• Socio-Technical Analysis
• Professional Support of Thesis: Dr. Massimiliano Vasile
• Professional Support of Thesis: Dr. Gary An
• Future Technologies and Applications of Thesis

• Automatic clothes-making machines, which obtain the user's measurements and produce on the spot
• Gene therapy as preventive medicine
• Weather Control
• Temperature-controlled couches
• Moving conveyor roadways
  
• DNA repair/replacement
• Sound bombs
• Electromagnetic tube elevators, no cables
  
• Computers that translate 10 languages simultaneously
• Computers hook directly into students' minds for accelerated learning
• Suspended animation for extended spaceflight
  
• Human life-span predicting machine
• The cosmiflyer, a 6-in. cosmic power generator strapped to one's back, is used for short-distance aerial transit
• Sound waves employed to expand vegetable cells (and man's food supply) a thousand times over
• Thought recorders
• Nuclear satellite bombs
• Iridium wire spirals at street corners, change night into day
• Ultrahigh-frequency electronic baths to remove dirt and other foreign particles from the human body
• Underwater air guns using glass electric shells that shock their prey
• The "stasis field," a special kind of force field, renders all radiation, electricity, light, and magnetism inert (including the atom bomb) and makes conventional weapons obsolete
• Manipulation of matter at the atomic scale, combining elements to build custom molecules and providing the world with new materials and medicines
• Electronic glass pane air-conditioning units
• Wireless and synthesized 3D viewers, allowing individuals to interact and conduct business with people not really there (but seem to be)
• Anticrime devices, which render felons rigid and helpless for 15 minutes
• Amplifiers that will pick up sounds in a house 20 mi. away
• Individual force fields enable the adventurous to sleep nude in snowstorms
• Faster-than-light spaceships
• Laser weapons
• 3D tape recorders
  
• Total absorption of radar waves, a radar cloaking device
  
• Amputated limbs and damaged organs can be regrown from their stumps
• Transatlantic rocket flights and commercial rocket travel
• Permanent settlements on the moon
  

• 2010 - Supercomputers will have the same power as human brains
• 2020 - Personal computers will have the same processing power as human brains
• 2030 - Mind uploading becomes possible - Nano-machines could be directly inserted into the brain and could interact with brain cells to totally control incoming and outgoing signals. As a result, truly full-immersion virtual reality could be generated without the need for any external equipment
• 2040 - Human body 3.0 comes into existence. It lacks a fixed, corporeal form and can alter its shape and external appearance at will via foglet-like nano-technology. Organs are also replaced by superior cybernetic implants.
• 2045 - The Singularity
• $1000 buys a computer a billion times more intelligent than every human combined. This means that average and even low-end computers are infinitely smarter than even highly intelligent, unenhanced humans.
• The Singularity occurs as artificial intelligences surpass human beings as the smartest and most capable life forms on the Earth. Technological development is taken over by the machines, who can think, act and communicate so quickly that normal humans cannot even comprehend what is going on. The machines enter into a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new generation of A.I.s appearing faster and faster. From this point onwards, technological advancement is explosive, under the control of the machines, and thus cannot be accurately predicted.
• The Singularity is an extremely disruptive, world-altering event that forever changes the course of human history. The extermination of humanity by violent machines is unlikely (though not impossible) because sharp distinctions between man and machine will no longer exist thanks to the existence of cybernetically enhanced humans and uploaded humans.
• Post-2045 - "Waking Up" the Universe
• The physical bottom limit to how small computer transistors can be shrunk is reached. From this moment onwards, computers can only be made more powerful if they are made larger in size.
• Because of this, A.I.s convert more and more of the Earth's matter into engineered, computational substrate capable of supporting more A.I.s. until the whole Earth is one, gigantic computer.
• At this point, the only possible way to increase the intelligence of the machines any farther is to begin converting all of the matter in the universe into similar massive computers. A.I.s radiate out into space in all directions from the Earth, breaking down whole planets, moons and meteoroids and reassembling them into giant computers. This, in effect, "wakes up" the universe as all the inanimate "dumb" matter (rocks, dust, gases, etc.) is converted into structured matter capable of supporting life (albeit synthetic life).
• Kurzweil predicts that machines might have the ability to make planet-sized computers by 2099, which underscores how enormously technology will advance after the Singularity.
• The process of "waking up" the universe could be complete as early as 2199, or might take billions of years depending on whether or not machines could figure out a way to circumvent the speed of light for the purposes of space travel.
• With the entire universe made into a giant, highly efficient supercomputer, A.I./human hybrids (so integrated that, in truth it is a new category of "life") would have both supreme intelligence and physical control over the universe. Kurzweil suggests that this would open up all sorts of new possibilities, including abrogation of the laws of Physics, interdimensional travel, and a possible infinite extension of existence (true immortality).

OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different username and password for each site. It is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.

Essentially, OpenID is a system that facilitates a single universal login and profile for each user. There's a great deal to be said about the technology's benefits to users:

• Only one set of credentials to be concerned with
  
• No more registering for every other site on the Internet
• Improved analytics, resulting in better recommendations, integration, and advertising
  

• Hacking - stealing users' information from website networks and databases
  
• Phishing - imitating legitimate organizations and fooling users to send private information
  
• Trojans - computer program hidden in software applications that give hackers access to users' computers
• Spyware - inconspicuously logging users' internet activity and sending results to third parties
  (although I'm not sure I would classify spyware as identity theft)
  

Phishing is an impersonation of a corporation or other trusted institution. The goal of the impersonation is to extract passwords or other sensitive information from the victim. It is a form of criminal activity that utilizes social engineering techniques. Phishing is typically done using e-mail or an instant messaging program. The attempt of the message is to appear to be from an authentic source so that victim will either directly respond, or will open a URL link to a fake web site run by the criminals.

1. spend about $10/month on a domain (preferably one similar to the name of the institute we're trying to mimic - if we're going to be First National Bank, then we might try to get the domain 1stNational.org, which seems to be available),
2. pull down the HTML files and images from the actual site we're going to replicate (File -> Save Page As and make sure the type is set to "Webpage, complete"),
3. make a few minor tweaks (so any form information submitted will be stored in our database or sent to our e-mail),
4. then upload these slightly modified files to our new domain.

<?php

function sendEmail($name, $email) {

$to = $name . " <" . $email . ">";
$subject = "Account Confirmation";
$message = "Body of e-mail goes here.";
$headers = "From: First National Bank Customer Service <CustomerService@1stNational.org>\r\n

Reply-To: First National Bank Customer Service <CustomerService@1stNational.org>";

$mail_sent = @mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent.<br />" : "Mail failed.<br />";

}

?>

If you've never used Google's Street View feature on Maps, you can watch the short introductory video below and then (just a little bit farther down) try the functionality out for yourself with the embedded Street View map of Anchorage, Alaska.

The Street View maps are developed in partnership with Immersive Media, which, according to the O'Reilly Radar blog, is "a company that has an eleven lens camera capable of taking full, high-res video while driving along city streets." What that means is that these Street View maps, because they are extracted from video shot while driving, are not just static images at random points around the city. They can be advanced fluidly down the street.

MMORPGs have countless aspects worth studying. I could probably devote my entire life to learning about the socio-technical issues floating around this fairly recent gaming phenomenon. Unfortunately, I have not the time nor motivation to do so. Instead, I've taken a few topics and provided some quick overviews. For all of the blurbs, I've chosen to focus on World of Warcraft (WoW), as it is the most popular of the MMORPGs and the only one I have personal experience with.

Objectives of Gameplay
Before getting into some of the more in-depth topics, I thought it might be appropriate to explain how these kind of games work, for anyone who might not be familiar. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry for World of Warcraft:

As with other MMORPGs, people control a character avatar within a persistent game world, exploring the landscape, fighting monsters, performing quests, building skills, and interacting with NPCs, as well as other players. The game rewards success with money, items, experience and reputation, all of which in turn allow players to improve their skill and power. Players can level up their characters from level one to level 60, level 70 if they have The Burning Crusade expansion.

