Two things:In the paper Co-evolution of....

Two things:

1. In the paper Co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans, Robin Dunbar predicts that the maximum group size that humans can maintain as a cohesive social unit, based on the ratio of neocortex volume to brain volume, is 147.8 (100.2-231.1 at 95% confidence). Consulting the literature, he finds that there's a trimodal distribution of group sizes: bands at 30-50 people, tribes at 1000-2000, and an intermediate one. The mean size of the intermediate level group societies is 148.4.
2. The AOL Instant Messenger servers impose a hard limit on the number of people you're allowed to put in your buddylist: 150.

(For more, and a better summary of Dunbar's paper, read The Magic of 150. Malcolm Gladwell also refers to the number 150 in his book The Tipping Point.)

[Interconnected]

I've been looking for a good link to this paper from 1993. Although there is a wide variation around the magic number 150 it is a really interesting conjecture. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

Good to have a link to some empirical support for notion that certain group scales are hard-wired.

1:30:40 PM •  • comment  

J. Boyle on the 2nd Enclosure Movement. I came across this article as I was putting together the reading list for TP5: The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain.(pdf file) This is a terribly interesting article that uses a fair amount of the history of intellectual property thought and economics to raise the ... [Furdlog]

More for my reading pile on intellectual property. Maybe I should have gone to law school after all.

11:04:00 AM •  • comment  

Lego fabrication, stylishly explained. Check out this amazing Flash pased pixelart/video-clip interactive tutorial explaining Lego fabrication: the perfect marriage of style and substance. Link (via Kottke)
[Boing Boing Blog]

A factory tour without leaving your browser.

8:22:38 AM •  • comment  

Information on the Assembly Line. Rats...it's a class night, and I've got to catch up on a couple chapters. So I can't do much more than make a quick blog entry for Jason Nichols' very intriguing looking masters thesis called Information on the Assembly Line (subtitled A review of Information Design and its Implications for... [IDblog]

Looks to be a useful resource.

8:06:44 AM •  • comment  

The Copyright Cage.

Jonathan Zittrain, law professor at Harvard Law's Berkman Center, authors The Copyright Cage in Darwin Magazine. Recommended reading. Thanks to Ten Reasons Why.

[commons-blog]

Very helpful to understanding today's copyright environment

7:55:27 AM •  • comment