Some thought-provokers

So, yeah, I've been a bit AWOL lately, but the interns are on the way out and I'm slowly returning to not having much of a life (I'll miss you, interns!)...

But, I have been doing some interesting reading. For example, in Wired, there were a few gems in the letters to the editor. One was a suggestion that we send convicts into space as our first inter-planetary travellers. And another was that international corporations represented useful global organizations if only they could be harnassed to solve global problems.

Meanwhile, David Brooks starts with an interesting premise and devolves into his usual over-generalization and self-importance. Diversity seems to keep coming up these days, though. Mark sent me this link about white kids growing up in black neighborhoods. And at brunch we talked about the suit against Abercrombie. At the sociable media reading group this week, we talked about Watts's study. It was a pretty interesting discussion, thinking about what one might hope to gain from a well-structured social network study, and how even though we can contact lots of people directly, we use introductions in order to help catch the other person's attention (and trust). It's almost a sort of reintermediation. Heck, even The OC (great show!) is at its heart a story about combatting insularity.

Random fun link: List of speed traps.

Friendster update: 295,195 through 31. (and the stuff about Friendster being blocked in offices made it into danah's blog. Yay danah!)