a social networking future?

Submitted by johnmcgovern on Mon, 07/24/2006 - 22:07.

While researching Lewis Thomas' essay collection entitled "Lives of a Cell", I came across the following article from July 2004 Technology Review.

Conincidence?  I think not.  Lewis Thomas laid the groundwork for much of James Lovelock's "Gaia" philososphy which theorisizes mother earth as massive superorganism seeking homeostasis.

The following article should prove interesting fodder for realNEO/Tribe folks as social networks provide holarchic transfer of knowledge,  thereby enabling a knowledge economy or a spontaneous dodgeball game in the E. 5th alley...

Social Lives of a Cell Phone

New wireless services will maximize your connections to others and minimize your need to plan ahead

By Eric Bender

Want to play Dodgeball?

Heres how it works: Say you're young and single, and youre out on the town one Saturday night. You take out your mobile phone and tap in the name of the restaurant where you're hanging out. You get a list of friends, and friends of friends, within 10 blocks. You can message each other about getting together, and maybe send a photo of yourself. We're taking social software off the desktop and moving it into the environment where people actually socialize," says Dennis Crowley, co-founder of the service, which spread this spring from New York to nine other U.S. cities.

The buzz about Dodgeball gives one glimpse of the future of the mobile phone. Probably no other product in human history has evolved and been adopted worldwide so quickly. Hundreds of millions of people own a mobile phone, and many replace it every year or so. Its use has already changed how many societies communicate. It already comes with good social connection services such as group text messaging and the ability to share camera-phone snapshots directly with friends or on a mobile weblog. But its about to produce far more radical changes in how we communicate.

READ THE REST HERE

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homeostasis, dodgeball, things that think, RFID

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 07/24/2006 - 23:27.

Excellent observation - homeostasis... from wikipedia: "the property of an open system, especially living organisms, to regulate its internal environment to maintain a stable, constant condition, by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments, controlled by interrelated regulation mechanisms"... a perfect term for where social computing SHOULD evolve, with open systems and feedback mechanisms, biometrics, and reputation systems. There is excellent development with the superorganism of social computing. In that sense "realneo" is a database and GUI with modules for dynamic equilibrium adjustments and interrelated regulation mechanisms, but just one of many database environments connected together in your superorganism, also accessing physical feedback mechanisms, weather, patient medical records, GIS data... the applications of which you regulate. The inputs and communications already may include cell device communications, for accessing databases, relations, attractions, proximity and contacts, and for adding and managing content, including rich media. "Smart apps", as Cathy Panzica says, already enhance the human cognitive experience, like with Dodgeball. As an open mesh communications network becomes more universal RFID (chips tracking you/things) will be big in the future... they will increasingly be embedded in Things That Think, like your shoes and iPod - we're just at the infancy of all this and as long as the future follows open systems the results will be excellent for Earth and our entire superorganism... the problem right now is the fight over open systems by closed networks.

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