A really interesting meta-phenomenon for anybody who remembers the Boston terrorist scare that was sparked by a guerilla ad campaign for the Aqua-Teen Hunger Force last year. Artists have created their own LED guerilla pieces and put them up around town. Click here to check it out. Brilliant.
I love the idea of currency whose value is not tied to resources but basic humanity. It’s a fascinating idea, and one that begs to be experimented with in small-scale projects.
From Wikipedia: The usual economic incentives have disappeared from the book’s world. Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person’s favorable or unfavorable actions. The question is, who determines which actions are favorable or unfavorable? In Down and Out, the answer is public opinion. Rudely pushing past someone on the sidewalk will definitely lose you points from them (and possibly bystanders who saw you), while composing a much-loved symphony will earn you Whuffie from everyone who enjoyed it.
A gross Whuffie score looks the same to everyone viewing it, but a weighted Whuffie score is subjective. This meta-Whuffie takes into account right-handed Whuffie (the amount given by people you like) and left-handed Whuffie (given by people you dislike). Another variety is pity Whuffie, given to those who are down on their luck.
The idea for Whuffie originated in the book above, written by Cory Doctorow – BoingBoing editor and all-around inspirational dude.
Fascinating article from Nick Bostrom of the Oxford philosophy department. This idea, or a very similar one, was widely covered in the news a few months ago.
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
To me, this is more evidence of technology causing convergence. Religion, philosophy and computers, in this case…
Nic Marshall’s updated portfolio is online, I’m pretty pumped. Please excuse the long load time – there’s lots of beautiful images there. Another Sevnthsin production.
Visually cleaner that is, not environmentally. Sevnthsin had the opportunity to work with Target.com to streamline their online shopping experience. We stripped it down, removed a lot of the clutter and cleaned it up a lot. Too many changes to mention here, but the client was wonderful to work with and we’re proud of the product.
