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The famous sociologist Manuel Castells in an interview by Paul Mason (BBC):  "With Facebook and with all these social networks what happened is that we live constantly networked. We live in a culture of not virtual reality, but real virtuality because our virtuality, meaning the internet networks, the images are a fundamental part of our reality. We cannot live outside this construction of ourselves in the networks of communication." Ever wondered why people try to redefine themselves by nationalism, regionalism, membership of small subcultures, even though the world is globalizing fast? I think Castells has some anwers on that too:  "The more we are connected to everything and everybody and every activity, the more we need to know who we are. Unless I know who I am, I don't know where I am in the world, because then I am a consumer, I am taken by the market, I am taken by the media. "And therefore people decide that they are going to be different. But to do that, they have to identify themselves as individuals, as collectives, as nations, as genders, all these categories that sociologists have already constructed time ago." Castells explains how people in this crisis engage in co-operative or non-profit work. It's a kind of 'non-capitalism'.  Putting now on my list: his new book Aftermath. 

Another great story from Singularity Hub. If this Kickstarter project is successful, it will enable us to explore the oceans by just using our laptop or tablet.  Which in a way reminds me of those cute iPad-robots enabling people to move around , see, hear and communicate from  whatever distance. So yes indeed, let's do this in the oceans as well!  "Eduardo Labarca wants to bring the ocean you. Not through the kind of striking, high-definition imagery that Planet Earth brought, but through an immersive experience where you actually get to navigate the corals, chase the fish, explore the shipwreck yourself. Which is why Labarca created AcquatiCo, a web-based ocean exploration platform. A Kickstarter campaign has been launched for the startup. If successful, it will be the first step in the company's goal of giving people unprecedented access to the ocean's treasures using just their computers, tablets or smartphones. I got a chance to talk with the Singularity University graduate and ask him about AcquatiCo, and his vision to "democratize the ocean." "

Over the last year I've reviewed several ~1900 era future dystopias, such as Metropolis, We, and Pictures of the Socialist Future. I wanted to see fears of the industrial revolution, from an era when that revolution was still young enough for people could see things from a farmer era point of view, and yet old enough that people had some idea of where the revolution was going.

Codeacademy is a start-up teaching people to code. It has tremendous succes. 

" Baxter, however, moves with less determination because it compensates for changes in its environment. This means it can work safely alongside people."

An academic study co-authored last year by leading virtual world academic Edward Castronova suggests that people get more happiness from being in Second Life than they do from good news in their real life.  Wagner James Au on New World Notes says this is probably also true for other virtual environments, not onlt for Second Life. He also points to the bigger question of the shifting boundaries between virtual and real.  Social media help extend immersive experiences to so-called real world networks. Virtual money is convertible in real money, and solidarity actions for real world issues can start out in virtual environments.  Manuel Castells says we live in a cultural of virtual reality - I think the deconstruction of the boundaries between real and virtual is becoming fairly obvious. Virtual is not some exclusive feature of 3D environments, and reality is ever more being augmented and digitally annotated.

The rise of social platforms and content sharing is driving a major shift in the media industry. Increasingly, people are getting ALL their media through the social web: cute animals, breaking news, personal updates, branded content, humor, jokes, music and entertainment are all mixed together in a single interface.

"Along with the rise of the connected consumer - a subject that has no shortage of consultants, writers and public speakers ready to tell your company what to do - shouldn't we also be thinking of the rise of empowered employee, the people in the most advantageous position today and tomorrow to fill those job shortages? "

For advanced economies, such imbalances would likely lead to more long- term and permanent joblessness. More young people without post-secondary training would fail to get a start in the job market and older workers would drop out because they don't qualify for jobs that are being created. The polarization of incomes between high- and low-skill workers could become even more pronounced, slowing the advance in national living standards, and increasing public-sector burdens and social tensions. In some advanced economies, less-skilled workers could very well grow up poorer than their parents, in real terms.

"Is there a new political philosophy emerging from things like open source software development; massive community sharing hubs like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Reddit; peer-to-peer social networking; experiments in "Liquid Democracy," and the rapid spread of resource sharing tools like ZipCar, AirBnb and Car2go? Is it time to start talking about replacing the "welfare state" with the "partner state"? On Monday September 24 at 7:30pm at the New York Law School, we're looking forward to exploring all those questions and more with noted author Steven Johnson, whose new book Future, Perfect is must-reading for people who believe in the power of open, collaborative peer-to-peer networking to achieve real social progress."

"Project aims to let anyone print a gun in their own home, raising new concerns about the legality of homemade firearms" There really was no reason to believe people would only use this technology to print cute toys and cool components for race bikes. 

"Everyone there was a "Quant." No one cared what the underlying company represented by a given stock actually did. Apple or General Motors, CAT or IBM… Everything boiled down to a set of statistical observations that, when assembled into the proper algorithm, delivered a portfolio that beats the market." I just love the title of that conference: Alpha Generation - Using News Sentiment Data