Listics

"Far too many people new to BitTorrent just install the client and expect
everything to magically work. Then they connect to a torrent that has a ton of
seeds, they get a horrible download rate and a high upload rate, and they think

Reprinted below in its entirety, the Amazon editorial review of Synthetic Worlds: the Business and Culture of Online Games by Edward Castronova (University of Chicago Press, November 2024).  I added the links to provide a webular dimensionality to the review…

From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have
evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an
extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People
of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of hours—and
dollars—partaking in this popular new brand of escapism. But the line
between fantasy and reality is starting to blur. Players have created
virtual societies with governments and economies of their own whose
currencies now trade against the dollar on eBay at rates higher than
the yen. And the players who inhabit these synthetic worlds are
starting to spend more time online than at their day jobs.

In Synthetic Worlds,
Edward Castronova offers the first comprehensive look at the online
game industry, exploring its implications for business and culture
alike. He starts with the players, giving us a revealing look into the
everyday lives of the gamers—outlining what they do in their synthetic
worlds and why. He then describes the economies inside these worlds to
show how they might dramatically affect real world financial systems,
from potential disruptions of markets to new business horizons.
Ultimately, he explores the long-term social consequences of online
games: If players can inhabit worlds that are more alluring and
gratifying than reality, then how can the real world ever compete? Will
a day ever come when we spend more time in these synthetic worlds than
in our own? Or even more startling, will a day ever come when such
questions no longer sound alarmist but instead seem obsolete?

With
more than five million active players worldwide—and with Microsoft and
Sony pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into video game
development—online games have become too big to ignore. Synthetic Worlds spearheads our efforts to come to terms with this virtual reality and its concrete effects.

I don’t use an aggregator.  That’s a shameful confession, I know, and I should explain myself.  I’ve tried aggregators, both online and client side -  from BlogLines to SharpReader, from Google reader to Radio Userland - and I find them to be a pain in the backside.  Managing lists, maintaining subscriptions, that’s the easy part.  I’m an information junkie and I have invariably signed up for more than I can read.  My email inbox tells me something about that undisciplined habit, that lack of organization.

Today I finally had it revealed, or perhaps more slammed in my face than "revealed," anyway… when I went to check on Tom Matrullo to see if he had any Wilma rants brewing, I saw that he has been writing up a storm lately and I’ve been missing it.  The trick to using an aggregator perhaps, is not subscribing to more than I care to read.  If I subscribed to Tom’s Improprieties…  wait… I don’t think I’ll go there right now.

A group, LiftPort, was formed to investigate the space elevator.  The best description I’ve found of the space elevator is in a book called Old Man’s War, a sci-fi novel by John Scalzi.   Scalzi writes a good Heinlein novel.  LiftPort is dead serious though.  This is no more sci-fi stuff than rockets were sci-fi in the fifties.

The LiftPort Group (LPG) is dedicated to building a mass transportation
system to open up access to the inner solar system (LEO, GEO, the Moon,
Mars, and asteroids). We expect the Space Elevator
will be at the heart of this revolutionary transportation service. By
opening up broad-based access to Earth orbits and the inner solar
system, LPG will help bring about the creation of entire new markets.
Based in space commerce, these new markets can only become viable
through safe, inexpensive, routine access to the inner solar system. In
short, we at LiftPort Group believe that development of the space
elevator is a crucial step in the future of Earth and space.

LiftPort has a low volume, spam-free announcement mailing list.  You should sign up so you don’t miss a chance to catch the ride of your life.

Thanx to Mme. L….

The intuitive link between consumer devices
In a room full of people, you would walk across the room to have a private conversation with someone, rather than shouting across it so that everyone could hear. Near Field Communication (NFC) uses the same principle to link electronic devices. It enables the user to exchange all kinds of information, securely, simply by bringing two devices close together. Its short-range interaction over a few centimeters greatly simplifies the whole issue of identification, as there is less confusion when devices can only "hear" their immediate neighbors.

In Charles Stross’ Accelarando!, there are thousands of AI civilizations that were born and died clustered around their own little corner of star systems.  Their limiting functions and the ultimate cause of their demise had to do with bandwidth and an unwillingness to venture from the rich high bandwidth regions at the center of their known volumes farther out into space where channels are narrowed and signal/response times lengthen.  Dumb AIs.  No pioneer spirit.  (On the other hand there are in Stross’ fictional universe entire galaxies pulsing with pure intelligence and working on problems like hacking Planck’s constant, so there is a range of success stories in the book, AI-wise.)

And so we stumble forward in the noughtie decade of the 21st century addressing simple problems like contactless identification and the connectivity gap, looking for that moment where I can touch your forehead with mine and be reminded to take out the garbage, pick up some dogfood on the way home, and call the Smiths to let them know we’ll be there around eight.

It’s interesting that NFC is as much an urban architectural solution set as it is an IT confabulation of tools and techniques.

Here it is.

Chris Pirillo today launched his tag-o-matic meta-search application, "gada." I Gada get me some of that. It doesn’t exactly do everything the way I would expect it to… for example when I select ALL, I would expect some kind of super set of info, but what I get back is a null set.  Oh well, it’ll be fun to doink around with.  Thanks Chris!