my mind on books

Midbrain Mutiny: The Picoeconomics and Neuroeconomics of Disordered Gambling: Economic Theory and Cognitive Science (Bradford Books) by Don Ross, Carla Sharp, Rudy E. Vuchenich and David Spurrett (MIT Press, 2008)

from the product description:

The explanatory power of economic theory is tested by the phenomenon of irrational consumption, examples of which include such addictive behaviors as disordered and pathological gambling. Midbrain Mutiny examines different economic models of disordered gambling, using the frameworks of neuroeconomics (which analyzes decision making in the brain) and picoeconomics (which analyzes patterns of consumption behavior), and drawing on empirical evidence about behavior and the brain. The authors argue that pathological gambling is a true addiction and that addictive gambling is the basic form of addiction, revealing the core character of all addiction.

The book describes addiction in neuroeconomic terms as chronic disruption of the balance between the midbrain dopamine system and the prefrontal and frontal serotonergic system, and reviews recent evidence from trials testing the effectiveness of antiaddiction drugs. The authors argue that the best way to understand disordered and addictive gambling is with a hybrid picoeconomic-neuroeconomic model, and their demonstration of this framework’s applicability to gambling provides a concrete case study for the more abstract description of picoeconomic-neuroeconomic complementarity in Don Ross’s earlier book Economic Theory and Cognitive Science: Microexplanation (MIT Press, 2005).

MIT Press information, including sample chapters

More on “picoeconomics” (micro-micro-economics)

newspaper article: “UAB researchers find gambling addiction’s wild card” (Birmingham News, May 6, 2008)

Dr. Don Ross’s webpage at UAB

This is the third part in the series of links for Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, covering Chapters 5-8 with links to the books, articles and websites from the bibliography. (Here are links to parts 1 and 2). There should be one more part and then I’ll join all the pieces together into one page. [update – link to complete “webibliography“]

Here Comes Everybody at LibraryThing

Ch.5: Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production

p.111 wikis

Ward Cunningham’s original wiki

Wikimedia Foundation

“The Hive” by Marshall Poe, Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2006

(p. 118 – no links)

p. 122 “Worse is Better”

Richard P. Gabriel’s essay “Lisp: Good News, Bad News”

(p. 123 – no links)

p. 124 power law distribution
Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (Perseus, 2002) (pbk ed, 2003)

p. 126 The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson (Hyperion, 2006)
Long Tail blog

p. 129 fame – “Communities, Audiences, and Scale” essay by Shirky

“Why Oprah will never talk to you. Ever.” Wired 12.8 (August 2004) p. 52-55 [reprinted here]

p. 133 The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler (Yale University Press, 2006) (pbk ed. 2007)

p. 136 Wikipedia deletion and restoration

“History Flow” by Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda B. Viégas

p. 138 Siegenthaler and essjay controversies

Wikipedia on John Siegenthaler entry controversy

Wikipedia on essjay controversy

“Wikipedia’s credentialism crisis” by Nicholas Carr

p. 140 Ise Shrine
The Same Ax, Twice: Restoration and Renewal in a Throwaway Age by Howard Mansfield (University Press of New England, 2000)

Ch. 6: Collective Action and Institutional Challenges

p.143 Boston Globe – “Spotlight Investigation: Abuse in the Catholic Church”

p. 144 Voice of the Faithful

Keep The Faith, Change The Church: The Battle By Catholics For The Soul Of Their Church by James Muller and Charles Kenney (Rodale, 2004)

p. 150 Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

p. 157 end-to-end communication

“End-to-End Arguments in System Design” (10 p. pdf) by Jerome Saltzer, David Reed, and David Clark
“Rise of the Stupid Network” by David Isenberg
“World of Ends” by Doc Searls and David Weinberger

p. 157 the phone company fought bitter legal battles

NPR timeline on Carterfone decision

Ch. 7: Faster and Faster

p. 161 Conspiracies are punished separately

U.S. v. Wei Min Shi at Project Posner

p. 162 information cascade

“The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig , East Germany, 1989-91” by Susanne Lohmann, World Politics 47(1) Oct. 1994, pp. 42-101 [note: links to JSTOR, abstract; fulltext also available in Gale/Infotrac OneFile — check your library for access]

p. 164 Flash Mobs

“My Crowd” by Bill Wasik [subscription required at Harper’s; fulltext available in Gale/Infotrac OneFile —check your library]