And below are some clips taken from YouTube that might help you visualize the process. The first is an official trailer from Blizzard. For the rest, I intentionally avoided videos with music, cinema scenes and fast camera cuts. This is what the game is. This is what people do, for hours upon hours upon hours, leveling up for new weapons, abilities, and places to explore. Once you get to the higher levels, you can slay other players as well, but it doesn't look much more exciting than other kinds of gameplay.

Motivations for Playing
Recently, Nick Yee, administrator of the Daedalus Project,set out to find the answer to the question, "What exactly drives people to play these games?". He asked players to "read through a set of motivations [generated from earlier findings] and pick the one that was most important to them". I'm not sure if the survey was open to unique responses, but the list seemed to be pretty comprehensive, and I don't think this would be cause for any significant inaccuracies. Below is a chart of the findings.

As you can see in the chart above, progress appears to be the most motivating aspect of play. Based on my experience, I couldn't agree more. The reward system is ingenious. At any given point, there is always a desirable skill or weapon that's only 2-5 levels away. It seems so close, and it makes playing an extra five hours (on top of the eight you've already played that weekend) completely feasible. And, guess what? As soon as you obtain your goal, there's another equally appealing treat dangling in front of your face and it's just as close. Progress is, by far, the most addictive aspect of WoW in my mind, and I believe that was the intention when the game was designed.

At first, I was a little surprised to see how highly socialization scored. But after realizing that it was only applicable for females and seeing some other research online, it made a little more sense. See the "Playing with Romantic Partners and Family Members" section.

Gender Composition
According to the Daedalus Project, the real-life gender distribution of WoW is 84% male v. 16% female. I didn't find the numbers particularly surprising, as I probably would have estimated an 85:15 or 80:20 ratio myself. I assume that the figures were calculated either from account holders' subscription information (which, not seeing any obvious incentive to lie, I think would be very accurate) or from surveying a large sample of players. In either case, I originally believed the statistics wholeheartedly. Then, I came across this article, claiming that Blizzard representatives assert that only 5% of the WoW population is female. These folks, more than anyone else, should know the ratio, but I (along with the author of the blog post) am a little skeptical. Considering the undisputed rise in female gamers, described in this NBC write-up, and my own beliefs coming into this assignment, I think 5% is too low. Maybe the blog post is inaccurate. Maybe the Blizzard representative didn't know his facts. Maybe the definitions of what constitutes a gamer were inconsistent. In any case, I'm leaning toward the Daedalus Project's work. I found quite a few YouTube videos, some being part of a series, proclaiming the presence of females in MMORPGs. At this point, I believe the stereotype that video games are solely for males is fading. Males still make up the majority, of course, but it's understood that the number of female players are increasing significantly and may someday even out the ratio.

Playing with Romantic Partners and Family Members
The Daedalus Project estimates that about 60% of female players and 16% of male players play the game with real-life romantic partners. The study also asserts that 40% of female players and 35% of male players play with family members.

I think the appeal of playing with those who share a real-life relationship is fairly obvious. Rather than being limited to interaction with people who, in most cases, the player will only communicate to through a digital medium, players can enhance existing relationships (romantic or family-based) they have with people they can interact with directly. While this post argues that, in some ways, meeting people through MMORPGs is more efficient and successful than in real-world situations, I believe that even the most hardcore of gamers would prefer real-life, face-to-face, human interaction over something mediated by a digital world. Also, playing with real-life peers, partners and family-members is more socially acceptable, because there is some form of human interaction that exists, so I believe this also makes players more likely to engage in the game with these people.

I also found it interesting that in both situations (romantic and family-based), females were more inclined to participate with other players they know in real-life. After thinking it through, it didn't take long to see why these statistics make sense. While the population of females in the gaming world is rapidly growing, the old gender roles are still prominent in society. It isn't as common for girls to start playing video games at an early age as it is for boys. Whether the reason for this is biological or dependent on the upbringing of the children (I'm guessing a combination of both), young females just aren't as inclined to be playing video games. I think that if they aren't introduced to video games early in life, they are less likely to play them later on for the same familiar reasons that most gamers play (progress, immersion, exploration, etc.). They need something else to spark their interest. As mentioned in the "Motivations for Playing" section, this is socialization. I think many females are introduced to gaming by males in their lives, whether boyfriends, husbands, brothers, fathers, or sons. Several may develop deeper interests in the games after they start playing, but the reason many start is, I believe, a social one.

