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The upshot of the story is that a dead MMORPG designer has died and left behind a widely distributed daemon that watches news feeds and waits for signals to begin the takeover of the world with the goal of changing human civilization in fundamental ways. It contacts the principal parties from the news and manipulates them to shape future events. To the masses, this is like the magic referred to in Clarke’s 3rd law, in fact they simply refuse to believe that it is happening at all.

Everyone gets blurbs. Even for a first book, the publishers force established writers they have under contract to say nice things about their new stablemates. I was mildly impressed with this one, though.

“Greatest. Techno-thriller. Period. Experts have long feared the Internet doomsday scenario. Daemon is arguably more terrifying.”
— Billy O’Brien, former Director of Cybersecurity and Communications Policy at the White House

You know, the hyperbole is there so, old Billy O’Brien (he worked for Cheney’s steampunk level security team) probably didn’t write it but it still lends a feeling that someone was thinking about us when they chose their blurbers. (Slashdot and paste are quoted, too.)

This is the first of at least two books in a series. I should tell you that the story is nowhere near over at the end of Daemon. The sequel , “Freedom” is out there now and I like it’s subtitle: “Everything is under control. Everything…”

I audited this book. I use this term rather than saying I read it because I listened to an Audible recording of it. I make this distinction because I think that the experiences are very different although not as much so as those of reading and seeing a movie based on a book. The book was unabridged but I still think I missed some subtleties because of the actors’ interpretations of line readings an so on. The production was good. Characterizations weren’t distracting and there were some decent modest sound effects but only to end chapters not in the middle of battle scenes for example.
I’ll be picking up “Freedom” soon and hope that the sequel doesn’t veer into Matrix Reload territory. Until then, I’m just glad that at least one book without glittery vampires is out there for the kids.

-Alan Thornton for acc3l

Some social networks have grown to such enormous proportions that they rival entire countries in terms of population—if Facebook, for example, was a country, it would be the fifth-most-populated in the world (right between Indonesia and Brazil). [Smashing Magazine]

Facebook campaign for Rage Against the Machine

The annual race in the British pop charts to get the ‘Christmas’ number one has become an irrelevance in recent years. The scheduling of Simon Cowell’s ‘X Factor’ TV series, which culminates a week before Christmas, and subsequent release of the winner’s single has guaranteed the X Factor winner the Christmas number one.

This year’s winner was Joe McElderry and the chosen single was ‘The Climb’ – a cover of last year’s Miley Cyrus hit, everything pointed to Joe getting the coveted Christmas number one.

Jon Morter picture by Tracy Morter (www.tracymorter.com)

Jon Morter, a resident of South Woodham Ferrers and occasional drinker in my local, decided that the ‘X Factor effect’ had robbed the charts of much of their festive excitement. After an aborted attempt to get Rick Astley to top the charts in 2008, Jon decided that to prove his point he needed to promote a track that was decidedly un-festive. He and his wife Tracy selected Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ – with its chorus of “I won’t do what you tell me” and started a group on Facebook to promote the campaign.

Inevitably the campaign came under considerable criticism, Cheryl Cole (a member of the group Girls Aloud and an X-Factor judge) described the campaign as ‘mean’ saying “I would be devastated to see Joe lose possibly the best thing that could happen to him in his life. Every aspiring pop star dreams of a No 1 record.” while Simon Cowell said “If you take me out of the equation, you have a teenager with his first single being attacked by a huge hate mob on Facebook.”

The Facebook campaign was not without its problems, dozens of fake RaTM groups appeared on Facebook, several promoting those irritating ‘get a free iPhone’ scams. Jon & Tracy responded by linking their campaign to the British charity ‘Shelter’ – raising over £90,000 for homeless people, and RaTM pledged to donate their unexpected royalties to the charity.

The Facebook pages mysteriously disappeared on a number of occasions and the sales figures were scrutinised by the company responsible for compiling the charts. In the end the sales of RaTM beat  Joe McElderry by around 50,000 – or 10%. After the earlier animosity Simon Cowell phoned Jon on the evening before the result and congratulated him on the campaign; according to Jon “He commended us on how we had marketed the campaign, and said if we won, he would be the first to congratulate us.“.

When the result was announced on the evening of Sunday December 20^th Cowell was true to his word and texted his congratulations to Jon.

After the result, Jon said: “I think it just shows that in this day and age, if you want to say something, then you can – with the help of the internet and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. If enough people are with you, you can beat the status quo.”

The following days saw Jon on radio and TV, this clip was from an early evening show, and since he’d been doing interviews since about 5am he could be excused for being somewhat jaded. His appearance on CNN is perhaps more lucid.

Joe McElderry’s single made it to number one the week after Christmas, but Jon and Tracy’s campaign had achieved its objective. Since then they have been plagued with suggestions for other campaigns, but while Jon still has a few ideas, their official line is “we’ll offer to support others if they fancy a go like we did…but we won’t attempt to top the Christmas chart again. It’s now been done..and bloody well if you ask us.”

The official facebook group, which has over a million members, can be found here.

Social Media fueled fund raising for Haiti.

Type “Haiti” into Twitter, Facebook or YouTube and you soon encounter a message from @redcross sent at 05:38 GMT on Jan 13. In less than 48 hours, the American Red Cross had received more than $35m in donations – including $8m directly from texts.

Haiti Earthquake

“It’s been incredible. People have donated more to Haiti than to Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Asia and Twitter has played an extremely significant part.”

In the race to fundraise, social network sites have given aid agencies the power to bypass TV and radio and appeal directly to the public.  The Haitian musician Wyclef Jean, for example, has raised $1m for earthquake victims through his Yele Haiti foundation, after appealing for help through Twitter.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, he tweeted, asking for donations through his foundation. His 1.3 million followers answered his call – and passed on his appeal with a message: “Spread the word”.

Meanwhile on Facebook, hundreds of thousands of people signed up to awareness groups, such as Earthquake Haiti, which offers a link to Oxfam’s Haiti relief fund.

On Youtube, bloggers began posting their own personal appeals, calling for donations.

So, how was this mass mobilisation achieved? After all, the American Red Cross had only a modest number of followers on Twitter when their appeal was launched. Their trick was to alert popular celebrities – and let their fans on Twitter do the rest.

This is a great example of social media effecting change (for the better) in the real world.  The way we communicate and interact with each other is no longer limited to our immediate circle of friends, we now live in a larger world where we are all interconnected and citizens of a global community.

Too Many Twits make a Twat

Tory Leader, David Cameron when asked whether he used Twitter said:
“The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it – too many twits might make a twat.”
The remark was greeted with laughter in the studio, with host Christian O’Connell saying: “That’s fantastic.”

Aides stressed that Mr Cameron had apologised immediately for the latter slip, and pointed out that “twat” was not defined as a swear word under radio guidelines.

Note from Andy: I should point out that the word “Twat” has a completely different meaning in the UK compared to the US. In the states the term is more anatomical than comical.