Women Are Better Social Networkers Than Men

In my Twine feed this morning I had the following interesting post about whether women or men make better networkers. With the recent reasearch into Gamma networking women, I found this very relevant. It looks as though even at a tech conference, women DO make better networkers.

Are Men or Women Better Networkers?

Are men or women better networkers?  As my son used to say to every
question when he was around 5, “The answer is ‘Nobody Knows’” (I think
he heard that at a Museum of Science Planetarium show).  Of course,
when you’re older, you realize the correct response is “That’s not a
well-formed question.”  What I do know is that at last year’s Emerging Technologies Conference @ MIT,
women used their nTAGs to exchange more business cards than men did.

You can also see from the social network diagrams below that women
were more central at the event.  nTAGs are being used at this year’s EmTech conference,
and it starts today.  I’ll keep you posted on whether this phenomenon
persists across years.

The blue dots in the above diagram are men.  Look at those
disconnected doormats in the outer circle.  Why did they even both
coming?

The blue dots in the above diagram are women.  When you compare the
diagrams, you can see the women are clustered more tightly toward the
center, reflecting their greater centrality at the event.  The raw
numbers reveal when you calculate all the “shortest paths” in the
social network between each pair of people at the event, the average
woman was on 772 shortest paths — the average man was on just 487 of
them.   Ergo, the women are playing a larger role in connecting the
community.  By the way, the above diagrams are based on data collected
by the nTAGs on who standing in front of whom (ostensibly talking) –
they’re not tied to actually exchanging business cards.

~ Erika

Social Media Marketing
Technology Goddess LLC

Teenagers using Google Earth to Pool Party with Facebook friends

If most of us thirty-somethings were not already keen on how much technology has altered everything in our lives, right down to the sub-culture of culture, then consider this little news tidbit:

Teenagers are using Google Earth to zoom in on inviting pools in their towns and then send out the location and invites to their Facebook buddies for a late night (3am-ish) pool party called “Dipping”.

It’s actually clever enough, to make me chuckle.

Back in my high school days, a simple “Matt Cutts’ parents are out of town!” shouted down the hallway between bells would be enough to have 200 teens show up with beer on Friday night at Matt’s house. In college, it was the Rave, and cheaply copied Rave flyers.

In 2008, technology has gifted this generation with numerous creative ways to get into trouble, or have some harmless fun. While the police remind the teens that “trespassing is illegal”, whether you view this as being clever and creative teen-tech mischief, or a serious legal offense depends on four things:

1. How old you are.

2. How much trouble YOU got into as a teenager.

3. Whether or not it is YOUR teen you are bailing out of jail for trespassing at 3am

4. Whether or not it is YOUR pool, and you are the one stuck cleaning up after 50 inebriated teenagers the next morning.

Speaking of inebriated teenagers, I have a posse of Japanese college-age girls walking down the street right now outside my window, (midnight) singing a Japanese pop song LOUDLY and off key… Hmmmmmm… At this moment, I would gladly refer them to a Google Earth location anywhere but here.

Here is the article posting below from Search Engine Land’s blog:

Facebook ‘dipping’ craze irks pool owners from the Telegraph reports that teenagers on Facebook are using Google Maps to locate pools in their neighborhoods and then hold pool parties, as uninvited guests. The new phenomenon is called “dipping” and has caused concern in the Bournemouth, UK area.

These “dippers” have been inviting others via Facebook to join the parties. The teenagers are instructed to “wear fancy dress costumes” and bring a bicycle as a way to make an escape for when the cops come. These dipping events seem to run between midnight and 3am and only have 16 confirmed participants.

There is concern that the events might grow. The Telegraph reports that “invitations were sent to more than 500 users on the Facebook site.” A police spokesperson told the Telegraph:

We are advising owners of swimming pools to be on their guard and extra vigilant.We would also warn prospective swimmers that using someone else’s pool is trespassing and therefore illegal.

Why we do not want you to know about keyword silo-ing.

Hi folks,

I am so relieved.

Nobody gets it . . . and the Blueprint Silo Krakken Module is almost here.