Memorable Gameplay
According to the Daedalus Project, the most memorable experiences players retained fell into the following categories:

Achievements
----Team
----PvP
----Solitary

The Trek

Relationships
----Random Acts of Kindness
----Romantic Relationships
----Friendships

Death
----The Memorable Wipe
----Guild Death
----Role-Played Funeral
----RL Death of Player

Misc.
----Role-Playing
----Meeting Guild IRL
----The Initial Euphoria

There are plenty of things to expound upon here, but of all the memorable experiences, I found the most interesting to be online funerals, specifically honoring those who have died in real-life...

Worth Studying?
I think we're getting to the point where it's almost necessary to study MMORPGs. These games are hugely popular in today's culture, and I have a feeling that they won't be going away any time in the near future. Not being an advocate of a society where individuals devote more time to online communities than they do to the physical ones around them, I can't say that I see a lot of good coming from this research, though. Learning what kind of games are most addictive so companies like Blizzard can make more profit isn't something I find to be particularly beneficial to society. Even with studies like comparing the relationship of age and status in digital v. physical environments, there is surely interesting and beneficial information to be extracted, but I feel that it will mostly help us move toward more submersion into digital environments. And yes, there's something good to be said for this (distance learning, perhaps?), but I don't know how much.

Stereotypes v. Research
I think that most stereotypes are derived from some form of the truth. Stereotype: Girls don't play video games. Yes, female players are on the rise, and they may be in equal numbers with males before too long. However, because this stereotype was, at one point in time, completely true, the change is a process, and we're not there yet. There's still some truth to it. Stereotype: Gamers are asocial geeks that stay cloistered up in their basements all day, never interacting with humans. When single-player console games were the only thing available, yes, this was the case. I don't think there were Super Mario Bros. 2 parties happening everywhere in the late 80's, and hardcore gamers probably were social outcasts. Now, however, gaming is becoming a more social activity. As mentioned earlier in the post, many players are interacting with people they know physically and many start relationships (friendly and romantic) over the internet that, in several ways, resemble traditional relationships. Still, they are typically alone in the physical sense. So, once again, I think the stereotype is fading, but still has roots in truth. I think, for the most part, this is a reoccurring trend (partially true stereotypes) but there are some cases that are absolutely factual - children who play video games are overweight.

So, I've discussed MMORPGs quite a bit. How do I feel about them personally? Well, I've seen them from both third and first-person perspectives. For about two months, I was mildly hooked on WoW before finally cutting it off cold-turkey. I've experienced the appeal, the addictive nature, and the enlightenment giving it up, and I don't plan to play any MMORPGs anytime in the near future. I think this article sums up my thoughts pretty well. The games require huge investments of time and offer nothing in return. They are evil.

After watching the above video for the third or fourth time, another brilliant animated short film came to mind - Solar, also nominated for a multitude of prestigious awards.

When I Google'ed "alternatives to Wikipedia", the first page returned was "Top 7 Alternatives to Wikipedia". Wow, that was easy, right? I guess Wikipedia isn't so high and mighty - there are at least seven other choices out there! I decided to do a little research to see which of the substitutes was best. Below are my findings - first the name of the website, then the description provided by the Online Education Database, then my review/analysis/critique and finally a rating out of 10.

Scholarpedia

• Scholarpedia is a site made from the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia. It almost appears like a mirror site, but there are some significant differences. Scholarpedia is written by, you guessed it, scholars. Experts must be either invited or elected before they are assigned certain topics and, although the site is still editable by anyone like a wiki, updates must first be approved before they are made final. This not only ensures that all information added to the site is accurate and attributed to an author, vandalism never becomes an issue.
• Sounds good in theory. I threw it some softballs for starters - "pneumonia", "cancer", "Egypt", "Hinduism", "baseball" - and didn't get a single result. I was starting to question whether the site was actually functional at all. Then, I saw the "Random Article" link. After a few clicks, I had been directed to pages with the following headings: "Stiff Delay Equations", "Burst Synchronization", "Evolving Fuzzy Systems", "Neuronal Synchrony Measures", "Stochastic Models of Ion Channel Gating". Ah, so that's why "baseball" wasn't returning anything! This seems like it might be worthwhile if you're in a pretty intense field and need detailed information on obscure topics. Aside from that, though, completely useless.
• 3 / 10
  

