This post presents the gist of a surprising scientific paper I discovered recently, entitled “Power law behaviour and world system evolution: A millennial learning process,” by Tessaleno Devezas and George Modelski. After briefly presenting the paper I then offer some personal reflections on agent-based social learning as a specific approach to social change.
Agent-Based Social Learning
Written by Michael Slattery on February 27th, 2010The Alterweb
Written by Michael Slattery on December 24th, 2009On December 9th and 10th I attended the two-day seminar in Paris called Leweb. This gathering is touted as “the #1 European Internet event.” I paid for my ticket myself (at a half-price “early bird” fare), and I consider that I got my money’s worth. I saw an amazing lineup of internet rock stars in the flesh, and was privy to an onslaught of announcements from representatives of companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook, concerning hot new features which they had been saving for just this occasion. But when it was over, and I had thought about it for a while, I realized that something had been missing from this big show.
The Duel Part Two
Written by Michael Slattery on November 23rd, 2009Background: On November 8th Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington exchanged a series of tweets about smart phones which concluded with the promise of a duel in Half Moon Bay the following day.
Subsequent events unfolded somewhat differently.
The Duel
Written by Michael Slattery on November 9th, 2009(The following is the transcript of an exchange on Twitter between Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington concerning smart phones.)
Scobleizer – I am working on a blog about Android. Sorry Android fans this is FAR from an iPhone competitor. See you next year!
Scobleizer – And yo @arrington the Palm Pre is a much better product than the Droid. If I weren’t an iPhone fan that is what I would be using.
arrington – so @Scobleizer here’s the thing. you’re completely wrong. Google Voice integration is win. But even without it, Droid kills Pre.
Friend Feast
Written by Michael Slattery on October 24th, 2009Robert Scoble has a problem with Friendfeed. So does Ben Seigler. But Robert’s case is more acute, because he was – and still is – Mr. Friendfeed.
Varieties of Singularity Experience
Written by Michael Slattery on July 2nd, 2009I first saw mention of The Singularity on the Facebook page of Sophrosyne Stenvaag, one of Second Life’s foremost Extropians. I thus tend to associate Singularitarianism with Extropianism, whereas they are two separate (albeit related) doctrines.
Extropianism would seem to be a form of Transhumanism, which foresees radical use of technology to improve human mental and physical capacities, including the possibility of immortality. But what is meant by “the Singularity”?
Fresh Hot Aksimet
Written by admin on June 4th, 2009Last year I used this blog as a backup for my Second Life blog on Blogger. That turned out to be a bad idea, since it meant that each article was online twice, once in my Blogger blog, and then again in this Wordpress blog.
And since my Wordpress setup was much more vulnerable to spammers than the Blogger setup, the spammers glommed onto what was supposed to be a sleeping backup of a blog, and propulsed it higher in the Google ratings than the original blog itself!
Fresh Hot Spam
Written by admin on November 30th, 2008The comment spam continues to arrive on this blog. The IP numbers of the spammers are revealed below.
Spamback
Written by admin on November 9th, 2008This blog is being attacked by an aggressive porn spammer with the following IP address:194.165.42.81