I think the result is quite amazing. Remixing is perhaps too strong a word because he mostly simply dropped entire chapters, with a little re-arranging here and there. It is a very sharp but intelligent edit. But the effect is striking. Instead of a rambling book about one dozen things, Lloyd's remix of my book focuses it on the cybernetic and feedback aspects of the systems I was reporting on in the early 1990s. I suggested this focus needed a better title than OUT OF CONTROL, which I never was happy with anyhow, so Lloyd came up with a new one for this version of the book. He calls it BOOTSTRAPPING COMPLEXITY.

So if you never read OUT OF CONTROL because you were put off my its length, here is a user-generated remix that shortens and focuses the book. You can read it on Lloyd's website or even download the PDF. (I will post the PDF here on kk.org as well.)

Lloyd's notes read thus:

Kevin Kelly's book "Out of Control" is a fascinating book full of fascinating ideas reaching across the board from artificial intelligence, evolution, biology, ecology, robotics and more to explore complexity, cybernetics and self-organising systems in an accessible and engaging way.

But in reading Out of Control, I found it suffering from a number of frustrating flaws: Not only is it way too long-winded, it is also almost completely void of meta-text to help the reader understand what Kelly is trying to do with his book (having read the book, I'm still wondering).

Indeed, reading the book I got the feeling that Kelly was trying to combine several different books into one: There is a fascinating study of self-sustaining systems. But there is also a sort of business-book take on network economy. And an extended meditation on evolution and postdarwinism.

I'm sure that to Kelly, all of these things are tightly interconnected. But he doesn't explain these interrelations very well to the reader. His central argument is that as technology becomes ever more complex, it becomes more akin to biological systems (eco-systems, vivisystems, interdependent and co-evolving organisms). But because the individual chapters are set up as essays on their own, there is often little to tie these wildly different ideas together.

I would have preferred a much shorter book, more narrowly focused on the idea of self-organising systems. The whole text of the original book is easily available online at Kelly's own website, so I thought: Why not remix the online text to make such a book?

So I did.

However, if you liked BOOTSTRAPPING COMPLEXITY, you may also want to try my "long-winded" original version with lots more stuff. It is available as web text and a free PDF as well.

I think Lloyd is a fantastic editor, and his fan-based work is exactly the kind of liquidity of text that I believe will propel books in the next century. His remix is the kind of literary fluidity I was talking about in my Scan This Book article for the New York Times.

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We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.

The answer is yes. And Venice, too.

There are more than 2 million photos on Flickr tagged with Rome. They capture almost every nook and cranny, every column and doorway, of the old city. If you had a lot of computer power, and the right smart software, you could take these 2 million views and compile them into a single unified 3D portrait.

And if this system from the University of Washington GRAIL lab worked for Rome you could take other highly photographed places, such as St Marks Plaza in Venice, and construct a visual 3D picture, down to the smallest detail.

Microsoft's Photosynth accomplished a similar feat. The movie below does that same thing with huge piles of photos taken off of  Flickr.

Eventually, the every city in the world will get a full textured 3D view of itself. (via Waxy)

It's not the whole history, but select dramatic parts, told simply and quick. It includes many scenes I was not aware of.

The dust cloud that is the precursor to Earth.

Turns out after many years of testing, that the free nets are incredibly effective in reducing malaria. Free wins! The story by Jeffery Sachs is here in Scientific American. Or you can read the PDF for the academic paper on the experiment.

Free or not, nets are a great idea and better than malarial drugs. If you want to fund a net ($10), there's a number of places that help  you do that, including Nothing But Nets.

We expect character from corporations even though they are not people, but when business do behave like upstanding people, we notice. Amazon did a silly thing recently by disabling books that they mistakenly sold on the Kindle. Founder Jeff Bezos just posted an apology that raised him two notches on my Buddha scale. It takes courage and wisdom to apologize as genuine and effectively as his did. Man, he is good.

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos

"This music video was shot for Sour's 'Hibi no Neiro' (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album 'Water Flavor EP'. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam."

Nice story about the not-surprising amount of work it took to coordinate. (Thanks, Michael)   

How long did it take to make, start to finish?
Kawamura: The whole thing took about three months. The first month was really about the planning phase, the second month was about preparing for the shoot – prototypes, working with the animatics -- and the third month was all about going out and getting it shot.

What surprised you most about the process?
Kawamura: No surprises. We saw everything coming (laughs).

According to the BBC report:

The work was nearly destroyed in a fire in 1978, but despite the building being gutted, a metal filing cabinet protected the files. A spokesman said the final tome would contain over 230,000 categories with 800,000 meanings. The thesaurus was nearly completed in 1980, but the team decided to include words from updated versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. This added almost 30 years more work to the project.

