'I don’t think in terms of technological determinism. I think in terms of human vulnerabilities: technological affordances and human vulnerabilities. The technologies of mobile connection make us some offers we can’t refuse. Connectivity technology pushes every button. There’s this new research that shows that our iPhones light up our brains in the same places that love lights up our brains. We’re wanted. Somebody wants us, somebody needs us, somebody’s calling to us, somebody remembered us. -- We’ve cornered ourselves into a communications culture, where I think we’re spending less and less time reflecting. The issue for me is reflection and spaces for reflection. Social media satisfy some needs. People feel connected. In some online places, people do feel responsibility and belonging. But in fact, people can just leave when they wish; the friended is not a friend. What I’m finding in my work is that online life can create a sense of disorientation. The speed of online friendship is so fast: you get this sense of intimacy so fast and the sense of close connection; you feel that you’re getting right to the heart of things really quickly. You’re not going through all the hard things that come with a shared life and a shared community; you have the sense of cutting to the chase. That goes on for awhile, and then somehow you don’t know what you have. You don’t know what your responsibilities are. You don’t know what you can ask for. So then people wonder, “Do I have everything; do I have nothing? What do I have?” It’s fine if you have a couple of those ambiguous relationships; everyone does. But when ambiguous relationships become more and more of your life, people become very disoriented. I have tremendous respect for the support and the connection and the fun that people have online. But I think when we decided to call these online connections “communities” and “relationships,” we chose the words we had available to us, and we confused ourselves. -- ...the point is, when we’re with people we feel as though we’re getting some kind of authenticity, and we experience ourselves as authentic. Which is why we go see people in person—we know, no matter how much they’re made up or fluffed up or prepared, we’re going to see the real something. And that’s what these kids are trying to avoid, when they only want to text, when they don’t want to have a conversation, and that’s what they’ve become exhausted by. They’ve put themselves in a world where they are performing all the time. They have organized a world where they’re always at their screen. That’s when they just kind of crack and find some way to drop out for awhile. -- I’ve studied kids and dolls – whenever I do a robot study, I do a parallel study with a doll. And everything is different with a doll. With a doll you have the psychology of projection. A child will act out with a doll what is on her mind: a little girl with a Barbie who feels guilty because she broke her mother’s china will put the Barbie in detention. Because of its passivity, because it’s inert, the doll is a projective screen for the child’s imagination, fantasies, sense of wonder, anxieties. Everything’s projected onto the doll. But a relational artifact, a sociable robot, is in a position to initiate a conversation. The robot is in a position to voice an opinion. With a robot, one is not free to project what is on one’s mind. The psychology of projection gives way to the psychology of engagement. The robot is presented as active, in place to be a new kind of best friend. Why do we need robots to do that? With every technology we need to ask if it’s serving our human purposes. What is the human need? What human purpose does it serve to have imitation people, who really aren’t people, pretending to be people? -- it’s only a collective fantasy that a robot, a machine that does not recognize your existence, can address your loneliness. In my view, this is a fantasy. We need to understand its roots. My research suggests that its roots lie in people having a sense that no one is there to listen to them. We have to acknowledge this. So many of us are lonely. But it does not follow that something that will never experience anything about human life can understand the things we want to talk about, about our lives. -- A common reaction to my book has been: “What are you complaining about? The people in your book, the elderly people who are happy with their robots, can’t tell the difference. My grandmother wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Why not give them this thing? If the machines will be so good we can’t tell the difference, what does it matter?” I think it matters very much. I think our humanity is at stake. -- It’s as though we don’t even have the word “solitude” anymore where solitude is a good thing. I have heard this formulation, how we need to “solve the problem of solitude,” not just on this one occasion. So, for example, people think of always having a device at hand as a way to solve the problem of solitude. We have a very hard time thinking of a life that does not include reaching for a device when one is alone. And I think we have an increasingly hard time even imagining that, imagining anything but loneliness. And of course, our connectivity devices give us the fantasy that we will never have to be alone. The capacity for solitude is crucial to our ability to reach out to people, not in anxiety but with a genuine ability to forge relationships. ...where we expect more from technology and less from each other; we’re treating each other as less human.'

'Selfobjects are external objects that function as part of the "self machinery" - 'i.e., objects which are not experienced as separate and independent from the self.' They are persons, objects or activities that "complete" the self, and which are necessary for normal functioning. 'Kohut describes early interactions between the infant and his caretakers as involving the infant's "self" and the infant's "selfobjects"'. Observing the patient's selfobject connections is a fundamental part of self-psychology. For instance, a person's particular habits, choice of education and work, taste in life partners, may fill a selfobject-function for that particular individual. Selfobjects are addressed throughout Kohut's theory, and include everything from the transference phenomenon in therapy, relatives, and items (for instance Linus van Pelt's security blanket): they 'thus cover the phenomena which were described by Winnicott as transitional objects. Among 'the great variety of selfobject relations that support the cohesion, vigor, and harmony of the adult self...[are] cultural selfobjects (the writers, artists, and political leaders of the group - the nation, for example - to which a person feels he belongs).' -- If psychopathology is explained as an "incomplete" or "defect" self, then the self-objects might be described as a self-prescribed "cure". As described by Kohut, the selfobject-function (i.e. what the selfobject does for the self) is taken for granted and seems to take place in a "blindzone." The function thus usually does not become "visible" until the relation with the selfobject is somehow broken.'

'Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them. In "Alone Together", MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It's a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools...' -- "...Alone Together is about human vulnerability and technological affordances. People are actually willing and wanting to substitute robots – that seem to care – for people... Nurturance is the killer app for sociable robotics. Human beings are programmed to love what we nurture." -- "'I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text.' When we use other people in this way, you can get used to seeing them as spare parts; as ways to support our too fragile selves."

"When you're a baby, your parents are substitutes for your pre-frontal cortex..." -- "How does the other shape the self? Well, we internalize their perspective." -- 'We treat our self like we have a self. We learn what we are like. We learn what we ought to be like. Self-knowledge is not gained from introspection.'

'Like many other researchers, we assume that the therapeutic relationship is an important component of the placebo effect. But many people — including doctors — think that the therapeutic relationship entirely accounts for the placebo effect. Our data show that this is not true. If the placebo effect was entirely due to the therapeutic relationship — the time, attention, warmth, and enthusiasm communicated by the doctor — then our placebo pill would not have produced any effect beyond that seen in our “no-treatment” control condition, because the no-treatment control patients received the same level of therapeutic relationship as that received by patients in the placebo pill condition. That tells us two things – one, that giving patients the placebo pill improved their condition, and two, that the difference in improvement was due to getting the pill. It was not due to the therapeutic relationship. -- We need to recognize and understand that patients are active agents in their treatment, not passive. The placebo effect does not come from the pill. It comes from the patient.' -- Made belief

'"I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It's peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction." Back in the early 80s, approaching the end of Vendetta's epic 38-part cycle, Moore was struggling to think of another "V" word with which to title a closing chapter. He'd already used Victims, Vaudeville and Vengeance; the Villain, the Voice, the Vanishing; even Vicissitude and Verwirrung (the German word for confusion). "I was getting pretty desperate," he says. He eventually settled on Vox populi. "Voice of the people. And I think that if the mask stands for anything, in the current context, that is what it stands for. This is the people. That mysterious entity that is evoked so often – this is the people."'

'To put it too simply, things have moved from a style of relating where one thinks: "I have a feeling, I want to make a call" to "I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text." In other words, the act of sharing a nascent feeling becomes part of the constitution of the feeling. The problem is that when we use other people in this way, as needed elements on the path toward our having our feelings, we can move toward a misuse of others. We are not relating to them as others but as what psychologists call "part objects." We are using them as spare parts to support our fragile selves. This takes the notion of an "other directed" self to a higher power. Our technology supports a culture of narcissism digital-style. It is a kind of self that does not tolerate being alone. And yet, psychology teaches us that if you do not teach your children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. We are forgetting this lesson in our culture of hyper-connection.'

'Chart: #The trade-off of ownership for access. Despite the infinite diversity of the human race, we’re actually quite similar in the kind of things we want to achieve on a day-to-day basis and, collectively, we’re beginning to realize that there’s little reason not to share the resources necessary to achieve these goals. With increased connectivity through modern technology, networks at both a global and local level are growing rapidly whilst new communities can develop and flourish through digital channels. These, in turn, allow for resources to be shared, swapped, borrowed, and traded while providing a platform where exclusive belongings are simply irrelevant. Effectively, access to the products or the means to achieve a specific goal has become good enough in these circumstances and a viable and appealing antidote to individual ownership. -- ...elements of trust and reputation become crucial to transactions between nodes...'

'We've learned a ton about how people share and what makes for a trusted, active sharing community. Not surprisingly, it requires a certain level of critical mass in an area to make an active sharing community. We've also learned the importance of groups on the network. When members join and create groups, they feel safe sharing with people they know - people they work with, people in the same apartment building, etc. This helps the network grow and become more useful for everyone. With NeighborGoods 2.0, we're launching a brand new groups feature so members can make private or public sharing communities for organizations, companies and and groups of all sizes. With NeighborGoods 2.0, groups can save thousands of dollars by sharing resources they collectively own.'

'Lisa Gansky, author of "The Mesh," talks about a future of business that's about sharing all kinds of stuff, either via smart and tech-enabled rental or, more boldly, peer-to-peer. Examples across industries -- from music to cars -- show how close we are to this meshy future.'

'Alone Together is the result of hundreds of interviews that Turkle has carried out over the last 15 years with a broad cross section of children, adults and old people. What Turkle finds is that, out of a sense of disappointment with each other, we’ve turned to robots as a substitute for human interaction.' -- "[The robotic moment] is the moment when we think that robots care about us. It's the moment when we ratchet up our expectations that we can put robots in the place of human beings." -- ("6 year-olds aren't disappointed, are they?") [Neglect] "There's this seduction by the robotic... Children attach to these robots and want to love them... there's a slide from better-than-nothing to better-than-everything: I want to robot dog because it's better than nothing. Then: a robot dog, it can always stay a puppy and that is kind of nice. And then only few conversations down the road: this robot will never die." -- "We've invented a form where we propose to substitute for our selves."

