Google Wave!

May 30, 2009 by sean.

At this week’s 2009 I/O conference, Google gave a demo of Google Wave, game-changing platform that could integrates the functionality of email, instant messaging, wikis, blogs and more with real-time collaborative editing, playback of each message’s evolution, real-time language translation and more. You have to see the demo for yourself to begin to understand how this works:

Also, check out Mashable’s Google Wave: A Complete Guide and Live With The Google Wave Creators article at TechCrunch.

Posted in innovation, pervasive computing, software | No Comments »

Thank You!

May 7, 2009 by sean.

Thanks to all the people who follow this blog.

When I originally started this blog a couple years ago, it was mostly as an “outboard brain” to capture ideas, notes, and comments re: augmented cognition, collective intelligence and social software. Since then, it has grown to include other topics including psychology, mathematics, games and mobile computing.

I have noticed quite a bit of recent subscriptions and greatly appreciate your support and welcome your comments.

If you have interesting stories or new items I have missed, please feel free to forward them for review.

Thanks again!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Cognitive Skills, Economic Preferences and Strategic Behavior

May 6, 2009 by sean.

Researchers at Princeton discover correlations between cognitive skills, economic preferences and strategic behavior [via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA]:

Economic analysis has so far said little about how an individual’s cognitive skills (CS) are related to the individual’s economic preferences in different choice domains, such as risk taking or saving, and how preferences in different domains are related to each other. Using a sample of 1,000 trainee truckers we report three findings.

First, there is a strong and significant relationship between an individual’s CS and preferences. Individuals with better CS are more patient, in both short- and long-run. Better CS are also associated with a greater willingness to take calculated risks.

Second, CS predict social awareness and choices in a sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Subjects with better CS more accurately forecast others’ behavior and differentiate their behavior as a second mover more strongly depending on the first-mover’s choice.

Third, CS, and in particular, the ability to plan, strongly predict perseverance on the job in a setting with a substantial financial penalty for early exit.

Consistent with CS being a common factor in all of these preferences and behaviors, we find a strong pattern of correlation among them. These results, taken together with the theoretical explanation we offer for the relationships we find, suggest that higher CS systematically affect preferences and choices in ways that favor economic success.

Posted in behavioral economics, psychology | No Comments »

William Gibson now on Twitter

May 3, 2009 by sean.

Scifi legend William Gibson has “been on Twitter for a little while now. Under the nom-de-twit GreatDismal (no space). I had not much of an idea what Twitter was, when I first went there, so signed in under a flag of convenience. Still have no idea what it is, or where it’s going, but will hang on to GreatDismal for simplicity’s sake.” [via williamgibsonbooks].

Posted in scifi, pervasive computing | No Comments »