15
POPSWill the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform? One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders. It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently? Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots. Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull). If that happens then Gibson help us all - remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs. If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we're not quite sure what it'll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.
13
POPSCelebrity Meter Although there are a few different standards for highlighting links like these, most social networking sites, blog software and hosting services support one or more. They're relying on site builders to highlight such links by using special markup. Google uses this information to build a graph of all sites and their links to one another. Rather than request the API from each site individually (Twitter followers, MySpace friends, etc.), Google provides a single RESTful API to send a simple query in one shot. While there are limits to this data (Facebook info is currently not available in this widget), the information we're getting is real and the friend information we're getting isn't a simple number but a list of live URLs that Google has vetted for us.
Newest Clips
see Newest Clips
5
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update