'What matters in the new era is not your physical wealth, but your reputation. As long as you’ve built up a rep for trustworthiness, there’s no reason you can’t benefit from access to a wealth of products and services when you need them. The trend isn’t entirely new — we’ve had toy libraries since the 1930s...'

Kirby: 'I introduce the term ‘diegetic prototypes’ to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These technologies only exist in the fictional world but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon previous work on the notion of prototypes as ‘performative artefacts’. The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial—all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production—and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.'

'We “learn to tolerate disappointment and ambiguity. And we learn that to sustain realistic relationships, one must accept others in their complexity.” There is a real danger, Turkle writes, that the rise of robotic companions will lower our expectations of human relationships, that we reduce relationships and come to see this reduction as the norm. She is clearly shaken by her research and she asks us to confront the implications of this loss. Turkle’s argument is that the choice of technologically-mediated friendships enables fragile and vulnerable individuals to regulate and plan their self-presentations in the world. The screen separates the speakers, she writes, offering an “illusion of privacy” and the “chance to write yourself into the person you want to be and to imagine others as you wish them to be, constructing them for your purposes.” Texting, in other words, offers at least the illusion of control and protection.'

'...there is speculation that implanted memories into one's existing photos could alter one's reality of the past and subsequent brand loyalty. ...according to Raskin, he notes that "social networking sites may either begin selling ad space in our memories as a business model for themselves, or people may directly offer themselves up as a platform for advertising to make some cash." In essence, this approach would be replacing 'celebrity' endorsements with "social-networking-followers-you-trust' endorsements. This is also supported by the fact that product placement within photos has greater value than simple TV commercials. On the flip side, the ethics of such advertising could put the social networking user at risk of losing the trust of his followers.'

'So how will we relate to these "alive enough" machines? "We start to consider what I call the "better than nothing" argument: that the robot would be better than nothing, which is really going down a slippery slide. Eventually, the robot starts to be seen as "better than anything." The story begins with: "Oh, a robot puppy. That will be nice because I'm allergic to dogs. So a robot would be better than not having anything." And then all of a sudden it's: "Oh, the robot puppy, you can always keep it a puppy at that cute puppy stage and it will never die and leave you alone." All of a sudden the robot puppy becomes better than any real puppy could ever be because it offers you things that living beings never could: a kind of total control, no surprises, a made-to-measure relationship where you can have things exactly as you want them." -- "If you don't know how to be alone, all you can ever be is lonely."'

Julian Bleeker at Kicker Studio's 2010 Device Design Day: 'Prototypes are ways to test ideas—but where do those ideas come from? It may be that the path to better device design is best followed by creating props that help tell stories before prototypes designed to test technical feasibility. What I want to suggest in this talk is the way that design can use fiction—and fiction can use design—to help imagine how things can be designed just a little bit better.'

'TOKYO—In an effort to keep pace with its largely progressive customer base, Toyota Motor Corporation announced Monday that the 2012 line of Prius hybrid-electric vehicles would come equipped with a crude but functional reproductive system. "It's the same fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly car that drivers love, but with the option of male or female sex organs," said Toyota spokesman Veronica Bates, inviting reporters to examine the 85-pound vulva of a just-assembled female Prius, as well as the passenger-side vas deferens of its male counterpart.'

"...differences between acting out and working through. ...using these environments to explore and work through some aspect of the self... putting different aspects of yourself out there."

'MY LIFE IS BETTER WITH TECHNOLOGY LASTING 4EVR CONNECTING WITH OTHER HUMANS SMART, SAVVY SHOPPING MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I AM 'BEATING SOCIETY' 'BEATING CONSUMERISM' ''TRANSCENDING TECHNOLOGICAL OBSOLESCENCE''

'As much of an online paradise as Twitter is, it's not *completely* free of the kinds of annoying behavior we see in the real world. High on the list are the sorts of adolescent posturing that social media in general make so easy--preening, name-dropping, ass-kissing, pandering, cliquishness, slavish trend-following. Yes, a tweet is usually just a tweet, but sometimes it's as conspicuously coded as the brand of jeans a high-school girl wears.'

'At one point we added an ice cream truck into the Parking Wars mix. If it was parked on a street, it amplified the value of all of the other cars. There was an alpha player, a woman named Ellie, who would park the ice cream truck on a street and then let everybody know so they could come get double points. It turned out that Ellie was very sick and ultimately, she passed away. What was so powerful was to see how everybody responded to her passion. What they wrote to her post-mortem were these really beautiful notes that talked about her generosity and her humility. The thing that's really interesting is how much of her personality she was able to express through 47 pixels of an ice cream truck. That speaks to what games are really doing, which is allowing people to express themselves in a living system with other people who are doing the same. I think that for many people, sometimes real life doesn't always feel like something that you can have concrete effects on in a systemic way.'

'Facebook fans overwatered the plant, loving it to death. Since its unveiling two months ago, Isai said Meet Eater had attracted more than 5,000 fans from across the world -- including a five-fold spike in the past two weeks -- literally drowning it with love. "We found that it's been over-loved, it's actually died two times from having too much stimulation, which is an interesting outcome for us," said Isai, a Queensland University student in interactive design. -- He said the research showed meaningful connections could be made online, but also some "needs and responses" could not be met via computers.'

