Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

This posting is the FAQ and introduction for a new, improved, second-generation meme experiment that is designed to spread faster and more broadly than the first meme experiment. We call this kind of meme a “GoMeme” (pronounced Go-Meem), because it is a meme that is designed to Go. The actual GoMeme, which you can add [...]

NOTE: This experiment is now finished. This is an experiment in spreading ideas across weblogs using the principles of viral marketing and social networks using a new method for making content more viral, which we call a "GoMeme." Related Posts:New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the NetFAQ for GoMeme 2.0The Metaweb [...]

by Nova Spivack, http://www.novaspivack.com Original: July 8, 2004 Revised: February 5, 2005; February 28, 2010 (Permission to reprint or share this article is granted, with a citation to this Web Page: http://www.novaspivack.com/science/a-physics-of-ideas-measuring-the-physical-properties-of-memes) This paper provides an overview of a new approach to measuring the physical properties of ideas as they move in real-time through information [...]

Draft 1.1 for Review (integrates some fixes from readers) Nova Spivack (www.mindingtheplanet.net) INTRODUCTION This article presents some thoughts about the future of intelligence on Earth. In particular, I discuss the similarities between the Internet and the brain, and how I believe the emerging Semantic Web will make this similarity even greater. DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE The Semantic [...]

Notes: Many people have requested this graph and so I am posting my latest version of it. The Metaweb is the coming “intelligent Web” that is evolving from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web. The Metaweb is starting to emerge as we shift from a Web focused on information to [...]

This evening I had an interesting idea for a new way to look for patterns in the distribution of numbers such as the prime numbers and the digits of Pi. In a nutshell I propose that there may be patterns in these number sequences that might not be evident to a computer but could be [...]

One of the big changes that will be enabled by the coming Metaweb is the shift from application-centric computing to data-centric computing. As the Metaweb evolves, information will be imbued with increasingly sophisticated metadata. HTML provides metadata about formatting and links. XML provides metadata about structure and behavior. RDF, RDFS and OWL provide metadata about [...]

This diagram (click to see larger version) illustrates why I believe technology evolution is moving towards what I call the Metaweb. The Metaweb is emerging from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web. Related Posts:New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the NetMy "A Physics of Ideas" Manifesto [...]

Before you invest time, content, relationships or money in any desktop social software play, be forewarned, this idea is already “old hat” and there already several apps out there that combine social networking, chat, and community features. Note that here I am placing emphasis on “desktop” — my point is not to malign social networking [...]

Huge news for the Semantic Web — the W3C has officially approved the RDF and OWL specs. Related Posts:New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the NetThe Metaweb is Coming… See this Diagram…Web 3.0 Roundup: Radar Networks, Powerset, Metaweb and Others…How the WebOS Evolves?Folktologies — Beyond the Folksonomy vs. Ontology Distinction

At Sandia National Laboratories researchers are working on a new technology that helps managers read the minds of their employees. This is supposed to help the managers assign tasks more effectively, gain insight into their employees’ states of mind, and achieve higher human performance. Technologies of this nature are useful for creating what I call [...]

Josh Kirschenbaum has some interesting ideas about a different way to constructing a social network. Instead of a LinkedIn (or any other system) style of listing everyone I know, and everyone who knows who I know- it shows a list of other nodes that I am strongly connected to. This strength is based on the [...]

Hello all, I have been thinking about the general problems of social networks on the Internet. It occurs to me that these issues are closely related to digital physics. For more on digital physics see the work of Ed Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, Norman Margolus, Tomasso Toffoli, and other pioneers of the field of cellular automata. [...]

In this article I discuss some insights about optimization of social networks. Basically I suggest that “trust is not preserved” along relationship paths of more than 3 hops. In other words, social networks should never forward messages beyond 3 hops. Doing so makes the communication of that message effectively arbitrary, adding noise to the system [...]

Thanks to the recent mushrooming of social networking systems, I am starting to experience a new problem that I call “social overload.” Now that I am connected to the world via LinkedIn, Ryze, Plaxo, Orkut, and Typepad, as well 6 different IM systems, and several email accounts, I am finding that an increasing amount of [...]

Here is an interesting article on “Cognitive Overload” for those interesting in a more scholarly analysis of the subject. Nice work! Related Posts:New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the NetUsing Nanoparticles to Augment Human Brains…?Beautiful Idea: How to Program the Global MindThe Metaweb is Coming… See this Diagram…Semantic Web Officially Approved [...]

A new service called Eurekster uses your social network to refine your search results on third-party search engines. The concept is that your interests should be similar to the interests of those in your social network, therefore based on what others in your network search for and like, your own searches can be tuned for [...]

CNN posted an article today about the potential risk of nanotechnology on the human brain. Basically some research shows that nano-scale particles such as industrial waste, or even components of nanotechnologies, can migrate through the human circulatory system and eventually lodge in the brain. This could cause harmful effects. But on the other hand, maybe [...]

One of the many cool things about the Metaweb is that it functions as a vast bottom-up collaborative filtering system. RSS feeds represent perspectives of publishers. Because feed publishers can automatically or manually include content from other feeds they can “republish,” annotate and filter content. Every feed is effectively a switch, routing content to and [...]

At Radar Networks we refer to pieces of microcontent as “Memes.” A Weblog posting is a Meme (pronounced “meem”), so is any RSS item. The classic definition of a meme is “a replicating unit of culture.” There is quite a bit of debate among memeticists about what constitutes replication and what constitutes a replicator. But [...]

The Metaweb is not just the set of all Weblog posts, it is much more than that. As much as I love to blog I think many old-timers would have us view the entire Net through “blog colored glasses.” But Weblog postings are just one kind of microcontent. There will be many others. Related Posts:New [...]

Originally developed at Netscape, a new technology called RSS has risen from the dead to ignite the next-evolution of the Net. RSS represents the first step in a major new paradigm shift — the birth of “The Metaweb.” The Metaweb is the next evolution of the Web — a new layer of the Web in [...]