Here is the blog post:

http://tinyurl.com/4qyoo9

Here is the direct video link:

http://www.screencast.com/t/MeBv6QvyXt

The map versus the territory . . .

I’ll take ALL of BOTH, thank you.

- Russell

Submit to Multiple Blogs at once with nifty Firefox add-on

Tell me we have not all been waiting for this?

If you are like me and have many different blogs, hosted on different services and platforms, it can be time-consuming to manage all the posting and editing that is needed for all of them on a daily basis.

Mozilla Firefox has recently come out with an add-on that offers a full-featured blog editor that allows you to add, edit or delete posts in your blogs without the tedious process of logging in to your admin panels on the multiple blog hosts.

You just install ScribeFire and when you would like to post to your blogs, click on the orange icon in your Firefox browser’s bar. You can post to multiple blogs on WordPress, Drupal, Moveable Type, Textpattern, Blogger and more.  It even features the ability to access previous posts and edit, delete or select new catagories and tags.

As an added bonus, as you are browsing the internet, the page content can be added into the editor using drag and drop, controling all of your blogs with tabs.  The drawback is that they do put a “Powered by Scribefire” blurb at the end of your post, however, if you are picky as I am, just edit the fresh post and re-post… Ah-Ha! No ad blurb.

Let me know if you have tried this add-on and what your experience was with it, ok? My personal review is that it’s very useful for most blogs, but on WordPress it occasionally messes with the formatting of the text, so you then end up having to re-post. But, it’s only an occasional glitch and Scribefire is still fairly new so this is something that may not be an issue for long.

~Erika, Tech-Goddess

Author of Social Network Mash, and author on Theme Zoom’s blog

Using the new Krakken Software for Website Blueprints

This is a very insightful interview between Russell Wright and Jon Keel about the new Krakken software.

Jon is making money combining Krakken with Theme Zoom 3.0 to create website blueprints for clients based on the silo architecture that he has learned from the Theme Zoom system. This is some amazing information if you want to have an advantage over your competition when it comes to building strong inbound link networks.

Interview with Jon Keel by Russell Wright

Tech-Notes: Justin Loftin talks about WAN Acceleration

Here is a quick note from Russell on some interesting information, check this out!

~Erika, Tech-Goddess

Jason Loftin informs the Theme Zoom community about WAN acceleration. I just heard about this down in Florida on my last business trip.

- Russell Wright

Filed under WAN Acceleration by Russell

What is Tech-Jealousy?

Tech-Jealousy: Emotions that come up when you see someone with cooler tech or gadgets than you have. This is intensified when the other person is someone you frequently see with the before-mentioned cooler tech.

Reference:
Tech-Jealous video part 1 - The realization someone else has cooler tech
Tech-Jealous video part 2 – The confrontation: wanting to acquire that tech for yourself
Tech Jealous video part 3 - The Tech-Goddess response

This is just a video series that Russell and I had some fun with at the Theme Zoom Megaplex this week.

Yahoo to Microsoft: Your Bid is a Load of Yahooey

Feeling like a politely worded episode out of the 1960’s cult classic “Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey”, where three gallant heroes battle a fire breathing dragon among other villains, Yahoo has responded to Microsoft’s “unsolicited” bid to acquire Yahoo (as in takeover) with a  battle of words. Microsoft Chief executive Steve Ballmer and Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang are dueling in language as the heated letters between the two giants were released earlier today.

The battle for the dragon began last year as Microsoft prepped it’s employees to get ready for an acquisition of Yahoo, and was followed up by a US $44 billion “offer” two months ago to buy the company.

Microsoft’s “offer” to purchase letter was accompanied with the suggestion that Yahoo! is losing value, market, and page views along with the threat to get hostile with a proxy fight unless Yahoo agrees to the deal within three weeks.

Yahoo! fired back today, highlighting it’s value and future growth prospects, along with it’s investments as strategic benefits to Microsoft, and placed a stake in the ground with the news that stockholders have deemed the bid seriously undervalues Yahoo!. Yang was careful to note that future transactions are not out of the picture, as long as the price goes up to satisfy stockholders.