'Toybots ushers in an "internet of things" that will disrupt the gaming, entertainment and toy industries. We have been building the Toybots Platform for connected toys with full 3G, WiFi, GPS and accelerometer capabilities tied to online and mobile games. Imagine a physical toy you can tickle online and it giggles in the real world. Imagine a grandmother in Iowa recording a family story and the toy telling the story to her grandchild in Florida. You will be able to download audio books as well to the toys and play full online games with these toys. Toybots will bridge mobile, online and physical gaming worlds together for the first time in an inspirational and unique way.'

'In 13 locations around the town, players can find 2D barcodes to scan and call up images of the young women in the game. The girls wear different clothing from their typical in-game looks. One hotel has gone as far as putting a barcode in its rooms, allowing players to see their “girlfriends” in a more private setting wearing summer kimonos. This unusual ploy on the part of the town and the gaming company Konami has reportedly boosted local tourism this summer after a steady decline since the 1990s, when a Japanese economic crunch cut down on company-sponsored vacations.'

"Here's some pictures of my dog. Can you comment on these?" -- Comment or it didn't happen.

'Among young people especially [Sherry Turkle] found that the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather than internally developed: a series of profiles to be sculptured and refined in response to public opinion. “On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are. But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.” Referring to “The Lonely Crowd,” the landmark description of the transformation of the American character from inner- to outer-directed, Turkle added, “Twitter is outer-directedness cubed.” -- I am trying to gain some perspective on the perpetual performer’s self-consciousness. That involves trying to sort out the line between person and persona, the public and private self.' -- I am Jack's Social Object

'You may now begin to notice a sticker with a redeemable code for “5 free farm cash,” the FarmVille currency that is used to manage virtual goods in the game. In the six-week pilot for the promotion, more than 100,000 in virtual Farm Cash was redeemed using the stickers, which appeared on 25 different Green Giant produce items. The promotion was launched in Target Fresh Grocery and SuperTarget stores first, but was expanded to stores nationwide as a result of the pilot promotion success.'

'One of the questions that keeps coming up is people saying, "Ok, this is great, but will it make me buy more Old Spice?" If you look at the comments that are publicly saying, "I'm going to go and try Old Spice after this, I'm going to wear more Old Spice."' -- Yup. The smell will become an in-joke. Shared/social object/scent.

'Would you trust this robot?'

'Can you be vaguely dissatisfied, unfulfilled and possibly even resentful of your marriage, yet fake it enough that your spouse thinks you love them more than anything? So why do you think you can fool your 8 year old? Because he's 8? He smells it on you, it reeks, like sepsis. And like all infections, it will spread to him eventually. -- I have a surprising piece of advice for parents, which I hope will be taken in the spirit it is offered: your kid doesn't want to be around you that much. No one does. This isn't because you're a bad person but because you're an ordinary person. You are not such a unique, creative, intelligent or even interesting person that the kid benefits from constant exposure to you. When you have something to offer, maximize and concentrate that time, and then get the hell out of the way.'

'...three modes of sharing and why they're different: #Sharing Goods: the hardest to do, because if you give a physical good you no longer have it, you're deprived of it. #Sharing Services: like giving helping someone across the road - you don't lose out on physical stuff but it's an inconvenience. #Sharing Information: like giving someone directions - you don't lose stuff, it doesn't take much time, no inconvenience. -- The music industry is not battling against a generation of digital criminals, it's fighting a bunch of kids doing what their parents have been telling them since they were two – sharing nicely. -- A mixtape is more valuable gift than a spotify playlist because of that embedded value, because everyone knows how much work they are, of the care you have to take, because there is only one.'

'The system awards points and virtual badges to players depending on how often they go out and which places they visit. Users who frequent a particular place enough times are crowned “mayor” of that particular location. “People are very territorial about their mayorships,” Mr. Crowley said. “It’s almost like bragging rights.”'

'...theories such as “hypertextuality” and “transfictionality” are problematised in light of transmedia phenomena. Since the phenomenon involves both narrative and game modes, a new methodology is introduced to study their presence at various stages of design: transmodality. The employment of actual world in transmedia practices is discussed in light of Aristotle’s “dramatic unities” and through the theory of “deictic shift theory”. Through explorations of research questions from media, narrative and game studies as well as semiotics, this thesis aims to explain how transmedia fictions are a peculiar practice that demands its own research area and methodologies.'

'CORE INSIGHT #2: TIE-INS AS FICTIONAL ARTEFACTS: Fictional artefacts are tangible products that have a presence within a fictional world. The drive for the print artefact is an immersive desire that is transcends the desire to read in print, to wanting to hold in your hand that which a fictional character has held in theirs. Fictional artefacts can be imported or exported.'

'With the Electric Vehicle Pack, the Sims not only get a shiny new electric car but solar panels and a windmill for generating clean electricity. “Electric vehicles are additionally going to appeal to younger, more socially conscious prospects and especially early adopters,” said Stephen Norman, Senior VP of Global Marketing for Renault. “This is the heartland of the Sims 3 community and it thus provides a great innovative way to build the Renault Brand just ahead of the Renault range of affordable electric vehicles themselves.” While Renault says the gasoline bills for Sims families are expected to decrease, we expect that players will also have to remind their Sims to plug in the car.' -- So if the car functions as a status object that allows you to express your sense of virtue to yourself and to others in the virtual world, by purchasing the vehicle there, have you exhausted your sense of virtue such that you'd have little motivation to purchase the 'real' thing in the 'real' world?