Citizendium

• Citizendium is a wiki that seems to be a compromise between the free-for-all that is Wikipedia and the strict supervision that accompanies Scholarpedia. One of Wikipedia's founders, Larry Sanger, created Citizendium in the hopes of improving on Wikipedia's model. With what the site refers to as "gentle oversight", all articles are subject to approval by the site's editorial team. Articles that haven't been approved will have an accompanying disclaimer, which helps to prevent people from taking potentially false information to heart. Also, you must register under your real name to become a contributor, unlike Wikipedia. Although the site is still in beta form, it is quickly becoming a popular alternative to Wikipedia, one that Sanger feels will "probably succeed".
• Alright, this one seems like a winner. The public contribution of Wikipedia with more controlled censorship. Perfect, right? Well, not yet. I ran the following queries: "Sigur Rós", "banjo", "Photoshop", "sodium", "pine", "napkin", "iPod". No results, at least none that were relevant. On the bright side, "apple", "pear" and "banana" has decent articles that seem to be half as good as Wikipedia. Although this one is practically useless now, it's still in Beta mode, and with a system of this nature, it needs visitors and contributors to be successful. I think that if this is marketed properly and people can be weened off of Wikipedia and onto this, it could be great.
• Current: 4 / 10 | Potential: 10/ 10
  

Encyclopedia Britannica Online

• When it comes to trusted and unbiased facts, this site is your best option. Here, every volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica has been transferred to Web format, in addition to multimedia features and an easy search tool. Updates to the site's entries are made by professionals, as this isn't a wiki community. The only drawback to this site is that it isn't free. To have full access to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, one must pay a subscription fee of $69.95 a year. This is a sound investment for students, however, as the yearly fee is substantially cheaper than buying the encyclopedic set in book form. Also, major universities will accept the site as a reliable source when citing information in a research paper, something Wikipedia can't claim.
• The information will be quite accurate, but compared to Wikipedia, the articles are probably limited and slow to adjust to current events. More importantly, though, it's not free (unless you're looking up very basic terms, which usually isn't the case). This justifies an instant failure.
• 0 / 10
  

MSN Encarta

• MSN Encarta is another online encyclopedia that bypasses the problems that plague Wikipedia. All entries have been written and fact-checked by professionals and the site will never be vandalized. However, like Encyclopedia Britannica Online, this site requires a subscription fee. For $29.95 a year, you can access MSN Encarta in its entirety, including the site's accompanying thesaurus, world atlas and other research tools for students.
• See Encyclopedia Britannica.
• 0 / 10
  

Infoplease

• Infoplease is a free online encyclopedia that is a part of Pearson Education, the largest educational book distributor in the world. All of the information found on the site is gathered from trusted sources, such as the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Although entries may be limited in size when compared to Wikipedia, you can be sure that all the information is accurate and incapable of being influenced by outside users. Also, Infoplease has many multimedia features that assist researchers, particularly students who are attending distance education courses.
• I searched the same terms as I did for Citizendium:

"Sigur Rós" - fail
"banjo" - pass, inferior to Wikipedia
"Photoshop" - fail
"sodium" - pass, inferior to Wikipedia
"pine" - pass, comparable to Wikipedia
"napkin" - fail
"iPod" - fail

As you can see, not up to par as far as quantity or quality of articles. Moreover, the site is slow, requires more clicking than is necessary, and there are annoying advertisements from time to time. It does offer dictionary entries for most words, but if that's what you want, then use dictionary.com.