Belarusian flash mobs [book has this link, which I found hard to navigate, but here are some pictures]

Nasha Niva protest

“Belarus: Ice-Cream Eating Flash-Mobbers Detained” by Veronica Khokhlov, Global Voices

p. 171 Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization by John Robb (Wiley, 2007); Robb’s Global Guerrillas blog

The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett (Putnam Adult, 2004); Barnett’s blog

p. 174 Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold (Basic Books, 2002, 2003)

p. 177 Kate Hanni
Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights blog and website

p. 180 HSBC/Facebook standoff
“Now It’s Facebook vs. HSBC”
“Facebook Campaign Forces HSBC U-turn”

Ch. 8: Solving Social Dilemmas

p. 190 The Evolution of Cooperation: Revised Edition by Robert Axelrod (Basic Books, 1984, 2006)
The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration (Princeton University Press, 1997)

p. 192 Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, 2000, 2001)

p. 195 Meetup browse

p. 200 Club Nexus
“A social network caught in the Web” by Lada A. Adamic, Orkut Buyukkokten, and Eytan Adar
Bernardo A. Huberman at Hewlett Packard

This was my garage sale find from last weekend. I thought a spare brain might come in handy, and it was a bargain at 25¢!

Soon I will put it in its vat to see how it grows….

A donkey doesn’t so much accept its cruel fate as bears it, lets it pass over them. They’re the most philosophical of all animals, much more philosophical about their fate than human beings. And it’s an instinctive philosophy, a stoic acceptance, a kind of beautiful strength, passive rather than aggressive, not an ugly violent power. Needless to say, their philosophy isn’t academic, isn’t read in books or taught in a privileged classroom: it’s everyday, a simple disposition that’s lived out and practised, in an open field. We might say, if we used philosophical-speak, that a donkey’s philosophy is ontological, that it’s all about Being, the philosophy of permanent reverie, of daydreaming in the open air.

That’s a snippet from a longish book excerpt included in The Times article on The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World by Andy Merrifield (Walker and Co., 2008).

See also “Donkeys and wisdom” at hermit’s thatch.

This is the second part of a series on Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations; I’m going through the bibliography and posting links to the cited books and webpages. This post covers Chapters 3 and 4. It’s turning out to be an interesting exercise, a nice collection of resources, and it might save someone else some typing! The post with the first two chapters is here. [Added 5/8–part 3 is now up; 5/13 – link to complete “webibliography”]

Ch. 3: Everyone Is a Media Outlet

p. 58 Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It by James Q. Wilson (Basic Books, 1991)

p. 60 mass amateurization

“Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing” by Clay Shirky

“The Pro-Am Revolution” by Charlie Leadbeater (misspelled “Leadbetter” in the book)

We-think: the book by Charles Leadbeater

p. 61 Trent Lott

“Parking Lott” article at Gnovis (links to the pdf)

“‘Big Media’ Meets the ‘Bloggers'” (26 p pdf)

Ed Sebesta’s blog and articles

p. 66 In Praise of Scribes

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Volumes 1 and 2 in One) by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Columbia University Press, 1979, 1980)

The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Columbia University Press, 2005)

p. 75 Crowdsourcing

2006 Wired article by Jeff Howe

Crowdsourcing blog (includes excerpts from the upcoming book, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, available for pre-order at Amazon)

Ch. 4: Publish, Then Filter

p. 84 social networking site

Social Networking Meta List (2005)

“Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace” by danah boyd

Danny O’Brien post

p. 94 Email is such a funny thing

“The strange allure (and false hope) of email bankruptcy” by Merlin Mann

p. 99 “Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”

BoingBoing post by Cory Doctorow (10/10/06)

p. 100 community of practice

Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wenger (Cambridge University Press, 1998, 1999)

Etienne Wenger’s website: www.ewenger.com