'The internet is already doing a good job of serving as a clearing exchange and means of valuation for the currencies of reputation, social graph, intention, and attention. Blippy broadcasts purchasing activity and serves as a leading indicator for public company quarterly sales; a real-time economy feed. Hunch goes a step further with the grand vision of mapping and predicting the affinity of all people for all objects. ...what is any individual’s preference for Nike, TikTok, Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulan Bator, existentialism, or any other noun, brand, product, item, object or idea. Social feed “likes” are already being mined for preference, affinity, and revenue.'

'The goal of Music Pets is to entertain a virtual pet by training it to like the music you like, then using points to send the pet out to find more music to add to your collection. It sounds silly, but this cartoon-ish virtual world includes every element of the real-world music experience: getting recommendations, deciding whether you like songs, collecting music, and going over to your friends’ “houses” to play songs from your collection, which, as with just about everything else, requires that you expend points. As with similar games, you can get everything you want for your pet and your music collection for free, so long as you have the time to add them to your pet’s training regimen by engaging in repetitive, somewhat amusing activities... Powering up for more points without spending lots of time requires that you pay up in real money, which is something many people simply don’t do for digital music in other contexts. Here’s how it works: ... '

'Next week, FarmVille players will have the ability to grow peanuts, thanks to ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi and an Israeli candy brand. We’re told this is the first time a FarmVille crop has been directly linked to a brand. Saatchi Interactive in Tel Aviv is working on a rollout campaign for Elite Taami Nutz, a peanut-filled variant of a popular Israeli chocolate bar. The new crop will roll out with a simultaneous farm design competition on April 14. The peanuts cost 20 credits to buy, sell for 78 credits and can be harvested in 16 hours.'

'"Look, I love my Xbox, I really do. We've had a lot of great times together," he said. "But life got in the way, you know? Suddenly you have more responsibilities at work, or you're just too tired, or your wife needs help with the kids, and the things that really matter fall by the wayside. Well, now it's time to make things right."'

'This commercial for Tru Blood (from the HBO show of the same name) packs a fictional multiverse whammy. Not only is it hawking a defictionalized product, but a close look about five seconds in reveals that the alpha males are clinking “de-Simpsonized” Duff Beer cans!' -- Video inside.

'From 10 to 24 March 2010, IKEA develops an interesting event in four important metro stations in Paris. Furniture collections are currently displayed in high-traffic spots, giving the potential customers a chance to interact with the brand by checking out the products.'

'Sex Panther [available via Omni Consumer Products Corporation] has been banned in nine countries (so far). What I love about Brian Fantana’s hidden collection of toiletries is that it’s filled with a host of made-up products like Stag, Wood Grains, and Stephanie’s Clique which are seamlessly combined with real colognes from the seventies such as Azzaro PH, Pinaud Musk, and Hai Karate.'

'What makes fictionalized product placements so conducive to positive and memorable engagement is perhaps their utilization of tongue-in-cheek humor of parody and satire. The real brands portrayed in displacements, specifically fictionalized ones, are usually iconic and commonly known. Fictionalized displacements are created using similar phrasing, slogans and visual identifiers as their real world counterparts. While fictionalized displacements typically mimic the most identifiable characteristics of real brands, there is always something “off” about them. Even if a product displacement is not a parody and only functions as a fictionalized stand-in, viewers are able to sense and even identify “off” content. In a way, viewers interact with fictionalized product displacements more so than standard brand integrations because they are required to connect their cultural knowledge to media messages presented.' -- If it's popular enough to be parodied...

Study: 'This may be a real irony of role playing—people whose main practice is pretending to be someone else may be also engaging in opening up so much through this practice that they are driving the very self-disclosure that leads to true social bonds.' -- Koster: 'People tend to think that muds alter how people perceive one another. That gender and race and handicaps cease to matter. It is a noble vision, sure, one shared in general by these frontier netters. In truth, muds reveal the self in rather disturbing ways. We all construct ‘faces’ and masks to deal with others. Usually in interpersonal relationships, the masks can slip, they evolve and react, and they have body language and cues. On a mud, on the net, whatever—they cannot. And people see specifically this: what you choose to represent yourself as, and THAT is more revealing of your true nature than gender, race, age, or anything else.'

'As our group membership forms our identity, it is only natural for us to want to be part of groups that are both high status and have a positive image. Crucially though, high status groups only have that high status when compared to other groups. In other words: knowing your group is superior requires having a worse group to look down upon. Seen in the light of social identity theory, then, the boys in the experiment do have a reason to be selfish about the allocation of the virtual cash. It is all about boosting their own identities through making their own group look better.'

'In India, where corruption (and the bribery that comes along with it) are a big problem, an organization called 5th Pillar has taken to printing zero rupee notes (so far it's printed over one million of them). The basic premise is that when someone is confronted by a corrupt official for a bribe they give them the zero rupee note, allowing them to make a statement without having to say anything at all. -- "Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization--that is, they are not alone in this fight."' -- The pirates' 'Black Mark'?

