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The Collective Voice of the Internet
nycheetah submits a story about the collective voice of the internet. There's also a Bell Labs webpage with some more technical information about the project.
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"There's also a Bell Labs webpage with some more technical information about the project."
Great, but so far, you haven't provided any information. I thought that the purpose of the summary was to summarise. How is anyone supposed to know whether this article is worth reading if you don't tell us what it's about?
people watching it at the same time. When I wash my car, read a book, eat dinner or just take a leak there are perhaps millions engaging in the same activity at the same time.
Big deal. It isn't some mystical fact. Just a fact. It conveys no information other than the fact that there are billions of people who at any given time are doing one of a fairly limited set of things.
We read greater things into it primarily because we are wired to seek acceptence from the tribal unit by behaving in similar fashions to the group. Geeks are nonconformists, although they tend to be nonconformist in the same sense that hippies and Japanese teens are "nonconformist." i.e., conform the same as me or you are "out."
The idea of someone surfing the same page as you at the same time gives the illusion of "group membership" with that person even though no such "group" actually exists.
It's a literal "feel good" idea of no actual signifigance. Your "group" membership is actually far closer with the guy that stocked the shelves at the supermarket where you buy your food or that damned cop who wouldn't let you off with a warning.
This is not to say that real groups aren't forged over the internet. Just that they aren't any more "golly gee" than any other such tenuous groups, like everyone who watched Friends last night.
KFG