Thought Bubbles shares bits of news, ideas, links and random scribblings. Feel free to email me your own.
I've spent the entire month of February so far hosting a googolplex of viral and bacterial creatures, kicked off by the flu week one - thus the long break in posts. I'll get back on it soon. In the mean time, some items I might write more on later:
DIY - & die?: March's Wired columnist Clive Thompson is enthusiastic about the maker culture revolution wherein "everything you want could soon be micromanufactured just for you." Yea! - right? Well maybe not so much, or at least not so fast. Sven Johnson shares several examples of DIY manufacturing gone wrong. You might want to think twice before putting those darling necklace beads you ordered from Etsy in your mouth.
Governing the leaderless revolution: "Thanks to the internet, the tools for revolutionary change are at our fingertips, but as of yet this revolution has no name, no leaders and no formal agenda. We have barely tapped into its potential to become the advanced operating system that will allow us to catch up with the future." -from a SpaceCollective.org project. Brings up questions about governance and organization in a dynamic, emergent system. Kevin Kelly has some thoughts on governing the swarm as well.
Decentralizing conscious intent: Interesting juxtaposition (to me, anyway) of two TED presentations - Elizabeth Gilbert talking about relating to genius as an external entity that communicates inspiration and Juan Enriquez talking about the rise of a new, technology-enhanced, hominid species "homo evolutis." Both these talks have in common the notion that we as human beings are informed and formed by forces not wholly governed by our conscious intent.