South by Southwest Interactive gets underway today in Austin, Texas, and a broad swath of the technology community will be headed there to check out the bands, barbecue, and, oh yeah, the startups. Ever since Twitter had its breakout moment at the 2007 festival, SXSW has been considered a king-maker of sorts. Yet no startup has [...]
Judging bytrending topics on Twitter, I was not alone in reserving an iPad today as pre-orders began for the April 3 launch. The experience was un-Apple-like in the bugs I encountered. Ordering did not work at all on the Apple site in Google’s Chrome browser, but was possible with the odd error page in Internet Explorer. In Chrome, it [...]
As the FTC lays the groundwork for a possible challenge to Google’s purchase of AdMob, it is instructive to look at something else Google has already done to gain a strong foothold in the mobile ad business. Any advertiser that bids through the AdWords system gives Google complete authority over which devices its messages are seen [...]
In another validation of the suddenly hot collective buying trend, LivingSocial has landed $25m in Series B funding from a group of investors including US Venture Partners and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC. But even with new money backing several similar companies, it is still unclear if the latest thing in e-commerce will last for long. LivingSocial [...]
Sony has every right to feel sore that Nintendo and Microsoft have stolen the limelight from it in adding motion-sensing to games. Sony had the EyeToy camera for sensing motion and putting players inside games on the PlayStation 2, long before Microsoft’s forthcoming Project Natal . Its six-axis controller has always had more motion capabilities than the [...]
Today there is some brouhaha on the Times threads about Lord Stern, author of a key UK climate change report, who is now saying that we will need to become vegetarian to combat climate change. Here’s the article link:
So far this has attracted 550+ comments which is substantially more than the number of people who commented about intelligence and IQ tests and how we can improve our collective intelligence. Interesting, hmmn that people are more interested in going online to refute his points about methane production from bovines and that he’s producing more “hot air” than a cow.
Never mind, I’ll continue with my journey towards harnessing and increasing collective intelligence.
INTERCONNECTING DIVERSE DISCIPLINES
So when not architecting and implementing business strategies or in code bunker, there are three hobbies I allocate time to:
(1.) travelling;
(2.) cooking; and
(3.) knitting
Each has a discipline, a methodology and a culture that can inform the way strategy and code are approached. This may not be immediately obvious but they all require the following:
* planning
* sourcing of materials
* application processes
* troubleshooting
* end experience
and these also apply to strategy and code. There are transferrable skills from each which can be cross-applied and synergized into project management, creative problem-solving and the re-imagination of solutions by gaining alternative perspectives on the original problem.
We often hear the phrases:
* “What Company X’s cooking in its labs.”
* “We’re weaving the Web.”
Well, at the moment I’m knitting a rainbow-colored gilet like so, including with cabling:
Plus weaving 360-2020 profile pages like so — with something called a Navigator and the types of customizable features I’d want on a social network:
The key difference between 360-2020 and other social media applications and platforms is that 360-2020 aims to be a seed for the development of a Conscious Web.
In the same way that when I can’t find some knitting in the stores that suits my utility, I go right ahead and knit what I really want from scratch, since the social media innovations to-date aren’t doing the types of things I believe they should do (enabling us to differentiate between content — including whatever’s marketed and advertised; including consumers in the production value chain; and contextualizing the consequences of that marketing with consumption that affects climate change)…………I’m weaving it from scratch.
No, there are no plans to create yet another socmed cool app that’s fun, but (ultimately) serves no serious purpose. There are also no plans to do a Lord Stern and advise everyone to become vegetarian; I trialled it for July 2009 and would never recommend or impose permanent vegetarianism on anyone.
There are much more intelligent policies and pragmatic solutions we can innovate — if we would properly analyse and apply our own human and collective intelligence by synergizing both, :*).
Yesterday something happened on the Global Sense-Making site that made me think again about senses of humor and whether we share or don’t share it with others and how this affects our insights, innovation, progress and plain old enjoyment of the Web. Then I thought wider about the social implications for the Global Brain.
Firstly, my own sense of humor encompasses this type of material (in no particular order):
(i.)Bringing Up Baby — directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn
(ii.) Life of Brian — ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ by the Monty Python crew
(x.) Chinese spoofs of Western pop songs — Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson
There’s lots more; above are just some examples.
LULU LOLS A LOT!
I have a particular fondness for naturally smart comedy (especially mistaken identity / fish out of water / idiot savant) rather than the gross out or Punk’d type, and it can be in any language or from any culture. The LOLs and funny bones are exercised regardless of those.
One of my good friends calls me “crazy little Chinese chica” because when she calls I tend to take something straightforward she told me previously, mash it up with something I’ve observed about life’s tragic-ironies and then make her laugh with what is off-the-wall tangential yet connected humor that she gets and likes.
WHITHER THE WIT?
However, I appreciate that humor doesn’t necessarily translate — particularly if the other person:
(a.)has a humor by-pass.
(b.)doesn’t like you, full-stop.
(c.)doesn’t share the same linguistic or experiential reference points.
(d.)is not privy to your group’s history of “in-jokes”.
(e.)is simply a t-r-o-l-l. [Shhh! Don’t say the word aloud or they show up --- LOL.]
