Porcine truths

The coming Noosphere: what it is, where it comes from

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who died in 1955, developed an interesting concept called the Noosphere which “is best described as a sort of ‘collective consciousness’ of human-beings. It emerges from the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This is an extension of Teilhard’s Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin added that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega point, which he saw as the goal of history. The goal of history, then, is an apex of thought/consciousness.” (from Wikipedia)

Teilhard’s Noosphere concept is so compelling in our digital age that he’s sometimes called the patron saint of the Internet.

Last month, I posted a mind map called “the coming Noosphere”. It was frankly confusing and quite cryptic, heavily influenced by my work at that time: a proposal for an EU research project.

I worked on that concept and I believe the core ideas to be worth exploring. In a sense, they are my plan for a generalized improvement in human productivity and decision making capabilities.

If you lived before the Internet and fully embraced it now, you’ll understand what a cumulative effect it had: the ability to access, process and transfer such vast amounts of knowledge was a true turning point in history. Science builds on itself; improving the speed of information exchange and the size of recipients has an exponential effect on the speed of scientific progress.

I’d like to generate a similar effect in decision making and learning skills, I hope that it will have a great impact on human productivity.

I want to make learning and thinking processes as easy to capture, improve and share as we can grab, change and transfer pictures or videos today. I will focus on us as a collective, not as single individuals. I have a plan.

So long, for now. I’ll leave you with a small hint.

We can model decision making as a process with five activities:

1. Gather Data.
2. Analyze Data.
3. Generate Options.
4. Choose an Option.
5. Implement it.

Yesterday, Wolfram Alpha opened to the public. It will officially launch next monday. Check it out.

social web + semantic web + computation engines = self-improving data analysis

The coming noosphere: from the social web to the social mind

I could use some feedback on an idea that’s been floating in my mind for the past few days.

You can click on it to go to flickr and see the mind map with hyperlinks.

I don’t know yet what will come out of it: a book? some blog articles?  a next-gen e-democracy platform for the EU?

Is it a dead end or worth exploring further in your opinion?

MacHeist update

WireTap studio has been unlocked. Great tool to make podcasts. You can use it to record live audio from other programs, such as Skype or iChat. A perfect tool for interviews.

Plus, I noticed that you can dowload a copy of EventBox fo free, even if you don’t buy the bundle. It’s my new favourite twitter, flickr and facebook client. It’s a really nice app. Grab it!

MacHeist

If you are on a Mac, do yourself  a favour and buy the MacHeist bundle. It’s awesome this time with great tools:

For those interested in video production, it includes Kinemac – a tool for live 3D animation (think TV news opening and cut scenes) and -once enough people buy the bundle- we’ll hopefully get BoinxTV – a tool for green screen livecasts from multiple sources.

 

Even if you don’t get the bundle, check out the awesome EventBox. A single inbox for many of your social sites. It works with facebook, twitter, flickr and it can also read RSS and sync with google reader. It’s my new favourite twitter and facebook client.

Foldable HUD library: design notes

I am working on a new version of my Teleport Effects HUD. One of the things that I’d like to add is a completely customizable user interface. Thanks to the introduction of llDetectedTouchUV, making HUDs is easier. We can detect touches in texture coordinates. It simplified UIs a lot, we can now use a single prim for most of the user interface: we’ll need more only if we want to show state (e.g. a switch which can be turned on and off, with visual feedback) or text (llSetText or its primmy alternatives).

My updated HUD will sport an interface made up of just two prims, one for the HUD itself and another one for a folding tab:

A separate UI library will manage:

• the folding tab and the HUD position, supporting the four corner attachment points
• the user interaction, mapping touches in texture space to actions (implemented through messages between scripts)
• the appearance, supporting skinning by loading textures (UUIDs) and UI elements position from text notes (skin files).

Eventually, I’ll add support for multi-prims HUDs and sub-elements (eg. multi-state/multi-texture switches).

I will release the UI library as open source.

Something scary is going on in Italy

You probably read in your newspapers about the clash between prime minister Berlusconi and head of state Napolitano on Eluana Englaro’s case.

The details of the case are not important. Stop listening to the clowns of media who point to the moon but, too weak or complacent, repeat hysterically: “Look at the finger! Look at the finger!”

I will give you a little background to really understand what is at stake here.

Virtual foreclosures

The estate owner of Isle of Phoenix, where I have my main shop and mall in Second Life, is closing down the sim:

Hi
The sim Isle Of Phoenix is almost empty now and LL will be converting it in the coming days. Since you are a landowner on the sim, we are proposing you to move to another sim. We will transfer your tier duedate to the new plot and on top of that, we will give you 1 week free tier to allow for transition time.
Pls check our land sales website at (…)
Let me know which plot you want and we’ll immediately set it to you at L$0 You can also go ahead and buy any plot and we would refund you the purchase price. We wont charge you any purchase price EVEN IF the plot you choose is slightly bigger than the one you currently own.
To avoid loss of objects from your land, please pickup your objects from the land within the next 5 days.
We are sorry for any inconvenience that this causes and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Thanks and Regards
(…)

It’s not completely unexpected. I gave the same advice – consolidate to reduce costs – to friends in the land business, but I am very upset at the short therm they gave me. The purpose of my mall is to host people who sell addons for the Teleport Effects HUD, my main product. I owe to these people its very high product longevity, the action of my landowner puts these symbiotic partnerships in jeopardy.

LindenLab bails out XStreet SL and OnRez?

LindenLab acquired XStreet SL and OnRez’s online shops. In the current economic climate, it might sound like they are bailing out the two online shop sites. I don’t really think that’s the case: LindenLab has a long history of copying ideas from the SL user community and make them their own, pushing the people who had the adopted idea out of business. That’s what happened with LindeX. For once, they are paying for it.

Prokofy thinks that it’s a sign for the coming Thereization of SL. That is a movement toward more centralized control.  A change whose ultimate result could be communism-style committes who approve what can be put on sale and what should not be put on sale. There won’t be any outright bans, products that foster LindenLab’s goals could be shown prominently on LindenLab’s homepage, those who don’t will be buried down in the last pages of search results. LindenLab’s goals are not necessarily in line with SL merchant ones.

I think there is one more interesting reason why LindenLab wants to control OnRez and XStreetSL. They were in a position that gave them a global view the SL economy. In a global climate of crisis, LindenLab may expect an SL economic downturn and may want to conceal it, they couldn’t do it without risk of getting caught if independent entities exist that could refute their statements.

Good aspects of the change:

• It will reduce or remove merchants fees. (If they don’t, SL residents and merchants should push hard for it).
• Due to a deeper integration in SL infrastructure, it could make online sales more reliable. (For LindenLab’s values of “reliable”).

Bad aspects:

• Without competition, there will be little innovation in the one and only online marketplace.
• They choosed XStreetSL, which was not the best one from the user experience point of view. OnRez had, in my opinion, a much better website and their search engine was much better than XStreetSL. (Due diligence: I sell only on XStreetSL, I have never used OnRez as a merchant).
• LindenLab may favour or push down a product or product category for non-economic reasons.
• LindenLab increases its grip on SL economy. They could released tweaked or ourightly faked economic statistics with little risk of being caught, since two of the independent entities who had widespread statistics on the SL economy disappeared. That’s not a point to underestimate in a climate of global, real world crisis.

Holidays and apologies

I owe an apology to all my friends in Second Life: many of you sent me cards and presents for the past holidays, but I didn’t answer yet. I am sorry.

I will eventually catch up, even if it means repackaging Christmas presents in Easter eggs and sending them out in February… for once, I will actually ship gifts before the holidays instead of after them.