Month: December 2011

Edward Tufte forum: Touchscreens have no hand

Edward Tufte forum: Touchscreens have no hand

“Maybe tactility will become a feature in the endless feature cycle of devices. Dimensional compression is dimensional compression, however, and even those sentient beings that reside in string-theory N space probably whine that their N – 1 dimensional display device (necessary to fit in their N – 1 dimensional pockets) fails to capture the rich experience of their real N space.” YEAH, PROBABLY.

New Currency Frontiers: Critical to expand perception of Currencies

New Currency Frontiers: Critical to expand perception of Currencies

“Consider how many hundreds of millions of people are freely participating in currencies like five-star product ratings, eBay reputation, user participation metrics, certifications, college degrees, performance reviews, stocks, stamps, movie tickets, etc. in contrast to how few are participating in general purpose money substitutes (LETS, Berks, local currencies, and even commercial barter).”

Symbionomics: The Blog: The Core of MetaCurrency

Symbionomics: The Blog: The Core of MetaCurrency

“The ability to record stuff that happened in the real world, and derive useful information from those records (such as account balances, or average user ratings) is obviously very powerful. Just being in the business of 3rd party record keeping can concentrate massive amounts of wealth (just look at the banking industry). What’s more, as the failure of many local currencies has shown us, this architecture can be highly fragile, subject to the petty personal politics that so often run rampant in activist circles. What if we had a way to perform all the same functions, but without the middle man? What if our records could be distributed in such a way that they couldn’t be tampered with, and privacy was still protected? We believe this shift would open up vast new possibilities for how we organize ourselves economically, as well as offer a resilience to our economy heretofore unrealized. “