tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50477012008-02-29T15:57:23.974-07:00patternboyBlogger601125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-60871446898403062032007-11-11T08:47:00.001-07:002007-11-11T08:48:49.855-07:00

"The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist." /Daily Mail/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-59343141753543951092007-10-28T08:24:00.000-06:002007-10-28T08:26:24.377-06:00

"One reason for organizational paralysis is that it's easy to believe that if your tasks go away, your job goes away... "As soon as management starts conflating people with tasks, they've guaranteed that the organization is going to get stuck. Probably soon. A better plan: rotate your people and continually reward and promote and challenge them. Make a big deal when someone makes the case for

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-75803940049836561072007-10-28T08:20:00.000-06:002007-10-28T08:22:09.332-06:00

"Steven Johnson has done some interesting (but not surprising) research on the complexity of the work of a few writers. Basically, short, simple sentences not only sell more books, but spread ideas farther and faster.' /seth godin/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-89715122328067647702007-10-21T11:05:00.000-06:002007-10-21T11:56:40.964-06:00

"It should not be surprising to hear that a great many people, when told of how prediction markets work, will claim that they can never produce meaningful results. After all, the market price, and therefore the prediction, comes solely from random people on the internet who decide to take a wild guess at who is likely to win... Certainly the opinion of an expert -- who has studied all the polls,

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-7684037293390355112007-10-20T21:02:00.000-06:002007-10-20T21:04:00.011-06:00

"One of the questions about commons-based peer production of public goods like Wikipedia is whether the “altruistic” contributors who aren’t regular enough to depend on their reputation provide contributions of sufficiently high quality. This recent study seems to confirm that they do." /SmartMobs/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-48033257644965052152007-09-15T09:45:00.000-06:002007-09-15T09:47:17.520-06:00

Report on the Army's first robot kill: "The US Army's MQ-5B/C Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle made its first kill in Iraq this month, reports Defense Tech. (The CIA and Air Force's drones have been killing for years, but this is a first for the army.)" /boingboing/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-86556964478054248582007-09-13T22:02:00.001-06:002007-09-13T22:02:38.640-06:00

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-51879590504950147322007-09-10T06:05:00.000-06:002007-09-10T06:35:59.599-06:00

While technologist Ray Kurzweil describes the Law of Accelerating Returns and an inevitable technological singularity, Gwynne Dyer, a highly sarcastic London-based independent journalist, claims that the rate of change in the industrial world may actually be slowing: We do not live in an era of major change, neither in the technologies that shape our environment nor in the social values that

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-5864968875771231502007-09-06T13:04:00.000-06:002007-09-06T13:06:24.152-06:00

"A new underclass of Japanese is living in 24-hour Intenet cafes across the country, using private booths to eat and sleep in after a long day in a low-paying job. A survey by the health and welfare ministry indentified 5,400 “Net cafe refugees,” although critics say that figure underestimates the scale of the problem." /telegraph.co.uk/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-46338556948236701562007-09-05T22:02:00.000-06:002007-09-05T22:05:25.579-06:00

"Cisco will provide the software for an on-board router in a space project it is conducting for the U.S. Department of Defense. The Internet routing in space (IRIS) project 'allows direct IP routing over satellite,' said Intelsat General Vice President Don Brown in a statement, 'eliminating the need for routing via a ground-based teleport, thereby dramatically increasing the efficiency and

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-21095027095036912332007-08-30T11:56:00.000-06:002007-08-30T11:57:50.640-06:00

"A Digital Hub-based company that supplies debit cards for corporate customers and shopping centres is in the process of creating a debit card specifically for users of Second Life." /Silicon Republic/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-12868641298461111062007-08-30T11:40:00.000-06:002007-08-30T11:42:07.075-06:00

"Corey Phelps, an assistant professor of management and organization at the UW Business School, and Melissa Schilling, an associate professor at NYU, “analyzed the innovative performance of 1,106 companies in 11 different industries over a six-year period. They examined the pattern or structure of strategic alliance relationships among companies in each industry. They found that how firms are

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-82720664488947397362007-08-29T21:27:00.000-06:002007-08-29T21:29:56.862-06:00

"IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn't need the offices... In the future, more companies with scattered work forces and clients may do what the marketing firm Crayon is doing: making its headquarters in cyberspace." /abcnews.com/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-26769732339551510802007-08-29T21:23:00.000-06:002007-08-29T21:24:44.867-06:00

