IdeaFestival

Foolish like this

How will people react to a little robot that just needs a little help getting where it wants to go? Cute. For another take on our relationship to lifelike robots, check out this video and my thoughts at the time. It's foolish, I know.

Wayne

ETech theme: less is more

ETech, the emerging technology conference, is underway and according to the O'Reilly, its corporate parent, the welcome talks up a favorite theme of mine: in an age of abundance, less is more.

This year's theme is the Attention Economy. [Rael] Dornfest noted that there is an abundance of available data now, 'the data web is incredible' and effectively dealing with it is becoming increasingly important. We've also got information overload in our personal applications and Dornfest showed a screen montage of the varioius inboxes and newsfeeds and calendars and buddy lists and to-do lists on stickies that lived on his desktop, and I think most of us in the audience could relate. I know I felt my stress level rising. Then he switched to a blank blue screen, and we collectively sighed a breath of relief.

'Attenuation is the next aggregator,' predicted Dornfest. 'I think there are some great businesses to be built on giving you less.'

Rael Dornfest is the program chair for ETech and the CTO of O'Reilly Media.

Give me less. And don't be a blabbermouth.

Words to live by.

Wayne

Technorati tags: attention economy, ETech, anonymizing
 

The Horde is Evil

Edward Castronova discusses moral choices in the context of multi-player online gaming.

As an economist, he has studied online gaming environments extensively because they offer a level playing field on which economic theory can play out. EverQuest, one of the most popular games, has a thriving off line economy where real money changes hands. In fact, Castronova has ranked the gross national product of EverQuest at $2,266, making it the 77th richest country in the world according to this highly recommended story in the publication Walrus.

As the author of the Walrus story points out, the economist in Castronova didn't just study countries, he discovered one.

What's real and what's not real, as Castronova says in the Walrus story, has a lot to do with the value we ascribed to things, which appears to spill over into the ethics on display in these worlds. Some values aren't neutral. Perhaps its not such a big leap, then, for the economist in Castronova to believe The Horde is Evil.

Wayne

Technorati tags: game theory, Edward Castronova, ethics

Anonymizing

BusinessWeek's Blogspotting suggests the next big industry: Anonymizing. Makes some sense to me.