What is the resource that most companies are desperate to get their share of: oil, food, human power? Well, did you ever think of our own minds? Our minds are solicited nowadays by tons of information per day. We cannot pay attention to all of them. Consumer products, politics, activists and media want desperately to get their “mindshare”, and I don’t even speak about the attention sought by our friends and family. Mindshare is a limited and highly valued resource, its negotiation is the object of a new economy, the Mind Economy. But if you are let’s say a teenager, fan of Justin Bieber, and want to become influential, how can you compete and get a bit of the public’s mindshare?
Complex Systems Theory could help us predict public’s opinions. The applications are endless and rather scary, e.g. media manipulation for political control or commercial gains. On the other hand, these researches could also explain us how we interact in a society, and maybe in which conditions social change is possible. It is in any case necessary for the general public to become aware of these new techniques. If not, nothing will refrain their use for the benefit of a few. Here are three examples from the ECCS 2010 conference in Lisbon. (I have edited the paper introductions in order to make them more accessible.)
“On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more…”
Nice video about a virtual building in Second Life called ‘Alexander Beach’. It was built as a place of gathering for students of the Princeton University. Looking at the forms of the building, very similar to what you can find in the state of the art architecture of the real world (e.g. on WAN), I wonder which universe inspires the other. Today’s architecture constantly pushes the limits of the possible, inventing more and more improbable forms, disequilibrated, liberated from natural laws. On the other hand, Alexander Beach has this organic shape inspired by nature, like in many new buildings. The two extreme influences, sort of ‘virtual anti-gravity’ and ‘earthly organism’, are paradoxically married harmoniously in contemporary architecture.
No, seriously, it is interesting to see that more and more online projects replicate, and criticise, the messages delivered on the Internet. Because of its novelty, the Internet has been immunized for quite a long time from parodies. It is disturbing in a way because it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the reality from the joke. It is good, it challenges the perception of the Internet, and reiterate some social criticisms.
