Body-heat powered buildings; organics in alien atmospheres; crowdsourcing (for and against); robosex; abundance economics and publishing …

• 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.

  (tags: AnnaMercury comics WarrenEllis)

• 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.”

  (tags: green futurism ecology power hear body energy technology)

• 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.”

  (tags: organic exoplanet methane molecules atmosphere space astronomy)

• 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.”

  (tags: web2.0 sociology smartmobs psychology media management knowledge intelligence hive feedback emergent ecology crowdsourcing complexity community collaboration)

• 5 – Crowd control at eBay

  “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.”

  (tags: governance reputation sociology trust authority communication community control eBay web)

• 6 – Lindens Limit Libertarianism: Billboard Advertising Restricted, Continuing Rollback of Laissez Faire Policies

  “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

  (tags: metaverse opensource regulation economics libertarianism SecondLife)

• 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.

  (tags: internet abundance economics IP copyright publishing writing blogging)

• 8 – Hard-wired for love

  “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

  (tags: fiction science scifi sf sex robot)

• 9 – Body-mod: Tentacle Implants

  Whoa.

  (tags: octopus implants cup suction tentacle modification body)