"In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission." /newswek.com/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-52385254368046288722007-08-20T08:33:00.000-06:002007-08-20T08:46:40.093-06:00

"Michigan used to make the question easy for schools. Up until 2004, all electronic devices were banned. But in 2004, the state left it up to districts to decide... Cheating is one of the major reasons cited in a letter the district sent to parents of summer-school students, and it is an area of increasing concern." /USA Today/ So, exactly what kind of cheating can you do with an electronic

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-77017300830387056642007-07-14T13:36:00.000-06:002007-07-14T13:40:11.801-06:00

I have been working on Node for the past few weeks, posting chapter summaries and related goodies regarding William Gibson's forthcoming novel Spook Country. Please feel free to check it out.

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-12562941814198626752007-06-06T20:36:00.000-06:002007-06-06T20:38:03.441-06:00

"Like a roving band of wildebeest, it seems communities arrive en masse, graze for a while, and move on to pastures anew. The current crop of Web 2.0 sites seem to have amplified this trend - there are more and more sites cropping up with a community angle, so now people hungry for social interaction on the web have a near boundless choice for their communal appetites." /wisdump.com/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-88202655433605172512007-06-02T08:42:00.000-06:002007-06-02T08:45:43.192-06:00

Check out some really interesting predictions published 20 years ago in Omni magazine, including this one from Bill Gates :"(I)n the next 20 years you won't be able to extrapolate the rate of progress from any previous pattern or curve because the new chips, these local intelligences that can process information, will cause a warp in what it's possible to do. The leap will be unique. I can't

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-12575483714038076982007-05-28T10:10:00.000-06:002007-07-28T10:23:50.982-06:00

A reader asked me to justify the legacy of Timothy Leary and his right to be one of the first person whose remains were launched into space. While I have little desire to justify much of anything (much less the life of someone whom I never met), I thought I would respond with a few thoughts. From my limited perspective, Dr. Timothy Leary was a flawed human being who made some mistakes including

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-78180448462297397852007-05-20T21:29:00.000-06:002007-05-20T21:33:21.125-06:00

William Gibson responds to rumors of the Neuromancer movie: "I'll be willing to entertain the idea that Neuromancer is really "headed for the big screen" when I'm watching it being shot "As the old saying goes, I'll believe it when I see it. "I *do* believe, though, that Peter Weir will not be going forward with Pattern Recognition. That is one utterly solid little factoid of film news, alas."

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-23312466906339536982007-05-19T07:21:00.000-06:002007-05-19T07:26:11.092-06:00

Performance artist and three-arm cyborg Stelarc "found a medical doctor willing to implant a cell-cultivated ear beneath the skin on the artist's forearm... (who) is apparently planning to go through a few more surgeries to give it more definition... (including implanting) a mic inside the ear that will connect to a bluetooth transmitter, so the ear can broadcast audio from the internet

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-46308305184981193052007-05-19T07:20:00.000-06:002007-05-19T07:21:40.580-06:00

"We humans get just the five. But why? Can our senses be modified? Expanded? Given the right prosthetics, could we feel electromagnetic fields or hear ultrasound? The answers to these questions, according to researchers at a handful of labs around the world, appear to be yes... "So here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you want — the electromagnetic fields, the

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-68712790781689886442007-05-19T06:41:00.000-06:002007-05-19T07:15:21.769-06:00

As Spook Country prepares for an August 2007 release, William Gibson's genre-creating debut novel "Neuromancer, is being brought to the big screen by indie producer Peter Hoffman. The project will get a $70 million budget with Joseph Kahn currently set to direct." /firstshowing.net/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-34554468376996618292007-04-22T13:52:00.000-06:002007-04-22T13:58:15.374-06:00

Lev Grossman writes that Titter is "like the cocaine of blogging or e-mail but refined into crack. Internet addiction is an old story, but we're on the tipping point of a new kind of problem that might more broadly be called an addiction to data, in all its many and splendiferous forms." /Time/

patternboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5047701.post-67341823672540068742007-04-15T19:15:00.000-06:002007-04-15T19:21:01.999-06:00

Robin Good recently posted a series of fascinating short film clips on YouTube of interviews with Finnish Teemu Arina about the Future of Learning. Teemu's blog on networked learning, knowledge and collaboration is also worth a look.

patternboy