URLs From the Edge

One of the upsides of being between major projects, aside from being overwhelmed by all the chores, tasks, people and hobbies that have been patiently waiting for your return, is getting to spend some quality time at coffee shops or out in the garden, sipping tea and chatting about changing-the-world with the various smarty pants that I'm honored to have as friends.

Topics of stand-out-merit (I'm in love with hyphens tonight) include the changing nature of social media, and how it, by itself, is changing the nature of "change". (Did that make sense? It's late) Beyond the general steepening of adoption curves (memetic virality), we are also seeing a return to a denser social fabric, yet also the solaria-like weak ties that allow access to far-flung resources. The traditional game-theory math falls down here, as we always knew it would. Now we begin looking at all social venues as "marketplaces" with highly connected (access to resources/information) players, but still influenced, perhaps more than ever, by basic social capital drivers and emotions. Facebook is still in a nascent phase with this, but almost all of the larger virtual worlds are seeing this set of emergent structures show up in any kind of transactional analysis of their member/player behaviors. The real fun begins to happen once governments start to see how this helps them shape/control public opinion about policies. Eeep.

Other fun topics: Politics - Poor Obama; Americans' rampant consumerism and credit abuse, evil banking practices and republican mismanagement (not 100% their fault, to be fair) have given us a horrible economic crisis that has sucked all the air out of the room; no matter what positive progressive social changes he stood ready to enact (beyond the obvious barrier shattering he personally represents by sitting in the Oval Office - w00t!), his presidency will be judged largely on how well he can clean up this mess. Looking at the health care debate; the frustration and rage seems centered around people being in rough financial shape. Why blame him for this, I wonder? And the environmental crisis is beyond critical now, and yet we fiddle while Rome burns. Sigh. Yet *another* historic chance for Americans to begin a new age of world enlightenment is squandered. Bleh.

Science: We're imaging, as in "looking at", extrasolar planets! How friggin cool is THAT?! I always go outside and watch the ISS and HST pass overhead a few time each week. The ISS is 350 feet long now; a good pair of binoculars lets you see its shape. Live and Work in Space. We've got to get our heavy industries and power generation infrastructure off our fragile planet before we destroy the biosphere.

Entertainment: Obviously this topic is focused through the lens of video game development. The shift towards casual games and social games and away from the bigger, complex franchises; is this a deeper societal change? An emergent effect of social media? A temporary side effect of the economic situation? Hmmm.

Ok - enough rambling for one night. I have tasks to check off my Burning Man list, and a business proforma to polish. Oh yeah, then sleep. I knew I was forgetting something.