'...when given the choice, try and move up the hierarchy of value. If given the opportunity to work with two customer segments, one of which sees your product as a basic utility and another of which sees it as a lifestyle statement, choose the latter. IMVU made that choice early on, when we abandoned some profitable customers who wanted to use our product as a regular-IM substitute. There was no way to service them while still engaging with the goths, emos and anime fans who were rapidly becoming IMVU's top evangelists. We doubled-down on identity value, and it worked out well.'

'A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black, acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transportation, says the creator. -- Here's how it works. The purchaser can set a new value for the artwork, which must be based on "current market expectations" of Larsen's work, and which could be considerably more than the price they paid. When A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter decides it wants to be sold again, bidders will start their battle at the value set by the current owner. This is where the art collector could make money. However they must first pay any fees to eBay and give Larsen 15 percent of any increase in value of the artwork.'

'#1. Show the work that went into inventing the product #2. Show the work that goes into creating each individual product. It can give “romance” to the product. People love to associate objects with romantic pasts.'

"We want to be known."

'Our assumption of the market-based ethics of turning things to account, of consuming efficiently, means we want to make our enjoyment of goods count, or matter, beyond the pleasure itself -- we experience the productivity of it as pleasure, and without that sense that our enjoyment will be in some larger sense useful, setting an example, reinforcing cool, etc., we no longer actually enjoy things.'

'...the "release" of informational goods produced and distributed in social networks is not free; there is a cost to the user in stress, in insecurity, in the fear of exclusion, of not knowing, not keeping up, being hopelessly out of style, being obscure. The self -- the individual subject -- within systems of social production is fundamentally insecure and unstable, and is compelled to continue to produce information by consuming other information and goods in a social forum under conditions the require the consumption to be competitive, signifying. -- The value of social production is that can exploit that source of emotional motivation without having to provide any wage compensation.'

'First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn't described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person. I read 400 pages of that book and barely had any idea of what the main character looked like; as far as I was concerned she was a giant Lego brick. Appearance aside, her personality is portrayed as insecure, fumbling, and awkward - a combination anyone who ever went through puberty can relate to. By creating this "empty shell," the character becomes less of a person and more of something a female reader can put on and wear.'

'On Sunday, a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus. The wedding took place during a Make: Japan meet-up held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In attendance were a live audience, an MC, the bride's virtual video game girlfriend—who made a speech—and a real human priest.' -- Idoru?

'The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, it uploaded images from of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album. Then it put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it. Facebook being what it is, word got out and needy, enthusiastic Swedes begged for more pictures so that they could tag themselves to a new sofa, a new bed, or a new vase into which they could stick their plastic flowers or their dead grandparents' ashes. ...thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the personal galaxy known as their profile pages.'

'...microtransactions typically have low prices, and the discrete value saved on a single purchase, even at half price, is so small that it might not convince non-paying players to enter their credit card information. To remedy this effect, an investment model could be implemented, where the player invests in the in-game currency for a guaranteed return on investment. The investment scheme could be framed within the fiction, for example that a local king needs funds for an ongoing war and will pay back the amount in one month at 20 percent interest. ...the unavoidable attrition rate of players means that some will stop playing before spending all of their sunk, in-game wealth. This sum of unspent wealth is expected to be bigger than usual when players are enticed to sink larger sums into the game. In other words: Players are expected to have larger sums of money in the bank when they eventually quit.' -- '...respondents bought goods because of social obligations or peer pressure.'

'"The new device is an improvement over the old device, making it more attractive for purchase by all Americans," said Thomas Wakefield, a spokesperson for the large conglomerate that manufactures the new device. "The old device is no longer sufficient. Consumers should no longer have any use or longing for the old device." "Not only will I be able to perform tasks faster than before, but my new device will also inform those around me that I am a successful individual who is up on the latest trends," said Rebecca Hodge. "Its attractiveness and considerable value are, by extension, my attractiveness and considerable value." "True, it appeals to my most basic insecurities, but this new device will ultimately be replaced by a newer device, rendering it completely undesirable and utterly repellent to my personal tastes," device-enthusiast Ryan Janosch said. "Also, I should start saving my money for the next latest device which will replace the newer new device a couple months after that."'

'It's that experience of driving in the back of the family car, scrunching you eyes up at night to turn the streetlights into laser weapons and shooting other cars.' -- o_< ZZZAP!

'...cuteness is physically addicting. -- As the essayist Daniel Harris argued our enjoyment of adorable stuff has a hidden dark side. “Adorable things are often most adorable in the middle of a pratfall or a blunder.” He mentions Winnie-the-Pooh’s getting his head stuck in a beehive as an example and goes on to argue that children themselves are not really so cute; cuteness, instead, is something we do to them. “There is something dark about using children for the pleasure of our maternal needs,” Harris says. “We enjoy being caretakers so much that we will create situations in which they need our care.” -- Roland Kelts: "...if you are desperate to be known, you need a strategy for being known, and a very good strategy is the old evolutionary one of being so cute that you need to be cared for. That was, in a sense, Japan’s position for the last 60 years: ‘We will make your products really, really well, and we’re going to be the best little boy you can imagine.’”

