I like to think of information as a form of energy. It fuels our emotions, thoughts, decisions, and actions. Information is valuable; it can be misused; wars are fought over it; lives are changed by it.
But information is unlike most other forms of energy. Typically energy dissipates as it travels further away from its source. Light, heat, sound, etc. all grow weaker and weaker as the distance from their origin grows.
In our aggregated world, information grows stronger and more valuable as it moves away from its source. Ten beat writers write about a basketball game, one-hundred website writers base their analysis on the beats, one-thousand blogs dissect the analysis, and ten-thousand tweets praise, criticize, romanticize, and collectively create a virtual Picasso from the ingredients of the original event. I'm not sure what that means, but I am sure that it's powerful and that I'll revisit this subject.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The question here is; what if anything can be done with the "virtual Picasso"? Is it valuable if it is simply being resurrected throughout the virtual world?
ReplyDeleteSure, you can frame it and sell it :)
ReplyDeleteYou can predict media trends and preferences: http://www.simulmedia.com/
...or predict stock market fluctuations: http://stocktwits.com/