As we ease steadily into 2012, like many others I’ve kept my eyes open for new opportunities in terms of investments and emerging technology. No doubt, within the next ten years the kinds of emergent technologies that will become available (and thus become marketable) could far exceed anything most of us can predict right now.
The key word here, of course, is most of us. I make this assertion based on the fact that I keep seeing the following website linked to Matt Drudge’s site, and this morning I finally took a moment to check it out. it’s called “Intrade.” In addition to securing an investment market around emergent technology (among other things), I think there’s also tremendous potential here for learning a bit about the process of prediction in general, and perhaps even humankind’s eventual attainment of function psychic abilities aided by new technology.
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I’m very wary of any public situation where people rush out in droves, attempting not to kill one another (we hope!) while shopping fervently for Christmas goodies to lay under the tree. Whoops, I’ve betrayed my own ambiguity here already; it’s already obvious exactly what sort of “situation” I’m talking about… Black Friday has arrived.
Personally, I feel it’s really more trouble than it’s worth, and the risk associated with trying to beat the crowds to find a better deal hardly ensures that one will indeed find anything similar to a bargain. Now, if what I perceive to be a logic-oriented opinion asserted here doesn’t sway you from braving the horrors of Black Friday, then perhaps stories of pepper spraying, cat-fights over yoga pants, robberies and shootings, and miscellaneous gunfire will do the trick.
And yet, it never ceases to amaze me the survival will that emerges on this day which, in truth, might as well be considered a sort of holiday–perhaps an “anti-holiday”–unto itself. Let’s hope all the rampant consumer activity does manages to achieve something of merit at least; coinciding with this year’s Thanksgiving holiday, Wall Street announced that stocks plunged in effect of being “their worst Thanksgiving week since the Great Depression on a percentage basis,” according to the Dow and S&P. But amidst all this dark-blackness and dismal danger, is there any hope that technology could assist in beating the holiday shopping blues? Believe it or not, I think so, and here’s why…
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