Breakfast Links: RFID implants, Online/Offline & (en)Gadget Giveaway
This one’s crazy. Super crazy. And not in a good way. Apparently some employers were trying to make it mandatory for their employees to have RFID chips surgically implanted. Our Senate, though, has passed some legislation that would prevent that from actually happening. How crazy is that? CityWatcher.com actually, really, honestly required that employees who work in their data center have the chip implanted in their arm. Creepiest thing I’ve heard all morning.
This one’s crazy, too, but crazy in a non-judgemental way. Nick Yee has been studying people’s behaviour in MMORPG’s (via mefi). Apparently he’s been doing his research for 8 years! There’s a lot to read on the site but check out his dissertation discussing what he calls the Proteus Effect:
The set of studies presented in the current work makes clear that our self-representations have a significant and almost instantaneous impact on our behavior. The appearances of our avatars shape how we interact with others. As we choose our self-representations in virtual environments, our self-representations shape our
behaviors in turn. These changes happen not over hours or weeks, but within minutes.
Wierd! He found that people’s avatars not only affected how they behaved in game, but also how they behaved in the real world! Don’t tell the people who like to blame games for all the ills of the world, though.
And if this last one isn’t crazy, maybe it’s madness… maybe it’s… SPARTA! Ahem. Or something. But Engadget is going through it’s closets, finding all the gear it’s gotten and giving away all the stuff it’s accumulated over time. That’s right, every 6 hours they’re going to be giving stuff away (including an HDTV, a DSLR and all those sweet phones they review). If you’re reading this this morning you can get in on the second round running till noon, otherwise you’ll have to go to the site yourself and find the current round.