One wonders what other kinds of things could we do if we were willing to devote half a century to it?

According to Oxford U Press the book features:

• A unique thesaurus resource - the very first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world's languages
• The largest thesaurus resource in the world, covering more than 920,000 words and meanings from Old English to the present day based on the Oxford English Dictionary
• Synonyms listed with dates of first recorded use in English, in chronological order, with earliest synonyms first
• Uses a thematic system of classification, with synonyms and related words forming part of a detailed semantic hierarchy
• Comprehensive index enables complete cross-referencing of nearly one million words and meanings
• Contains a comprehensive sense inventory of Old English
• Includes a free fold-out colour chart which shows the top levels of the classification structure

You can preorder the "Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary: With Additional Material from A Thesaurus of Old English" at Amazon for $316.

Yet, eventually every unstoppable slows down, even if they don't vanish, and they usually don't. (Unlike the "too big to fails.") How are unstoppables stopped? I recall how hard it was to imagine how unstoppable Japan would be stopped in the 1990s? Real estate was not mentioned. It is always hard to imagine how any great power declines while it is at its peak. But all will.

I see five "unstoppables" reigning in popular imagination now. 

Google, China, the Singularity, Moore's Law, and the US.

Recently a few contrarians have taken a stab at how the US might fall apart, as mentioned previously. Here's a recent not very convincing argument against Moore's Law continuing much beyond 2014. Vernor Vinge himself fashioned four arguments against his singularity thesis (that is greatness!). There's a few arguments against China. This one in Foreign Policy has some good points, but I find myself not persuaded for some reason. Excerpts:

For complex reasons, China's rise has inspired fear and unease, not enthusiasm, among Asians. Only 10 percent of Japanese, 21 percent of South Koreans, and 27 percent of Indonesians surveyed by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs said they would be comfortable with China being the future leader of Asia.

*
Another, perhaps more important, reason for the enduring American preeminence in Asia is that most countries in the region welcome Washington as the guarantor of Asia's peace. Asian elites from New Delhi to Tokyo continue to count on Uncle Sam to keep a watchful eye on Beijing.

*
China appears to have done much better in these areas. But appearances can be deceiving. Dictatorships are good at concealing the problems they create while democracy is good at advertising its defects.

I'd love to see a good set of believable scenarios on how Google eventually gets sidelined.

I think this tutorial the best thing on the digital economics since Better Than Free.

Dan says:

When you design your game, pick three or four revenue streams and build them into your game.  Here are some categories of users that you may want keep covered.

• People who don't want to pay: Advertising is a good option to keep around. A few hundred bucks is still money in the bank.
• People who are interested in more of the same: Once you've established the value of your game, some players want more.  Give them more levels, more puzzles, more enemies in exchange for cash.
• People who are interested in status or identity improvements:  Some people see games as means of expression and identity.  Give them items that let them express themselves or customize their experience. 
• People who have limited time: Some people live busy lives and want to consume your game when they desire and how they desire.  Cheat codes, experience multipliers and other systems that bypass the typical progression all help satisfying this customer need.

I like this experimental book publishing model. Print 200 copies of a book in hard cover. Sell with "free" shipping. Then make the rest of the copies free as a downloadable PDF.  I missed getting one of the limited edition 200 ($9, postage paid), since they sold out in 8 hours. It really doesn't matter what's in the book. The model is brilliant, if you have an audience. The scarce limited edition of the physical subsidizes the distribution of the unlimited free intangible.

Here is what their website says:

We'll post a PDF online, free for everyone—but only after we sell this run of 200 real, physical objects. So think of it this way: You're not just buying a thought-provoking, take-it-to-the-coffee-shop book for yourself. You're buying access for everybody. You're a patron of the new liberal arts!

As it happens, the PDF reveals that the content is pretty thin. But it did not have to be. Their premise is great (the new literacies), and their biz model innovative. We can hope they try again.  I am impressed enough with the experiment to use this model on my next self-published book.

Sometimes it will. The following is a wonderful case where very passionate fans did their own amazing science and investigative research worthy of any national newspaper or world-class magazine.  The story is about whether vegan resturants in LA are truly vegan, but the larger story is how deep and thorough their investigation was. I'd be curious to know where they learned their skills.

Oh, if you are a vegan (or even a vegatarian) you'll want to read this.

Operation Pancake.

UPDATE: Avi Solomon suggested another in-depth investigative report generated outside of professional journalists. Three students from Singapore created this very impressive long-form article, with photos, of Surrogate Motherhood in India, "the ultimate outsourcing job."