The explosion of the social web has redefined the way we perceive social connections, our individual role in the social grid (may it be online or offline) and the importance of the collective intelligence. We, the user of the social web, take full advantage of this revolution by promoting our blogs, our work, our affiliates, our software. To an extent all our practices in the social web are working for our self-interest.
Social Connections
before the social web, we were dealing with the interesting, intriguing theory of the ‘six degrees of seperation‘. The main principle of the six degrees theory simply says that
everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we’re so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we’re so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection… I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.
Anyone who is deeply engaged in the social web, will argue that this theory underestimates the power of the web. Blogs, social networks, forums and communities enable interaction between two individuals in less than six steps; or at least that’s how it feels like.
The role of the individual
Sometimes when we analyze the tree, we lose sense of the forest. If we observe social networks from really high above, we will notice that they have reestablished our trust to democratic procedures. How many times have your heard people saying: “one vote never made a difference”.
It seems, that in the social web one vote does make a difference. That’s why we put a ‘thumbs up’ at StumbleUpon, or digg a submission, or cast our vote in Mixx. It is just one vote; but we trust that collectively this vote will bring a change.
The collective intelligence
A direct result of our trust to the individual is our belief in the collective intelligence. That’s why we firstly read the top news of all these news aggregators. Because we know, that these news are the most important/intriguing/thought provoking/interesting ones.
Machines were not made to sleep
So just our interaction and participation in the social web, actually proves that we believe that one vote, one individual, one voice,
one computer can make a difference - can provide to the commons. In one way or another our participation in the social web is self-interested. We vote other submission, because we hope people will vote ours too; we comment on other blogs to learn more about a subject and hopefully receive a comment on our work; we use news aggregators so that we will not have to search for the most interesting news in this sea of data.
Maybe it’s time to do something completely altruistic, which will prove that we really believe in the big difference one individual can make.
The first step is to leave your computer on, when you are not using it (it isn’t energy waste if the computer actually works). After all, machines were not made to sleep.
Distributed Computation
There are several scientifical, mathematical, ecological, biological, astrological projects out there, which could use the power of your
computer for their research. You can actually use the idle time on your computer (any computer, any OS) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover life in other plants, etc. These projects are based on the ideals of volunteer computing and grid computing.
The projects are numerous, but here is a list of the ones I use:
- World Community Grid: humanitarian research on new and infectious disease, natural disasters and hunger.
- Rosetta@home: determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases.
- SETI@home: saying that we are alone in the universe is the most selfish thought I’ve ever heard. SETI’s goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth.
A detailed list of the projects and their description can be found at boinc projects. This list doesn’t have all distributed computed projects; if your aware of any other, please let me know.
The process of participating in these projects is simple 3 step process:
- You choose the project(s) you would like to participate and register.
- You go to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) site and dowload the software.
- The software has an easy wizard to incorporate any project in it.
Both images taken from BOINC.
Paul M. Banas responded on 21 Feb 2008 at 3:05 pm #
Glad to see that you’re still posting! It wasn’t clear if you’d still be working with this site now that your research is over.
On distributed computing, would this type of thing open my mac up to viruses and malware and such? I keep my firewall closed, and it always surprises me to look at my firewall log and see all the evil little bots out there just pinging to get in.
Forgive me for the potentially ignorant question, it’s just that understanding PC security is not my strong suit.
robojiannis responded on 22 Feb 2008 at 12:13 pm #
When you decide, which project you support you just give the url of this project. So I suppose the software doesn’t work like p2p but more like a browser. I think it is just like visiting the project’s site and trading data.
I haven’t seen any ports opening or anything like that.
But I’m not sure about it. The FAQ of BOINC didn’t give any insights either.
Rytis responded on 22 Feb 2008 at 1:01 pm #
Hello all,
I am one of the developers of the BOINC system, and I’m running my own project (PrimeGrid, http://www.primegrid.com - if you’d want to attach :)).
First of all, security is our main concern. If we had virus outbreaks or other malicious activity, this would mean the end for our work - the news spread fast. That is why we spend a lot of time making sure we don’t have any holes for viruses (or any other malicious activity) to spread. Communication is done via HTTP protocol, all application files are verified using private/public key model, which means that if the files are tampered with during the transfer from the server to participant’s computer, the client will simply discard it. And in order for hackers to publish their own applications if they hack into the project’s server, they would have to know private key of the project, which is very strongly recommended NOT to have in the server machine.
Of course, nobody can stop malicious people from starting their own “bad” project. This is why you should read about the project you are planning to join. I think it’s pretty safe to join any of the projects listed in the official website (the list is also downloaded to the client application, using the same security mechanisms).
Another thing to note about security: World Community Grid, one of the major BOINC projects, is run by IBM corporation, and is running on most of IBM’s desktop PCs. In order for this software to be allowed on the company’s network, IBM conducted a security review, which BOINC passed just fine.
I hope I’ve diminished your concerns, waiting for you to come aboard and crunch
robojiannis responded on 22 Feb 2008 at 7:51 pm #
@Rytis
Thanks for dropping by. You surely cleared out the field on the security of BOINC.
I’m now looking at the primegrid project and it seems really interesting; I admit though, that my math knowledge are at a level, where I pretend to understand but I actually don’t
Jim (roboRobert) responded on 23 Feb 2008 at 8:22 pm #
protein folding is just the beginning… with all these internet connected gaming consoles out there… a hacker could build a password cracking program with relatively few infected consoles and brute force incredibly long passwords in VERY little time (like days)
robojiannis responded on 24 Feb 2008 at 11:27 am #
@Jim
If you are talking about breaking the web, I think it’s much more difficult. The internet is a decentralized network.
The cracker must choose very wisely which consoles to infect and it is still not certain if the effort does any actual damage