The starting premise was that progressives should, in principle, have had two strengths going for them. First, we argued that modernizing trends were shifting the demographic terrain in their political favor. Second, we asserted that the crisis had illustrated the intellectual and policy bankruptcy of conservatism, which had now proven itself devoid of creative ideas [...]

“Click Fraud Detection with Practical Memetics” is an evolution of my previous Defcon presentations. The original Meme Miner program and Meme Theory were enhanced for better predictive ability which led to an accidental detection of “Pay-Per-Click” advertising fraud. This presentation includes expanded overview of Meme Theory, real-life example of Botnet click fraud, strategies to detect [...]

The easy answers are ready to hand. We might postulate a strand of political culture and thought in American society that reproduces hate and racism in some of the young people who are exposed to it. (Hate on the Internet falls in this category.) Or we might postulate a recessive “racist personality” type that is [...]

Is there really such thing as “freedom of thought”? Or is some force bigger than myself manipulating my thinking, my consciousness? Is there such thing as “original thinking”? And if so, where do such thoughts come from anyway? Are we really that creative in our thinking, or are we picking up “mind viruses” unconsciously? Consciousness, [...]

Each of our lives is a story, an album, a painting, in which we play the starring role, but only posthumously, in hindsight, or through the internal wrestling of the creative process which separate us, momentarily, from our day-to-day concerns. These stories weave together into an ever-changing tapestry which we call culture. Though it sounds [...]

Michael A. Hoffman II is also a man who devotes a large portion of his life to questioning the historical veracity of the Nazi Holocaust. He’s a religious fundamentalist with weird hobbies, and much like myself, badly in need of an honest editor. I’m not discussing him because he’s important or correct on much of [...]

As viral marketing strategies have been exploited by corporate media to make profit connecting people all over the world, Seppukoo playfully attempts to subvert this mechanism disconnecting people from each other and transforming the individual suicide experience into an exciting”social” experience.With Seppukoo in fact it’s not important how many friends you have, but how much [...]

As social media and technologies continue to disseminate and evolve, making it easier for everyone to connect with everyone else, to communicate and collaborate in ways we’ve only started to anticipate, swarm intelligence may become the norm rather than the exception. As that happens, the best leader may find themselves turning for advice to the [...]

Although the reflex still exists to evoke fear of these positions in political campaigning, neither pro- nor anti-state positions are meaningful in themselves. We have seen the devastating social problems that resulted from the idea that there is no such thing as society, under Thatcher, and under Blair and Brown we have learned that no [...]

Gambling for salary? The day before receiving the paycheck, each employee is required to roll a dice. A portion of their salary for the month is then multiplied by the value he/she rolls. Travelling office Every year for about 2-3 months, the company rents out an office in places such as Hawaii and Italy and [...]

Memetics met with academic opposition from socio-biologists including Edward O. Wilson, and Dawkins himself expressed concern about memetics becoming an empirical science of culture. Dennett and others developed slightly different interpretations of memes from Dawkins, and the academic world has consequently been slow to adopt the new science. Memetic Engineering developed from diverse influences, including [...]

FuckYourBrain is an online and PDF-based fountain of knowledge and delight. The mission? To promote deliberate human evolution, to provide the material for new creations, to encourage neurogenesis, to provide data on epigenetics, to appreciate and adore beauty and power, and to advance the possibility of life extension and immortality, all with a deep sense [...]

Purple. Polka dot. Grimy white. And even as the bra colors went viral — wildly so — cyber-arguments erupted about what it all meant. Was so openly and brazenly posting something as intimate as one’s bra color an attempt to raise breast cancer awareness? Or was it all just another Facebook time-suck, another “send your [...]

I want you to imagine back in the early days of newspapers and magazines how the effect of coupons could be measured. A store owner put a coupon in a local newspaper, and then counted up the coupons that came back into the store – immediately that store owner had an understanding of the impact [...]

Using high definition audio recordings of dolphins, the research team, headed by English acoustics engineer and cymatics researcher, John Stuart Reid, and Florida-based dolphin researcher, Jack Kassewitz, has been able to use cymatics to image the imprint that a dolphin sound makes in water. They have used cymatics to create “reproducible patterns that are expected [...]

Never before has it been possible to see such quick paced change across the Google SERP. At this years imedia summit Amnesia have started a social experiment in the form of @Hunvalski. The idea of this experiment is to see the amount of search results that can be generated for the term Hunvalski (a term [...]

There is an eBaying of content going on, as people repurpose stuff they find in the digital garage and attic that is the Web. Some people will become the new scavengers, looking through the detritus of the web for things to reuse and remix. Some will build the places where they look, the tools they [...]