"pure mind-stuff"

I realized lately how much our perceptions of writing, creating, connecting, etc, centered around the internet, and how they've changed, and how screwed we'd be if it shut down somehow. As I write this, my brain is working out ways to incorporate more information in various formats (pics, links, tags, vids) to make for a better blog. I've become obsessed with del.icio.us and don't know what I'd do without texting (I have unlimited texts with tmobile for $15 a month) and blogging. When encountering an unfamiliar reference, I've got Wiki on my drop-down. But I didn't know about all the cool stuff that you can do as Rheingold describes in Smart Mobs, and now I'm a little scared. I thought the cell phones that pinpoint your location were a little creepy. I hear you can also put a thing in your kid's car and track them around town like a damn dolphin. I recently received a text from a random number on April 20 encouraging me to celebrate 420. There's no doubt our tech-savvy is bursting with usefulness at the sacrifice of privacy. I actually feel a little sorry for Alec Baldwin these days, after his voicemail ranting became public property. Seems like we could do something about malaria in third world countries before perfecting real life gaydar, celebrity stalker alerts, and dating services that beep you when a potential mate is within striking distance.

It also seems the availability plus the instantaneousness (yes that's a word, I just created it) plus the sheer volume of information in our world is going to require a lot more discernment on the part of the sheep, I mean, people.

These words will be worth remembering when millions of people carry devices that invisibly probe and cloak, reach out, evaluate, interconnect, negotiate, exchange, and coordinate invisible acts of ad hoc cooperation that create wealth, democracy, education, surveillance, and weaponry from pure mind-stuff, the way the alchemy of inscribing ever-tinier patterns on purified sand invokes the same forces from the same place."

The discussion about threshold models of collection action and emergent behavior was also interesting--I used to talk to my 7th graders about the difference between a crowd and a mob before reading "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." "Decades ago, computer scientists thought that someday there would be forms of 'artificial intelligence' ...they never thought in terms of computer-equipped humans as a kind of social intelligence." This certainly holds a lot of promise for anarchists and revolutionaries, all in their Palm Pilot.

Click here to read a fantastic online chat between a guy named Remy and Dell Customer Service. You won't regret it.

Query (especially for writing teachers)--is the pen mightier than the sword?


Simpsons episode about WOW