March Hitwise results show that Google has 67.25% of the search market, (and growing monthly) with Yahoo at 20.29% (and declining) and MSN also slipping at 6.65%.  If MSN can combine with Yahoo they can at least gain leverage as a #2 with more power in the search market share, where as right now Google’s complete domination seems set in stone. The question is whether stockholders will be more open to Microsoft’s offer if Google continues to grow, putting further pinch on Yahoo! to make a change, any change.

Ballmer will likely grant a counter offer to Yahoo! quickly, since they set a proxy deadline that demands some kind of answer or response from both sides.  Corporate relations are rarely sweetened by thumping the prospective acquisition over the head with a club and dragging her back to the cave, the new acquitison might dutifully take care of business but with less heart, and Yahoo! is a company known to be strong of heart. Critical Yahoo! employees may flee if negotiations turn into a proxy fight.

Ok, now for the good stuff. Here is a compilation of all the latest, including letters between Yang and Ballmer. We’ll be posting new updates as they break.

• Yahoo!’s Yang & board’s response to Microsoft letter
• Microsoft gives Yahoo! deadline on offer
• Microsoft’s Ballmer’s letter to Yahoo!’s board
• Upgrade sends Yahoo shares higher
• Yahoo projection just too optimistic?
• Yahoo joins cloud computing research
• The most important shareholder initiative in decades
• Share prices on the up for Yahoo!
• Rosy outlook for Yahoo’s future
• Microsoft: many jobs for Yahoo
• Microsoft and Yahoo! met to discuss merger
• Yang: Microsoft offer ‘galvanized’ Yahoo!
• Microsoft says it won’t uproot Yahoo!
• Microsoft readies hostile Yahoo! bid

Google’s Search within Search is Stupid, Says Amazon

Russell Wright of Theme-Zoom.com just released this video review of the new Google “search within search” function that Amazon had removed. Why? Check out the video.

~Erika, Technology Goddess

From Theme-Zoom.com

The New York Times released an article yesterday exposing Google’s “Search within Search” function that has been bugging me for the last several weeks. Read the New York Times article about Google’s search within search function.

In this short Theme Zoom video I give you a quick tour of the issues and hand with a live demo of Google’s “Search within Search” function.

My “modest proposal” is that Google has the courtesy to remove the pay per click advertisements from the second tier search function. To me this seems reasonable enough.

In my opinion, this is the most controversial change Google has made since the “auto-link” function that I blogged about in 2006- where ISBN numbers on any bookstore website could become hyperlinked and redirected the visitor to Amazon.com at the wave of a toolbar wand.

- Russell

Who’s Hot and Who’s Not in Social Networking

I just ran across this on Mashable and decided to share the post with you via Flock.

My thoughts are that it’s interesting how MySpace is declining in unique audience, although people are spending a lot MORE time on the site overall. Why? Well, as someone who has a MySpace network that has reached the up side of huge, and given that many of my “friends” are actually REAL friends on there that I physically friended, (as in met in person and know), and as such requiring things like occasional posting, chatting and updates or I start to get hoards of “Where are you???” email…… I can understand why people are spending more time on MySpace when they do get up the courage to go there and deal with the upkeep.

There are so many widgets, quizzes, pokes, teases, flirts, winks and nudges on the networks now that some days it is easier to pull the “I’m Invisible” covers over your head and go back to sleep. Or at the very least, perhaps we could on some days consider actually calling or emailing friends rather than poking them and sending them little flying pigs online. Just kidding. Where would the fun be in that?

~Erika, Your Technology Goddess

(Mashable post below)

This morning, AOL’s Chariman and CEO Randy Falco said of his company’s acquisition, “Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media.” “Leading position” might be a bit of an overstatement, at least in the US, according to some statistics sent our way by Nielsen Online.

In February, Bebo received 2.25 million unique visitors in the US, placing it between Buzznet and Imeem in the rankings, and representing less than 5% of the traffic that MySpace received during the same period. While it did represent 86% year-over-year growth, users spent significantly less time on the site – 81% less than they did in February of last year.

