technologies?

Chapter 1.

Do you use your cell phone to browse the internet?

1. Would you use it more if it were cheaper?
2. Personally, I like using wireless on campus and I usually have wireless access, so I never use it. But, I do like being connected all the time. I feel disconnected otherwise.
1. Combining physical presence with virtual presence is one of Rheingold’s main points. Will having many-to-many conversations make us a more productive society? How will our social lives be affected?
2. Location based dating and gaming seems to be taking off in Japan and Finland. Will it take off here? Would you use these kind of services? Do you think cell phone companies have the wrong target audience with the services they offer?
   
3. Being always connected forms a “social empowerment” in society that didn’t exist before. What will result out of this “social empowerment”? Maybe, limiting our rights or freedoms?

Networking with the Human Body

Don't know how many people caught this little article over on slashdot discussing the use of the surface of the human body as a data transmission device, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Quoting the I4U post:

"NTT announces Human Area Networking technology Research Project called RedTacton, that safely turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path at speeds up to 10 Mbps between any two points on the body."

Think about the business applications...you could hold your ipod in one hand, and then touch a terminal in your local Disc Jockey to download a song you want. Or maybe use it to make quick uploads of pictures to your blog without having to worry about USB cables.

Check out the flash demo over at RedTacton's site.

-Bertito

Security Issues With Emerging Technologies

I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard that Paris Hilton's T-Mobile Sidekick was hacked and over 400 phone numbers, emails, addresses, and pictures were posted to the internet. It contained a lot of phone numbers of other Hollywood celebrities as well. What does this say about security and emerging technologies? Should celebrities take precautions when entering data into their personal mobile devices? Does this make you feel insecure about the security of your own data on your cell phone or PDA?

Questions for Feb. 23--Introduction and Chapter 1

Introduction:

1. Think about a particular technological device you have right now (ex. digital camera, PC, cell phone, ipod, etc.) Try imagine life without it, what are some pros and cons that you can list to your personal life without this device?

How about imagining the world without this device? What are some changes there (social, political, relationships, habits, entertainment related..etc.) , both good and bad?

2. The "device" Reingold mentioned on page xii--where we are to link objects, plaes and people reminds me of a world like in the movies Minority Report, Irobot, Starship Troopers, etc. How possible do you think it is to unify all information and have one centralized system. This way we can have just one form of ID and all information needed are accessed quickly. What are some of the hurdles in the way?

Shibuya Epiphany:

1. Rheingold started out the whole book by mentioning the culture of text messaging in Japan. Do you think he approves of such a culture? How exactly do you imagine he feels about this just through his tone?

2. Through Matsunaga's description of "the addition of symbolic characters," we can probably relate it back to AIM smileys. Do you think of this as a form of language revolution? At this rate, where will our written language be in 50 years?

3. Looking at the lives of "Gentxts," do you feel scared or hopeful? Do you think our society will reach that state despite what Mozuko Ito said about the private life styles in the US?

Cell Chip Pictures

Since we ended up talking a little bit about the cell processor in class I decided I would post some decent artciles about it.

This first one has actual pictures of the chip, these don't really mean much to me, but maybe you'll get a kick out of it.

This bit from slashdot has a lot of useful links.

Here's an article that illudes to the cell chip being used in Sony's new PS3. The Register has a lot of great info about the processor and if you check the links at the bottom you should find all the information you need.

Daily Show on Blogs

Brendan pointed us to the Daily Show's take on blog on the class discussion board. I was just sent a link to a QuickTime version of the Show. Take a look and enjoy.
Is the Daily Show right?

Podcasting makes the Front Page of NYTimes

The groundwork for podcasting was set back in 2001 when Dave Winer added a "Payload" to RSS. But it wasn't til this past summer (2004) when Adam Curry wrote a script to carry the payload into iTunes and then to your iPod that the term and practice of podcasting took off.
Last week podcasting got attention in USA Today. Today podcasting was a front page story in the NYTimes. The Times story was more of the odd people do odd things tale that has dogged bloggers to me, but Dave Winer saw the article as mostly positive.
What's your take on podcasting and on the article?

Welcome to A Smart Mob

This blog will be a forum for updates and discussions for the Emerging Technologies and Issues class section 001. We'll pick up from the Blackboard discussions, but don't feel limited to those topics..