Participation inequality, spam-nanotech, water on Mars, TV causes autism…

• 1 – Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities
  “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.” Any response from the regulars on these results, then?
  (tags: statistics study technology participatory interaction internet contribution communities comments)
• 2 – Industry Finally Realizing That Ditching DRM Is Good For Business?
  “It’s unfortunate that much of the “should there be DRM” debate is positioned as “the recording industry” against “people who just want free music…” Techdirt has its eye on the vibes.
  (tags: downloading p2p property intellectual expansion business DRM copyright industry music)
• 3 – The Nightmare Scenario
  “Forget home-printed assault rifles and field-produced drones. Forget gray, green and red goo. The real danger we will face in the time of molecular manufacturing is spam.” Ye gods, will it ever end?
  (tags: futurism seflf-replicating embedded advertising spam goo grey nanotech manufacturing molecular)
• 4 – Mars Express And The Story Of Water On Mars
  “The big picture of a warm wet Mars is not completely correct. Any warm wet period lasted only a few hundred million years. By four thousand million years ago, it was over…” Interesting stuff.
  (tags: environment Martian Express MARSIS history water surface Mars space)
• 5 – Rock tours damaging environment, says Radiohead singer
  “I want to go to the US by ship. The Cure did that years ago because Robert Smith refused to fly, and then I get told that if you take the ship, that’s as much carbon usage.” A fleet of pedaloes, maybe?
  (tags: tours music international impact environmental Yorke Thom Radiohead)
• 6 – Brits go blogging, bigtime
  “Overall, more than two thirds of the British population has tried some kind of digital activity … the survey … noted that more than a quarter had created their own website or blog.” I’m guessing MySpazz is included in those results.
  (tags: survey downloading music personal websites blogging blogs internet UK)
• 7 – TV might cause autism
  “Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
  (tags: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2006/10/new_study_tv_ma.html)
• 8 – U.S. Congress to Investigate Virtual Economies
  ” … the U.S. Congress is in the preliminary stages of looking into virtual economies such as Second Life’s and World of Warcraft’s, and the public policy issues surrounding them.” The fun’s over, boys and girls!
  (tags: WoW Life Second legislation government investigation exploration Congress US economy worlds synthetic metaverse)
• 9 – Corporate solar is coming
  “Epic games of beach volleyball, urban indoor workspaces infused with natural light, enthusiasm for the outdoors – at Google, we’ve always taken advantage of the sun. And now we’re ready to use the sun yet another way: to create clean electricity.”
  (tags: corporate responsibility overheads footprint environmental generation power electricity energy solar Googleplex Google)
• 10 – The Worlds of David Darling
  “The Worlds of David Darling is a large on-line collection of information on astronomy, astrobiology, spaceflight, physics, and other areas of science and mathematics, both conventional and speculative (teleportation, time travel, etc).” Result!
  (tags: resource energy alternative living sustainable spaceflight cosmology astronomy astrobiology space encyclopaedia online Darling David)
• 11 – Kissing cousin cultures
  “SF has always been a ghetto genre, of course, and has struggled for legitimacy for its whole existence. The result is that it has a much stronger sense of its own history.” Raph Koster digs sf cons! Via Tobias Buckell.
  (tags: fandom community cons conventions character genre culture sf scifi fiction science)
• 12 – J.G. Ballard Bibliography: Novels
  Does what it say on the tin.
  (tags: novels bibliography author literature genre sf scifi fiction science UK Ballard G J)
• 13 – JG Ballard Bibliography: Short Stories & Non-Fiction
  This also does what it says on the tin.
  (tags: non-fiction stories short bibliography author literature genre sf scifi fiction science UK Ballard G J)