As for the rest of the trends in the space, I’ve highlighted some of the hot and the cold (in orange and blue, respectively) in the chart below. Last month’s reports of Facebook’s demise seem to be greatly exaggerated, as the site is sporting 102% year-over-year unique audience growth. Meanwhile, MySpace growth has gone flat, though users are spending 10% more time on the site – not inconsequential when you consider how huge their audience is. That number should continue to rise with today’s consumer launch of their application platform.

One of the other most notable statistics – Last.fm users spent 180% more time on the site last month than they did in the same period last year. That can easily be attributed to Last.fm rolling out free streaming of full tracks on their Web site back in January, an initiative that parent company CBS has also been praising for its success in recent weeks.

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Are Bloggers real Journalists?

With Web 2.0 blogging becoming the mainstream news network, once again we are facing questions about who is considered a “journalist” or “professional” writer, and given the same access to sporting and press conference venues.The news item below about bloggers being banned from the Mavericks locker room caught my eye because as bloggers I feel we are a unique breed of reporter that is on the edge of the web 2.0 revolution, and not yet fully credentialed by more traditional “press” corps… Or are we?

The Democratic and Republican Conventions have admitted Bloggers as credentialed Press Corps since 2004, although the accomplishment is still in 2008 viewed with some disdain by television and hard copy news media reporters who consider the bloggers more gossipy than newsworthy.

Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, questions blogger’s journalistic credentials. ”They’re certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo,” McPhail says. Bloggers ‘’should be put in a different category, like ‘pretend’ journalists.” This seems to be agreed upon by Congress, who does not consider Bloggers or online news reporting agencies “Journalists” in the Free Flow of Information Act H.R.581 which was designed to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources. “Journalist” is defined as:

A) an entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means and that–

(i) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;

(ii) operates a radio or television broadcast station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier; or

(iii) operates a news agency or wire service;

(B) a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such an entity; or

(C) an employee, contractor, or other person who gathers, edits, photographs, records, prepares, or disseminates news or information for such an entity.

Bloggers, unless they are under the protection of a major publication or broadcast company, are not included.

As web 2.0 is transforming the way our Global community shares news and information, transforming it from a static “News reporter on camera reading the news” format, to an interactive global community that shares, discusses, posts and votes on what is or is not relevant as news, we must take a close look at what the definition of a “Journalist” actually is.

Wikipedia defines it this way:

“A journalist (also called a newspaperman) is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.

Reporters are one type of journalist. They create reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet.

Depending on the context, the term journalist also includes various types of editors and visual journalists, such as photographers, graphic artists, and page designers.”

Well now.
The Great Wiki has spoken!

~ Erika, Your Tech-Goddess and Wiki-approved Journalist.

Reference: Dallas Mavericks owner bounced bloggers from his team’s locker room. Cuban is being shortsighted.

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Tags: MarkCuban, Wiki, technology, blogging, bloggers, blog, journalists, journalism, reporting, news, web 2.0, “social networking

Podcast: Cutting Edge Technology with Russell Wright

Hello everyone, my latest episode of “Cutting Edge Tech” has been posted to TalkShoe.

My guest this week was Russell Wright of Theme Zoom chatting with me about neuromarketing and neuroeconomics, Theme Zoom, web 2.0, platonic solids, social networking and Buckminster Fuller’s business integrity model and philosophy. Russell connected the dots between all of those subjects and more, it was a fascinating conversation with a man on the cutting edge of technology. ~ Your Tech-Goddess, Erika

Cutting Edge Tech, with Russell Wright of Theme Zoom, (select “Episode Three”).

Cosmo: Apple Stores THE place to meet men

Ok,  I have to say that anyone who thinks Tech is NOT a hot dating draw is seriously offline. Technology is sexy, women who are into technology are sexy and this trend will only get bigger. Helen Fisher in “Why We Love” goes into detail how dopamine effects love and attraction, and well, nothing gets the dopamine going like the lastest cool gadgetry for both men AND women.  While Cosmo notes that the gym also made the list (of course Helen Fisher teaches us the natural selection process includes some brawn) as our society is moving more neural, smarts are in and the new eros is Genius Mind. ~

So, the essence of the Cosmo article is that if you are looking for a good man,  the place to look is your nearest Apple store.