'Here's the interesting bit. On page 13 of the online comic, it's possible to click on a computer monitor in one of the frames. This plunges you into a sort of old school text adventure, which borrows the first line from classic of the genre, Zork. This is followed by another mini-game based around assembling genetic codes. Apparently, X will eventually be a cross-platform retail game release, which will include consoles. It will also turn up as a printed graphic novel and an online community-driven ARG. Somehow, they will all align and interact. "We've introduced a world inside a graphic novel that people can come and explore at their own pace, go as deep down that rabbit hole as they want, and join and interact with a community of other people all doing the same thing. Now, once you have a global universe evolving, and the player's experience unfolds within that universe, you have some real potential for complementary, parallel stories."'

"The presidency of Mr. Obama is truly a landmark event, and I can think of no better way to honor it than with this $2.5 billion advanced digital-imaging project," acting archivist Adrienne Thomas told reporters. "Not only will our sensors provide unprecedented moment-to-moment documentation of a sitting U.S. president, but they will also give the American people the breathtaking realism and seamless layer animation they have come to expect." Many scholars have also praised a feature of the motion capture technology that would allow future generations to digitally alter the president's wire-frame model by retroactively modifying clothing, facial features, skin tone, and even accessories.' -- Shades of PKD's 'The Simulacra'.

'Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider real value -- and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.' -- THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE WORST THE WORST THE WORST THE WORST THE WORST

iPhone or GTFO -- NSFW: Curved lines and sleek surfaces.

'In Japan, Konami conducted a lifestyle survey of 500 men in their twenties, just releasing the results late last month. About 40 percent of these men said that they thought in-game love is something worth seeking out. About 20 percent of those polled actually want love with a videogame character.' -- MOAR FEEDBACK

'If I put a bunch of tracks on an MP3 blog ... I’ve crossed the line into being a freelance marketer, a wannabe A&R person. I want strangers to applaud my taste under the auspices of “sharing.” -- It’s no better if I talk about my musical tastes on a social network—the context changes the relevance of what I am saying and my opinions can be aggregated and sold as demographic data, or could lead to my friends being hit with certain sorts of targeted ads. By the terms of service, my opinions become part of a commercial public record. Our intentions in listening will be harder and harder to keep pure; the temptations to sell our tastes out by blogging/tweeting/social network posting about them will continue to increase.'

'...metaphors reveal the extent to which we think with our bodies. -- “What we’ve discovered in the last 30 years is--surprise, surprise--people think with their brains,” says Lakoff. “And their brains are part of their bodies.” -- To the extent that metaphors reveal how we think, they also suggest ways that physical manipulation might be used to shape our thought. In essence, that is what much metaphor research entails. And while psychologists have thus far been primarily interested in using such manipulations simply to tease out an observable effect, there’s no reason that they couldn’t be put to other uses as well, by marketers, architects, teachers, parents, and litigators, among others. A few psychologists have begun to ponder applications. Ackerman, for example, is looking at the impact of perceptions of hardness on our sense of difficulty. The study is ongoing, but he says he is finding that something as simple as sitting on a hard chair makes people think of a task as harder.'

'Call it a massively multiplayer offline game. -- The items the Dragon Quest players are exchanging are treasure maps that lead them to hidden dungeons filled with monsters and treasure. When a player finds a map in the single-player game and then passes it along, his name will be attached, perhaps making him a mini celebrity. -- The game mode that’s fueling the Japanese crowds is called sure-chigai tsuushin, or “passerby communication.” It’s a brilliant concept for densely populated cities like Tokyo -- While every player I talked to said they were interested in the game because you can “meet people,” nobody seemed to actually be meeting each other. ...in a culture where randomly introducing yourself to a stranger is something of a breach of etiquette, perhaps there really is a deep appeal to being able to virtually encounter other people, if only in passing.' -- Massively multiplayer ambient collecting game

'In the networked city, the truly pressing need is for translators: people capable of opening these occult systems up, demystifying them, explaining their implications to the people whose neighborhoods and choices and very lives are increasingly conditioned by them. This will be a primary occupation for urbanists and technologists both, for the foreseeable future, as will ensuring that the public’s right to benefit from the data they themselves generate is recognized in law. If we’re reaching the point where it makes sense to consider the city as a fabric of addressable, queryable, even scriptable objects and surfaces – to reimagine its pavements, building façades and parking meters as network resources – this raises an order of questions never before confronted, ethical as much as practical: who has the right of access to these resources, or the ability to set their permissions?'

'"The state of the art is only a little further advanced than the Real Dolls of this world," he says. "There's a Japanese company that has a product called HoneyDoll, which has some electronic sensors. If the man strokes the nipples in the right way, the doll can make orgasmic sounds … There's also an engineer in Germany, Michael Harriman, who has developed a doll that has heating elements so most of the body is warm, apart from the feet." "I think the sex robot will happen fairly soon because the bottom is dropping out of the adult entertainment market, because there's so much sex available for nothing on the internet," says Levy. "...if you think of the number of vibrators that sell to women. I'm sure a male sex doll with a vibrating penis will sell better than sex dolls today. As soon as the media starts writing about 'My fantastic weekend with a sex doll', it will be like the iPhone all over again, but the queues will be longer."