• 3 / 10
  

Conservapedia

• Conservapedia is a conservative, Christian-influenced wiki encyclopedia that was created as a response to Wikipedia's alleged left-wing bias. The information found on this site is free of foul language, sexual topics and anything else deemed offensive by the site's editorial staff. If you feel that Wikipedia shows a strong bias toward liberal views, then this site may suit your needs. All Conservapedia users are asked to follow the site's seven Commandments.
• Of all the 7 entries, this one actually holds up the best compared to Wikipedia. Still, it's not as good. For any entry ("God", "Jesus" and "Catholocism" included), Wikipedia has more content, and while Conservapedia does have a significant number of articles, it doesn't have more modern terms (like band names or "iPod"). Regardless of how it might look quantitatively, I would never use this as a reference for anything related to politics, religion or anything of the like. The name alone implies how slanted the entries are, and the video below illustrates that pretty well (wait until about a minute into it).
• Functionally: 5 / 10, but out of principle: 1 / 10

Uncyclopedia

• Uncyclopedia is an ambitious spoof of Wikipedia. It could be seen as an over-the-top response to Wikipedia users, also knows as "Wikipedians", who seem to take the site much too seriously. From the home page's logo to the formatting of each entry, the parallels between the two sites are uncanny and well-executed. Make no mistake, however. Nothing on Uncyclopedia should be taken as fact, which may be another dig at Wikipedia's occasional inaccuracy. If you are fed up with Wikipedia's many faults and want to have a good laugh, check out this satirical site.
• Funny, and a good resource for boredom, but not so much research.
• N/A

Wikipedia alternatives? I suppose not, at least not yet. If something ever happened to Wikipedia, I'm sure someone (most likely Citizendium) would step up and fill the role. As mentioned before, popularity is crucial to the success of sites like these, and since Wikipedia is practically a unanimous favorite, people typically don't use any alternatives at this point. If we ever need them, they'll be there. But for right now? Not worth the time to type the URL's.

But even if I knew that 10-20% of each article I read was inaccurate, I would still probably use it as a resource. Off the top of my head, I don't know any substitutes that compare to Wikipedia (although I'm sure I could find some mediocre alternatives if I tried), and it's become such a habit at this point that it's sort of strange imagining a world without it. At this point, I think that, similar to Napster and music filesharing, Wikipedia has become embedded in enough people's lives that if anything should ever happen to it (legally or otherwise), plenty of substitutes would pop up immediately.

Upon Googling "define: wikipedia", I came up with some interesting results:

• “A Web-based, free-content encyclopedia,” available in numerous languages. It "is one of the most popular reference sites on the Internet."
• Modern aluminium beer barrels - also called casks or kegs - outside the Castle Rock Barrels often have a convex shape, bulging at the middle.
• The term church originated from the pre-Christian Germanic kirika. St.Simon church in Aleppo,Syria is considered to be one of the oldest.
• A nonparasitic antigen capable of stimulating a type I hypersensitivity reaction in atopic individuals is called an allergens.
• The Buffalo Sabres are a professional ice hockey team based in Buffalo, New York. They began playing in the National Hockey League as an expansion team in...
• FAME can also be an abbreviation for:. Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer, an astrometric satellite designed to measure the positions of stars very...
• Dean Blakesley was the author of the first English Life of Aristotle (1839), an edition of Herodotus (1852-1854) in the Bibliotheca Classica.
• The is a small breed of dog usually Such s can be seen in many of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
• Among other problems, the real Billy the Kid spoke Spanish fluently and could read and write ... Jon Bon Jovi's album Blaze of Glory; Charlie Daniels 's song, Billy the Kid; Billy Dean 's song...

Maybe I should be more concerned with the information I encounter using Google's "define" method (which also comes up very frequently for me)...

When I heard/read/whatever about the upcoming release of In Rainbows, I was overjoyed. For one, it was a new Radiohead album, which was, in and of itself, good news (they're pretty reliable when it comes to releasing great albums), but even better, it was going to be (practically) free! (If you're reading my blog, then you surely have at least an idea of why this album caused a stir, but if you want to know more, read this.) I was hoping that it would be the start of a music revolution, finally ditching the big labels, releasing albums for free, or at least for reasonable prices. I figured if any band could do it, it would be this one - they have a huge following, and can get away with just about anything.

As time passed, however, I quickly realized that it was only because Radiohead was Radiohead that they could pull it off (letting listeners download the album online and set the price, that is). It wasn't a formula that would work well for everyone, at least not yet. If bands didn't have millions of fans that were desperately anticipating a new album, then they weren't going to have a fraction of the luck their predecessors did.

