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.

iPhone, another brick in the wall…

… of my mobile development strategy.

I have been accepted in the iPhone Developer Program. It means that I will be able to write apps for the iPhone and publish them through Apple’s iTunes.

At the end of last year, I joined the Maemo Device Program to develop software for their Nokia Internet Tablets (NITs). Back then I promised to work on a lightweight mobile chat client for Second Life. I haven’t forgot. Real Life just got in the way so far. I will start working on the project this summer.

I could even end up creating an iPhone version of the lightweight client I have in mind.

Request for links: webservice to get song lyrics from song name and author

For a personal project, I am looking for a webservice (XML-RPC, SOAP, RESTful – all will work) to obtain song lyrics given a song name and author.

Curious about what I need it for? I want to write a little iTunes visualizer plugin that looks up and displays Flickr photos using song lyrics as keywords.

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3D templates for Photoshop CS3 Extended

Working with Kewpie Mayo, I made two OBJ files that can be imported in CS3 Extended to preview skins and clothes just with a few keystrokes. They are for female and male avatar shapes.

Kewpie asked me to report the following notice:

“You can’t paint directly on the 3D object. You double-click the textures, make edits, save texture and then it’ll preview on the 3D object. For people worried about making mistakes, you can always use the “Step Backward” tool and revert. It’s quite easy”

Download 3D templates for Photoshop CS3 Extended

Sculpties tools

Sculpted prims are coming to Second Life in a matter of weeks if not days. If you are like me, Blender makes you sick and you don’t even consider spending 6.000+ USD on Maya. Are there any other options?

I investigated it a bit and found out a nice program called Modo by Luxology. It’s the program that Bose corporation uses to design they spiffy speakers. So far, it’s the nicest choice I’ve found.

I asked the community on ways to create sculpties’ textures and they came up with a way that doesn’t require any kind of scripting or programming. So far so good, altough I am not completely sold on Modo (the 800+ USD price tag is nicer than Maya, but I won’t be using most of the function anytime soon).

Other SL things that you can do with Modo:

• Paint skins and clothes directly on the 3D model of a Second Life avatar.
• Bake (pre-render) shadows and prepare textures to use in SL.

Nice non-SL things about Modo:

• It comes with 1.5 GB of video tutorials, pretty much every function has a video tutorial.
• It is one of the best subdivision modelers that I have seen so far.
• It has the fastest global illumination renderer that I know.

iWork: to buy (now) or not to buy (now)?

I have been using iWork ‘06 lately, the trial came pre-installed on my MacBook.

I have used for years OpenOffice on my PC and I still use it, in the NeoOffice incarnation, on my mac. Pages and Keynote address different needs. I’d still use both.

So, I have decided to buy the iWork suite. The question is: rumors abound about the iWork ‘07 which should be out very soon. I would hate to buy the old version and see a new one come out within days.

I have 8 days left in my iWork trial period. I have 17 days left before MarCamp, a local barcamp, where I want to use Keynote for some of the slides.

Friends, what do you say: should I wait until just before MarCamp? Is there any chance of iWork ‘07 launch within -let’s say- the next month?

Windows Vista launch… in premier Second Life’s sex clubs

Microsoft made an interesting choice for the 9 locations in Second Life where they’ll be streaming the Windows Vista worldwide launch event:

• Strawberry Estate, not sure what it is. There isn’t much there apart from an atomium-like structure.
• Parioli, a PG Italian sim by Virtual Italian Parks.
• Sanctuary Rock, dance and music club dedicated to good rock music.
• Elements @ Goddess Of Love 3, one of the leading SecondLife dance and night clubs
• Crayonville Island, a marketing company’s sim.
• Isle of Lesbos, the name says it all: an entire sim decidated to (virtual or real) women who love women (i.e. Second Life’s lesbians)
• Mermaids Gentlemans Club
• ShowGirls Gentlemen’s Club
• Liquid Dreams, in their own words: “THe Premier Adult Experience – The newerst Adult Club in Industry Offering Escorts, Dancers, Sex Roms, Skyboxes and More!”
• Irie Vibes Club, reggae roots dance hall.

4 out of 9 are places where you can find sex escorts, and there is also the Isle of Lesbos that is somewhat sex-related.
I guess they want to convey the idea that Windows Vista is sexy… but not free. In any case, it’s a brave choice and I wish them good luck (but I am posting from a Macbook hehe).

“Windows Vista a Parioli:

Inizio alle ore 23:00.”

(Via Second Life Blog.it.)

UPDATE:More about how the location where choosen on Coolz0r – Marketing Thoughts: Vista Launch in Secondlife.