The magazine states (as if we didn’t know) the fact that guys are natural gadget lovers, Mac savvy, and with Apple’s sales soaring, “more men than ever are stopping by Apple boutiques.”

“The vibe at the stores is conducive to man meeting too: You can check your email among cuties, take a free workshop on anything from Photoshop to podcasting (a great opportunity to strike up a conversation), or just survey the, ahem, good-looking merchandise,” Cosmo concludes.

If you are not into Mac, have no fears, you can still find a handsome tech-savvy man, just go to work for a Tech company. Statisticly, more than a fifth of workers meet their spouse on the job, the magazine notes, adding that Cisco Systems is 78 percent male, while Hewlett-Packard’s workforce is 68 percent men.

So yes, geek is in, as the article suggests that technology men are faring better than ever when it comes to dating, although again, because the weight room at the gym was also on Cosmos’s list, Helen Fisher can give the old ancient caveman programming a nod too.

So are Apple stores just the new “cave” women flock to, hoping natural selection favors them among so many men and so little competition?

~Erika, Your Tech-Goddess

MySpace joins with MTV in the UK

MySpace and Viacom’s MTV are partnering again, on a weekly TV show. The program is called “MySpace Chart” and will only air on the UK Network MTV Two. So far there are no solid plans to bring the show to US fans.

Members of MySpace, which initially gained traction as a way for independent music artists to gain buzz, will vote on select music videos each week that will then be showcased in the hour-long MTV Two show. MySpace Chart premieres on the evening of March 16; a week earlier, pages on MySpace and MTV Two will go live to kick off voting.

MTV parent company Viacom does have its own social-networking project, the “distributed” service called Flux. But partnering with MySpace can give them access to the massive site’s audience. “The audience for MTV Two and MySpace are incredibly similar,” Philip O’Ferrall, vice president of digital media for MTV Networks’ U.K. and Ireland region, said in a statement. “Not only are they both incredibly passionate about their music tastes but they are powerful advocates for the latest upcoming artists, which both MTV and MySpace have a history of showcasing.”

Additionally, for MTV, it’s a way to bolster the company’s new-media credibility; for MySpace, it helps to solidify its role as a pop-culture hub as the market for social networking grows increasingly crowded. In the U.K., MySpace not only competes with Facebook but also with the more youth-oriented Bebo–which syndicates some MTV video content as part of its “Open Media” platform.

Posted by Tech-Goddess Erika

Feed from cnet.com news

New Free Interactive Brain Map allows you to see the brain as never before.

BrainMaps.org is an interactive multiresolution next-generation brain atlas that is based on over 20 million megapixels of sub-micron resolution, annotated, scanned images of serial sections of both primate and non-primate brains and that is integrated with a high-speed database for querying and retrieving data about brain structure and function over the internet. Currently featured are complete brain atlas datasets for various species, including Macaca mulatta, Chlorocebus aethiops, Felis catus, Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus, and Tyto alba.

I love this and wanted to share it, what a great tool not only for adults but for children and families!

Tech-Goddess, Erika

Google’s Future: Neuro-Google?

The future of nanotechnology screens that instantly access and translate all information presented to them, and the neurotechnology we already have makes a future where we “think” of what we want to know or access, and it instantly appears in front of us, through our nanoscreens like the one shown here, or other possibilities like glasses and virtual holopraphic screens that we can carry with us all the time.

I can see a future where everyone has their own nanoscreens or nanoglasses and is connected to a worldwide database of information that is only a thought away, blending the technological and organic thought processes in daily life. You want to know something, you just think about it, wearing your glasses or scan your nanoscreen above the words or images, and the info instantly appears. Holographic technology takes it to the level of thinking aobut it, the screen appearing in front of you, and then instantly accessing the needed information. Talk about easy searching!