After reading a short article entitled "Radiohead Offering Was Insincere, Industry Is Inept", which is based primarily on comments made by Trent Reznor - founder and creative force behind Nine Inch Nails (also one of the first to ditch his/their label) - I was less impressed with Radiohead's move with their recent album. Reznor brought up the points (of which I was already aware, but reading about them in series made more of an impression) of the band only releasing medium-quality (160kbs) tracks while Amazon and iTunes both offered 256kbs, going back to the record labels to put out the traditional album, cutting off distribution of online material after the previously mentioned release, and using their innovative sales method more as a marketing tool than a means to help out listeners. What they did was definitely a move in the right direction, but as the article points out, being who they were (Radiohead), they could have done better.

Morally, I don't have much problem with this little extracurricular activity the kids (aged 15-17) have started. As long as the ordeal is fairly friendly and things don't get out of hand, it's probably a healthier investment of time/energy than a lot of alternatives the participants/spectators could get involved with instead. But, these thoughts aren't particularly relevant at the moment.

I found the scenario to be somewhat relevant to my group's final project/presentation in IST 431, which might be (we have to work out this issue with another group that selected the same topic) about science fiction's role in predicting/determining future technologies. The juvenile fight club isn't any sort of technology, of course, but would it have come into existence if it wasn't first written about years before? Did the fiction cause the reality? Or, was the author just one of the first to come up with a concept that others would have inevitably arrived at, and publishing his idea for the masses did nothing more than speed up the process at which everyone else discovered it?

While I haven't come to a firm conclusion as to my stance on the topic in general (whether fiction causes things to happen, or if the things happen the same way even if the fiction had never existed), I think in this particular case, the idea was more predetermined. We've been fighting since the beginning of time, at first out of necessity and as a means to gain wealth (land, money, resources, etc.), and then later as a form of entertainment and sport. Fighting has been part of culture since, well...since we've had a culture. So, I don't find the fight club derivation to be particularly surprising, and it probably would have eventually happened even without the fiction.

However, if the object of concern was something more contradictory to human nature, or at least not innate to humans...let's say, mowing grass - the 60 students gathered in the old field behind the school after hours each week to cut and maintain the lawn - then I would say, "Yes! These children are behaving in such a way because they've all seen that new blockbuster, Grass Groupies!"

And I think this philosophy (hazy as it may be - apologies for the less-than-stellar examples) applies to technology as well...

Science fiction predictions involving technologies that were fairly predictable (like groups organized purely for the sake of fighting) probably didn't have much influence. Take the toaster. Sure, at one point, the thought of having a toaster that knew when bread was finished heating was probably far-fetched and futuristic. But, look at it from a toaster manufacturer's perspective. Maybe the competition is starting to pull ahead, and our company needs something new and revolutionary to get us back in the game. So, we sit and stare at a toaster. "How could this be improved?" we ask ourselves, "What is wrong with existing model? What would be a nice feature? What could we do better?" At some point, someone in the group would declare, "It should stop heating the toast when it's finished, so the user doesn't need to stand around watching it!" Even without any forward-thinking science fiction available, this should have eventually happened on its own.

On the other hand, technologies like using sound as a weapon (predicted by Brian Aldiss in the mid 1900's) are not as easily anticipated. Technologies that wouldn't be the result of a natural progression (see pop-up toasters), technologies that we would almost need to happen upon by accident to realize - these are the cases where science fiction is most valuable. If a scientist sees notices a strange behavior when certain chemicals are mixed or perhaps becomes aware of an unusual byproduct, then the individual may overlook great potential if he/she doesn't possess certain forward-thinking concepts to which connections can be made. These concepts might very well come from science fiction.

Well, this post came a long way from Fight Club. I think somewhere during the journey, though, I've cleared up my thoughts on the value of science fiction and its influence on future technologies. As a rule of thumb (subject to change, of course, as I consider the idea more), I would say that the more absurd and out-there the science fiction, the more impactful it could potentially be for the future. If it doesn't seem completely unrealistic, then it would have probably happened on its own.