SocialStartups.com

Josh Porter wrote an article about the co-evolution of humans and technology, which I think should be expanded further. To start, a little background from the one semester class I took with Hod Lipson when I was in school (see his TED talk for self-evolving robots). Co-evolution is a feedback loop where the fitness function of one actor is defined by the fitness function of the other. You can think of it as symbiotic or parasitic. A symbiotic example would be the bacteria in your digestive tract evolving to help you digest while your body evolves to require their presence for healthy digestion. A parasitic example would be the arms race between antibodies and antigens - each continues to evolve to outpace the other. (There is an interesting discussion about the influence of evolving man-made pharmaceuticals and other biotechnologies on the natual co-evolution of antibodies and antigens, but I’ll leave that aside.)

To get back to Josh’s article, I think he didn’t go far enough. Yes, individual’s behavior does change in response to technology, but what if we think about it generationally. Compare children today vs. people born in the 1950s or 1930s. They have a technological intuition that is astounding compared to their parents or grandparents. How is that happening? Now, I’m not arguing that there is some genetically detectable evolution going on with regards to the cognition of technology. I do think there is a behavioral co-evolution (in the same sense that Josh intends) where technology creates a generation of children who intuitively grasp that technology, and as that generation ages will produce even more advanced technology (leading to yet another generation of children more intuitive than the previous).

Where does that leave us? I’m not sure, but I do look forward to an ever-increasing rate of radical innovation in technology.

Tags: co-evolution, science, technology

Leak: More Evidence of Comcast’s Non-Net Neutrality

This might push me to cancel my comcast subscription.  Collecting metrics about bandwidth demographics and mix is OK with me, as is various Security features, but controlling bandwidth is a no-no (even if it is for “non-Comcast customers”.

The utility companies scale with consumer needs. Why shouldn’t ISPs?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: netneutrality, comcast

Senators Threatening Telcos With Probe Over Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is important, so tell your friends. I’m not one for pushing agendas, but the internet is the gateway to the world’s knowledge. The ISPs cannot be allowed to control access.

Blogged with Flock

Yahoo Internet Cafes Launch in Vietnam

I can’t say enough about this - I think one of the most valuable ways to invest in the future is giving people access to the Internet. Yes, even in the poorest areas. I rank it up there with giving people access to clean water.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Yahoo, education, internet

Phew. So I’m back. My laptop hard drive died and I lost the password to this admin account, so I’ve been unable to post. But never fear, I finally discovered the “Lost your password?” link and guessed the right username/email combination.

Since it’s memorial day weekend, I’ll be playing around with the coolest thing to hit Tech since… jeez, I dunno, maybe AJAX - Facebook Platform! I’ll be twittering and blogging about my experiences as I figure out what I’m doing. First tip: This looks to be a great tutorial, running through it now. God bless wikis (found via F8 documentation wiki).

Google Reader - David’s shared items

Since I’m subscribed to 30-some feeds and read hundreds of articles every day, I’ve decided to start sharing the articles that I think are worth reading with all of you. You can read the web (HTML) version of it by clicking the link above, or subscribe to my RSS feed here. It’s all about the kinds of topics my socialstartups.com blog is about - technology and community and startups. Enjoy!

Wow, never going back now. I used the Google Personalized home page forever (or, since it launched), but now that I’ve got so many blogs to keep up with, it was time to give Google Reader a chance. And you know what? Keyboard shortcuts are severely underrated. You just don’t know how great they are until you try it. Makes reading so much faster.

Before diving into a very exciting new feature launched today by Jellyfish.com, I would like introduce myself and explain what this blog is all about. To start, hello, my name is David Lifson. I’m a software engineer at Amazon.com, doing some very exciting work in the social computing space.

This blog is going to be a look at new ideas, new technologies, and new startups in social computing. Anything from new ways to chat, to new ways to blog, to new ways to merge offline with online is fair game. I find this area extremely exciting and I hope you will as well.