Program or Be Programmed

Here’s another way of saying the basic premise of my book Life Inc.

(And yes, they spelled Douglas wrong.)

Make sure you are not a computer

Grammar says everything. The online signup process for Nimbuzz, one of the wifi telephone services, asks users:

“To make sure you are not a computer, please type in the characters you see in the text box below:”

In other words, you can find out if you are human or computer by taking their simple test. Imagine if such a test were available to the androids in BladeRunner.

At least we all now have a place to turn if we are afraid we might be computers.

The Crowd – a new roundtable at PBS Digital Nation

I’m moderating a conversation between the smartest people I know thinking about open source, crowd-sourcing, the hive, and digital mob behavior over at http://pbsdigitalnation.org It has already evolved into a mind-expanding, passionate, no-holds-barred conversation.

You are all invited to participate along with:

Danah Boyd – Social Media Researcher, Microsoft Research; Fellow, Berkman Center of Internet and Society, co-author, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out. danah.org

Amy Bruckman – Associate Professor, Electronic Learning Communities, Georgia Institute of Technology www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/index.shtml

Nicholas Carr – author, The Big Switch and the forthcoming The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains . roughtype.com

Kevin Kelly – Senior Maverick, Wired magzine. Author, Out of Control, and What Technology Wants – coming in October www.kk.org/thetechnium/

Mark Pesce – co-inventor of VRML, founder, FutureSt social web consultancy, author, Share This Book (upcoming) www.sharethiscourse.org/

Clay Shirky – NYU Interactive Telecommunications Programm, author Here Comes Everybody www.shirky.com/

RU Sirius – co-founder, Mondo2000, Editor, H+ magazine www.hplusmagazine.com/

Sherry Turkle – Director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, author, The Second Self, Simulations and Its Discontents, and Alone Together (forthcoming) web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/techself/

Jimmy Wales – Co-founder, Wikipedia. Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home