We are rapidly moving towards a future where SEO (search engine optimization) becomes instead web-intuitive thinking, Whole Brain. Where a webpage and information is indexed by how we think, Whole Brain wise, instead of merely logical spider indexing. Because, as we become more logical/intuitive or whole brain neural in the internet and technology, the current ways of indexing pages will be obsolete. Companies like Theme Zoom have been revolutioning the way companies look at their webs SEO and businesses with a whole business intelligence perspective and an eye for the future, while Neuromarketers like SalesBrain founders, Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin has revolutionized the way online marketing targets their audience. Utilizing tools like these can prepare a business for the future.

So, it is conceivable that one day, Google could go neural, maybe Neuro-google?

Ha.

Your Tech-Goddess,
~Erika

New Ultra-efficient LED will vastly improve LCD screens

ScienceDaily (2008-03-03) — In recent years, light emitting diodes (LEDs) have begun to change the way we see the world. Now, a student has developed a new type of LED that could allow for their widespread use as light sources for liquid crystal displays (LCDs) on everything from televisions and computers to cell phones and cameras. This first polarized LED holds promise to vastly improve LCD screens, conserve energy, and usher in the next generation of ultra-efficient LEDs.

Next Generation of LEDs

Schubert’s polarized LED advances current LED technology in its ability to better control the direction and polarization of the light being emitted. With better control over the light, less energy is wasted producing scattered light, allowing more light to reach its desired location. This makes the polarized LED perfectly suited as a backlighting unit for any kind of LCD, according to Schubert. Its focused light will produce images on the display that are more colorful, vibrant, and lifelike, with no motion artifacts.

Schubert first discovered that traditional LEDs actually produce polarized light, but existing LEDs did not capitalize on the light’s polarization. Armed with this information, he devised an optics setup around the LED chip to enhance the polarization, creating the first polarized LED.

The invention could advance the effort to combine the power and environmental soundness of LEDs with the beauty and clarity of LCDs. Schubert expects that his polarized LED could quickly become commonplace in televisions and monitors around the world, replacing widely used fluorescent lights that are less efficient and laden with mercury. His innovation also could be used for street lighting, high-contrast imaging, sensing, and free-space optics, he said.

Schubert’s innovation has earned him the $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize.

Adapted from materials provided by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 … <em>> <a href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080228205953.htm”>More Science News </a></em></p>

Future of Nanotech Screens and Neuro sensors?

Something that at this moment is still in concept stage like Nokia’s new nanotech phone, but…… Wouldn’t we ALL love to have this? 

Your lost so you hold up the transparent nanotech screen and see the arrows directing you to your destination, and instantly translate any language or have access to any information.

From screens like this, just watch: I can’t wait until the next tech to develop after this one becomes interfaced in society: glasses or sunglasses with the same technology. Just put your sunglasses on and instantly translate everything you see whole visiting another country- road signs, menus etc….

From there, watch the glasses have the technology to interface with your neural activity so that you simply think of what it is you want to access.

I read an article a while back about military technology that has already interfaced night vision and field goggles with neural tech that senses the subtle frequency your brain shifts into when your subconscious picks up “danger” ahead. Research showed that soldiers were able to sense danger ahead several seconds before the danger actually appeared. So, they have now wired that into the goggles so that when the soldiers brain emits the “fear” wave, the goggles give a warning that danger is near.

What does this have to do with the nanotech screens we are seeing here?

Well, imagine this rather standard issue, sci-fi like scenario….

A woman wearing the new Psi-Glasses (sunglasses recently introduced that have nano and neuro technology interfaced with her brain waves and thought processes as well as the web) is walking down the streets of New York on vacation. She has never been to New York, but she has no trouble navigating the city simply following the arrows and directions as they appear in front of her vision. She stops in front of a beautiful statue in Central Park, wonders who created it, and in a small screen in her glasses she is able to instantly see the artists profile and information as well as photos of the work in progress before it was in the park. (Google goes neural)

She continues walking, when suddenly her glasses give off a series of beeps, warning her that her subconscious mind has picked up a life threatening danger.

