Links for 15-02-2008
Body-heat powered buildings; organics in alien atmospheres; crowdsourcing (for and against); robosex; abundance economics and publishing …
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1 – Who is “Anna Mercury?” Warren Ellis Gives Hints
“When I’m drunk, I tell my computer that it’s called ‘NewPulp.’ I don’t mention that to other people, of course, because they’d laugh at me. I also, obviously, don’t tell people I talk to my computer.” I love Uncle Warren.
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2 – Human bodies turn up the heat
“A new environmentally friendly building to be built in Stockholm, Sweden, will harness human body heat from commuters at the neighboring railway station.”
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3 – Organic molecules found on alien world for first time
“The giant planet lies too close to its parent star for the methane to signal life, but the detection offers hope that astronomers will one day be able to analyse the atmospheres of Earth-like worlds.”
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4 – Kevin Kelly — The Bottom is Not Enough
“Our best technological systems are marked by the fact that we have introduced intelligent design into them. This is the top-down control we insert to speed and direct a system toward our goals.”
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“What we’ve seen happen with self-regulating communities, both real and virtual, is that they go through a brief initial period during which their performance improves [...] but then, at some point, their performance turns downward.”
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“Just as likely, they’re doing this mainly in preparation for the time when the Second Life servers will be open sourced. That’s when the libertarians will move their unregulated banks, controversial sex, and other banned content to adjoining nations.” Yu
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7 – What Do You Do When You’re Good Enough to Swipe From?
“Anyway, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has come up with a bold response to the situation: “Feel free to steal my content,” he told readers Monday.” Economics of abundance, yo.
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“By mid-century, predicts the 62-year-old academic, getting it on with an electronic femme-fatale or a superstud sexbot will become an accepted part of the human landscape.” And did I mention, buy my book! KTHXBAI
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9 – Body-mod: Tentacle Implants
Whoa.

February 15th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Look, that’s the second time you’ve waved those octopus sucker implants at me (including their star turn on Futurismic) and I don’t feel any less nauseous this time around…