'Your portable device is used as a portal to the astral plane, and helps you find and collect ghosts that exist all around you. In your quest you use real tools, such as the built-in camera and microphone, as well as abstract ones like an "EMF tuner" for tracking down the ghosts. Once you find the spirits, you document them and find out why they haunt our world. They also give you riddles to solve. Ultimately, you will help them find peace.' -- "There is no Dana, there is only Zuul!"

'...items are just manifestations of the connections I have with other people. Books educate me and give me thoughts to share with others. I love talking about books with my wife, and that shared experience of a book we’ve both read and loved is sublime. Here’s the real truth: as I’ve stopped buying so much stuff and started thinking carefully about the purchases that actually matter to me, they wind up being ones that are inherently tied to personal meaning and personal relationships. Stuff for the sake of having stuff doesn’t really have any meaning in the end – the stuff that has meaning is the stuff that you can share with others, or that profoundly changes you (and thus your relationships with others). This is why sometimes it’s hard to let go of stuff. You’re not really that concerned about the item itself, but you’re losing the connection to someone else or some part of you that the item represents.' -- Also shared ideas, opinions and affirmations as social/theory objects

'In the show, a synthetic blood beverage called “Tru Blood” allows vampires to walk among humans. HBO faced some specific communications challenges marketing True Blood. Primary among them was creating awareness, building buzz and ultimately driving tune-in.

'It’s much easier and much more convincing when others tell us who we are and what we are like and even what we seem to enjoy than for us to know ourselves directly—our self-knowledge is too distorted by wishes, secret shame, denial, grandiosity, modesty, and a variety of other expectations we are always in the process of juggling. -- we can’t opt out of the ways in which our pleasures are imbricated with class snobbery. Class identity seems to be one of enabling conditions for experiencing many, many forms of pleasure (if not all of them)—the pleasure of belonging, of excluding, of knowing where you are and what you might become, the pleasure of winning.'

'Brand-wise, "IKEA Heights" is absolutely harmless. In fact, Seger and his friends have essentially done for free what "Easy to Assemble" cost IKEA $50,000 to do. And done it better. As of Sept. 7, "IKEA Heights" had been downloaded 14,168 times. And yet, "IKEA Heights" has the company smiling through gritted teeth. "I thought it was very playful and fun and complimentary to our brand," Liss says. Nonetheless, she says carefully, "We didn't give [Seger] permission. People need to ask." Permission, alas, ruins it. Virality -- that must-see, must-share quality that marketers so desperately want to capture -- requires some transgression, Seger says, some stunt."Every Web job I've ever had," Seger says, "they've said, 'OK, let's manufacture a viral video.' You can't do it because so many elements of luck and charm go into making something that doesn't feel like you're selling something."'

'Welcome to IKEA Beijing, where the atmosphere is more theme park than store. Every weekend, thousands of looky-loos pour into the massive showroom to use the displays. Some hop into bed, slide under the covers and sneak a nap; others bring cameras and pose with the decor. Families while away the afternoon in the store for no other reason than to enjoy the air conditioning. Visitors can't seem to resist novelties most Americans take for granted, such as free soda refills and ample seating. Purchasing anything at Yi Jia, as the store is called here, can seem like an afterthought. "We want to be modern. I think IKEA stands for a kind of lifestyle. People don't necessarily want to buy it, but they want to at least experience it." -- A group of university graduates recently donned caps and gowns for photographs by the checkout aisles as if to capture the moment they matriculated to the middle class.'

'Fans of the AMC’s Mad Men know that the show, about fictional 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper, names other real-life agencies and brands to achieve some verisimilitude. What they may not know is that some of those are actual product placements. The show’s third season, which premiered Sunday (Aug. 16), featured placements with London Fog and Stolichnaya vodka that both brands said were engineered. -- When asked whether other brands mentioned on the show on previous seasons like Utz and Cadillac were paid placements, AMC president and general manager Charlie Collier was coy: “We absolutely have product integration on the show, but you shouldn’t know which ones are paid and which ones aren’t.”'

'10,000 cases and counting of Brawndo have sold online or via convenience stores in the Northeast and other regions. This happened not because of a movie-studio marketing brainstorm. It happened because of an “Idiocracy” fan in Oakland named Pete Hottelet. A graphic designer with very particular pop-culture tastes, Hottelet has started a business devoted to bringing to life certain products from movies. His business is called Omni Consumer Products, a name borrowed from the fictional megacorporation in “Robocop.” -- “I watched ‘Idiocracy,’ and I was like, ‘O.K., we’re in,’ ” Kirby says. “Based on how things are going on in the world, and especially our country right now, this is a shoo-in.” He laughs as he says this, so I wasn’t sure what he meant. Are we already living “Idiocracy”? “Absolutely,” he says. “It’s all about overcommercialization.”'

'The official site to buy Tru Blood Beverage. Enliven yourself with this uniquely carbonated, slightly tart, lightly sweet blood orange drink.'

'Omni Consumer Products is a product development company located in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a focus on licensing, defictionalization, and reverse-branding.' -- Did Tru Blood