She follows the beeps by looking around until the glasses “lock” on the source of the danger her mind is sensing, a man standing about 50 feet away watching her that she didn’t notice before. She zooms in with her glasses to see his face, then instantly searches the database to find out that this man is wanted for homicide. The glasses flash on the screen that based on the NLP (Neuro linguistic programming) signals, the man is feeling agressive towards her.  She instantly uplinks his image from her glasses with GPS location to the police, and then turns, hails a taxie by sending a neural flash, ”emergency help” request to his dispatch and speeds away safely.

The technology of instant and total uplink could either change our world for the better, by breaking down all walls of separation between individuals so that we are constantly communicating with everything around us in a technological way as well as the organic.

OR this kind of technology could also turn into something out of “Minority Report” as subconscious inklings of danger warn us of possible threats that do not yet exist, and the questions as to whether our subconscious mind is actually creating, or sensing.

The enlightened mind view is that we create everything around us… so what happens when we are forewarned of our creations? Does focusing on the future change it? Yes, scientists have pretty much proven that when you focus on a particular point, it changes the outcome. In the case of the woman on vacation in New York, it did, it may have saved her life.

Was the future changed? Yes.
Was it the “future” then, or only a neural blip of potentiality?

Your Tech-Goddess,
~Erika

Preview: Ranking Quickly for Theme Keywords with Video

A quick preview of an upcoming video series for Theme Zoom members, hosted by me, on how to rank quickly in Google for your keywords with videos. This is just a fast sneak peek intro and thank you to Russell Wright at Theme Zoom.

Nanotube: Tech-Goddess word of the day

Nanotube: A one dimensional fullerene (a convex cage of atoms with only hexagonal and/or pentagonal faces) with a cylindrical shape. Carbon nanotubes discovered in 1991 by Sumio Iijima resemble rolled up graphite, although they can not really be made that way. Depending on the direction that the tubes appear to have been rolled (quantified by the ‘chiral vector’), they are known to act as conductors or semiconductors. Nanotubes are a proving to be useful as molecular components for nanotechnology. [Encyclopedia Nanotech]

Strictly speaking, any tube with nanoscale dimensions, but generally used to refer to carbon nanotubes, which are sheets of graphite rolled up to make a tube. A commonly mentioned non-carbon variety is made of boron nitride, another is silicon. These noncarbon nanotubes are most often referred to as nanowires. The dimensions are variable (down to 0.4 nm in diameter) and you can also get nanotubes within nanotubes, leading to a distinction between multi-walled and single-walled nanotubes. Apart from remarkable tensile strength, nanotubes exhibit varying electrical properties (depending on the way the graphite structure spirals around the tube, and other factors, such as doping), and can be superconducting, insulating, semiconducting or conducting (metallic). [CMP]

Nanotubes can be either electrically conductive or semiconductive, depending on their helicity, leading to nanoscale wires and electrical components. These one-dimensional fibers exhibit electrical conductivity as high as copper, thermal conductivity as high as diamond, strength 100 times greater than steel at one sixth the weight, and high strain to failure. NASA JSC – Carbon Nanotubes

References:
NASA JSC – Carbon Nanotubes
Encyclopedia Nanotech

 

IBM using DNA in Nanotube Chips

If you are still thinking that chips must be built, think again. The latest trend IBM is exploring is GROWING chips from the building block of life: DNA.

The sceintists at IBM are experimenting with using something called nanotubes, which are just strands of carbon atoms that can conduct electricity, with DNA. The DNA then does as DNA will, it replicates itself along with the nanotubes into a grid that can perform calculations or serve as information storage.

Greg Wallraff, an IBM scientist and a lithography and materials expert working on the project shared that, “”What we are really making are tiny DNA circuit boards that will be used to assemble other components. These are DNA nanostructures that are self-assembled into discrete shapes. Our goal is to use these structures as bread boards on which to assemble carbon nanotubes, silicon nanowires, quantum dots.”

This is not new, research on “DNA origami” conducted by California Institute of Technology’s Paul Rothemund, is currently being used by researchers on a global level to experiment with nanotech self-replicating. Scientists hope that by perfecting the process, chips can be grown rather than assembled.

An added bonus beyond self-replication, is that DNA can both apply and recognize, features as small as two nanometers. where as even the most cutting-edge traditional chips today have features that average 45 nanometers. 

