Intuition for play and purpose

Luis Von Ahn, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University is putting the collective intelligence of internet users to good use, and he's doing it in a resonant way: games. Von Ahn devised two easy online games, The ESP Game and Phetch that put active users together in an internet version of charades. One person sees a photo and tries to give clues for the others to go out and find it.

Through these games, Von Ahn is giving people a fun way to solve a problem that cannot be solved by computers yet, called "human computation." The trick of these games is that descriptions for every image are logged--and stored as tags. The ESP site claims that every image on the web could be tagged in a matter of weeks should the game be played as much as other popular online games. And he very well could be on to something. During a speech at Google, Von Ahn pointed out the unharnessed potential of people playing games online....

I like toys and candy, what of it?

In a world of more choice, and more complicated choice, are we taking shelter in behaviors and preferences whose simplicity offers comfort?

Benjamin Barber believes that pressures from society today and our insatiable consumer culture are making us revert to childhood familiarity. I heard him speak about his book, "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole” on National Public Radio. He sites three years of Superman and Shrek movie blockbusters, and the number of adults reading Harry Potter books, among other examples (a listener phoned in to comment on the candy-flavored drinks now offered at Starbucks) to prove that our capitalist society has finally cracked our rational being.
While I don’t agree with Barber’s citations (Shrek has plenty of humor and messages unintelligible to 9 year olds), nor his point on capitalism, I think the notion of our instinct to revert is interesting. In certain ways, I can see that coming to life online, in smiley faces that stand in the place of a complex thought, and in the escapism of virtual worlds (Avin and I have an ongoing debate about whether Second Life fits here). The internet is home to endless choice, and yet it’s a sanctuary where people can exist simply, childishly, without someone razzing them about it.

Just something to chew on, I guess.

Shift Happens:Aggregators for your Aggregators

I now subscribe to 226 RSS Feeds (I have to segment my reading by topic groups each day to get thru 'em by the end of the week-which still puts me behind on 80% of my info). Now with old school email (work and personal), Blackberry, a few social networks (Plannersphere, LinkdIn, Facebook), blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter, Tumblr, Meshly), instant messaging, TV/DVR, morning magazines in the bathroom, Second Life, face-to-face meetings and even the impromptu lo-fi human conversation at the watercooler, I have a damn pressing need for aggregators of my aggregators. The future is info management genies!

Uberblogger Robert Scoble is truly one-of-a-kind. For those who don’t know, he became famous as a technical evangelist at Microsoft and quickly became their most outspoken and influential blogger. He now interviews people like Bill Gates, and the worldwide media reports on his every move. One of his most mindboggling skills is information management. He currently reads 622 RSS feeds a day — it used to be 1,400 feeds a day!

He expains his process:


via fourhourworkweek