Day Two

Day Two, an associate who we'll be helping manage the game company came by dropped off some books for RPG night.
This early in the game I'm just settling into having a new internet connection and all that that means, working on developing new working habits, and researching, lot of researching with the goal in mind of being able to work at home over the internet. Here's some initial fruits of my efforts:

a friend recommended ExpertBee, a website where you can get paid to do research for other people. Looks intriguing, but so far the the research question postings have been inactive.
This is stock market simulation game I'm going to play it for a while to see if I can get consistently good at picking winners, by then I'll have saved to enough $$$$$ to start investing for real.
LEGO mindstorms is a fascinating example of a crowd-sourced business model. When you purchase the product, you're not just acquiring configurable robot kits, you're also buying a membership into an online community of robot builders, allowing for the customer base to help drive innovation. I think Mindstorms an interesting case study and will be using it as a reference point for discussing the implications new socioeconomic relationships enabled by novel information technologies.
A good conceptual lens for analyze Mindstorms and other thematically similar changes to our market economy is available to readers of Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, which is highly recommended reading to everybody, and required reading to anyone who wants to have the basic vocabulary to take a part in the discussion that I hope to cultivate with this blog. It's a fascinating survey of the many ways that computers, cellphones, internet, texting, etc are opening new ways for people to from groups and coordinate their collaboration across geographic distance and social barriers.

Ok, that's a start, I have more to post later, now I'm on my way to have a meeting about a theatrical production....