How are they doing it?

Although the research is still early, scientists have a good idea of where they are headed with the new technology.

First, scientists would take scaffolds of designer DNA that is created into very specific shapes that will be used in the nanotubing grid. If you can belive this, scientists have actually made DNA structures in the shapes of circles, stars, and happy faces.

So then, a photo-resistant surface is etched with e-beam lithography and the combination of several films. Pour the DNA into this new mold and let the DNA do it’s thing, spreading out through the mold and growing naturally between the patterns of the substrate surface and the physical and chemical forces between the molecules. This is followed up by pouring in the nanotubes and allowing the interactions between the nanotubing and DNA to grow into the pattern/grid naturally.

So in a nutshell, what does it mean? It means that we are moving away from technology that is “assembled” by human or machine and created from components, and towards organic technology that grows and self-replicates itself. The DNA that creates our human form, our base, now creating nano-chips that will hold and apply information, chips that will likely be used in the future in every tech device we utilize as their base. 

As we thin further the veils between life and tech, it’s easy to see that technology will one day not too far in our future become something that is no longer seperate from the organic lifeforms that use it, but rather another new form of organic intelligence that we interface and interact with co-creatively.

And on the viral level, you have to admit that even if you have within you a resistance or subtle feeling that we are moving into territory where the lines between us and tech are uncomfortably thinning, it’s still cool.

Your Tech-Goddess,
Erika

Brilliantly Post-Technological

Erika here, your personal Tech-Goddess, and as Stargate fans would say, “Brilliantly Post-Technological”.

What has inspired me to start tech-blogging is the awareness of web thinking, and the ability to put a label on what web thinking is, which led to the epiphany that those moments of profound overwhelm where my mind sees or hears something new and instantly creates maps and connections to seemingly unrelated concepts, objects or realities all interwoven back to a central truth are related to a shift in mental perception and logic that is global. It’s a shift from linear logic to whole-brain and more of a web logic that connects everything to everything else in coherent way.As we are bombarded with new technology, information and applications, I feel there is a search for relevance and theme, something that I can contribute by my own process of web thinking and insight.In “The First Sex” author Helen Fisher notes, “women more regularly think contextually; they take a more “holistic” view of the issue at hand. That is, they integrate more details of the world around them, details ranging from the nuances of body posture to the position of objects in a room”.

I feel that this is a subtle shift in thinking that is also happening with men and the male brain globally. It’s a search for connection and meaning.Web thinking, in tech, means that if you show me the prototype for a new kind gadget, first my brain flips through the emotional connects of whether I actually like it and would use it, and then begins connecting to how it would be useful to me, to you, to others, to humanity, and what kind of emotional and psychological impact does it have as a whole

Then from the emotions I flip over to the logical, just HOW useful is it? I start thinking of applications, and where it will or will not be relevant, then imagination kicks in and the timelines all happen at once. Can I see myself, other women, other men using this? How does it look, feel, taste, smell as I live their experiences? How much easier is it making my life in the scenarios? Is it viral? Or, is it just a really bad idea?

Digging deeper I want to know if this new gadget will benefit your business, your life, your family and HOW. Is this something we are evolving towards, away from or through? Where does it all converge back into one truth, and what is the core essence from the singular person to a world and universal level.

All of this happens for me in a few seconds of paralyzing brain freeze, something I thought at one time was lethal and radical daydreaming but now see as (Stargate inspired) post-technological web thinking.

In short, my intention is to look at tech and offer insight and instruction from a larger view. Let’s look PAST whatever current tech, gadget, trend or viral video we are talking about to the future we are evolving towards where technology is organic and our awake minds not only interfacing with the tech, but ARE the tech. (Post-Technological)

Can you imagine a world where call phones are no longer needed because our brains have learned to dial the “frequency” (like the current phone numbers) of the person we wish to call, and then we use telepathy to have a conversation? When I see something like the new nano-tech phone concept I’m reviewing here soon, I’m seeing communication and tech moving post-tech, BACK to the FUTURE, to organic

Ancient or Future?
You decide.

Your Tech-Goddess, Erika