LOST IN TRANSLATION
I remember once being in a cinema watching Infernal Affairs — which was subsequently remade into The Departed by Martin Scorcese, btw — and there is a really witty romantic scene in the psychiatrist’s office which was the culmination of the flirtation between the two leads and………..NO ONE laughed in the cinema except me.
Yup, I released my LOLs regardless into the darkness.
Why? Well, my mother tongue’s Cantonese, which is what the film was made in. I read the subtitles they provided for Westerners and there was definitely “lost in translation” at work, so by the time the comedy climax came…………..only I, the native speaker, picked up on the laughter cues all along the way. It’s subtle. It’s nuanced. It’s there.
We’re CONSCIOUS of it.
HUMOR AS A GLOBAL BRAIN SYNAPSE
So what does this have to do with the Global Brain?
Well, it seems no one’s really given humor much thought yet much less application. Technologists are still focusing on the issue of spirituality and conscious self-awareness of AI. In fact with a simple search on Google with the terms “global brain humor” there hardly elicits many entries! I counted less than a dozen relevant ones.
Following is a rare link which does includes some glimpses and I’m blogging about it because it’s also a great read on David Bohm’s theories of quantum mechanics — which is what the SemWeb and the Singularity brigade and the science fiction futurologists are all trying to simulate.
“You have many special mental faculties: humor, spirituality, eroticism, music, mathematics, aesthetics, nurturing, gossip and narration.”
My impression of the SemWeb and Global Brain movement to date is that they’re still adopting and refining the mathematical approach to semantic social graphs. They may say and spin they no longer use the statistical approach, to try and delineate their rankings algorithm from that of Google’s, but I’ll bet you a can of Coke the algorithm is still driven by mathematical concepts rather than humor, nurturing or narration.
To my mind, these are the key constituents of sense-making rather than the mathematical ones.
We do calculate the risks and probabilities involved when we make decisions but invariably if the narration, the nurturing (or positioning) and the humor is good this over-rides whatever mathematics we generatein our mind because we reason that, “Who knows? So the likelihood of failure is 60%. So I’m paying a premium of 10% over cost. So I can’t really afford it……..but I’m going to enjoy and have fun with it while it lasts!”
It’s the ego and the will acting in conjunction to opt for personal happiness, even momentary, in place of rational responsibility. Sometimes, it can save us from ourselves and the rigidity of society.
By no means am I saying that the mathematical element should be completely abstracted from the building of the Global Brain. I’m simply stating that the other N-dimensions also have to be taken into account. At the moment, thinking about the Global Brain is somewhat linear, uni-dimensional and disconnected from how our brains really work: the AI and neural nets branch of mathematics is being deployed to proxy consciousness, there’s taxonomies and semantics but no smart wit.
Humor is a major synapse that’s currently missing in the formulations of how to build the Global Brain. Humor actually plays its role in our ability to reflect upon the information we’re intaking from external sources and also internally how we perceive and deal with the folly of our own absurdities and idiosyncrasies as well as those of others.
This is another aspect which highlights how important perception is. What one party regards as “genius wit” is seen by another as “juvenile silliness”.
We should factor this into the Global Brain postulations, imo.
HUMOR AS A METAPHYSICAL CONSTITUENT
Dr Branko Bokun, a graduate of the Sorbonne’s sociology department, argues in his book, Humour Therapy, (published by Vita Books) that the brain is also a gland, and that its glandular activity can be manipulated by thoughts or ideas created by the brain’s mental activity.
He believes that humour therapy helps us to realise that both unhappiness and gloom are infectious.
‘That is why the pursuit of personal happiness only acquires a realistic meaning if it becomes the pursuit of other people’s happiness.’
Bokun proposes humor courses, to help restore our inborn disposition towards playfulness, joy of living, curiosity, exploration and flexibility. His suggestions include:
(i)Develop a sense of self-ridicule, for instance by talking to oneself in the mirror;
(ii)See amusing and happy films and plays, and read humorous books and magazines;
(iii)Dedicate a corner of one’s home to toys, as the mere sight and feel of them lessen tension. Hang pictures of children and animals on the walls rather than staid or gloomy ancestors;
(iv)Find a hobby, but change it the moment it is taken over-seriously. Preferably choose a hobby that cannot go against nature’s harmonies, such as sailing or gardening;
(v)Have a pet and talk to it;
(vi)See life through a haze of analogies to memorised jokes and anecdotes;
(vii)Repeat three times every morning ‘I am not the centre of the universe’; and
(viii)Remember the eleventh commandment ‘thou shalt not take thyself too seriously.’
These seem to be reasonable suggestions — although, if you get caught talking to yourself in the mirror…………someone may wrongly assume you’re being narcissistic rather than exercising your humor! LOL.
I like point (vi), though. Life is richer and funnier if you can quote analogies from a wide variety of sources spanning Shakespeare to ‘The Simpsons’ to Jackie Chan — yes, seriously; he’s a naturally hoots guy in Chinese and in English!
Jon Stewart + Stephen Colbert (The Daily Show) in Rolling Stone
So….the Global Brain has the opportunity to LOL and make sense or……..go mad / cuckoo, short-circuit because it has no GSOH (or release values) and have a nervous breakdown.
