As countless, near-identical Steve Jobs obituaries spew out of the blogosphere/Twitterverse today, let's honour his contribution by doing what he did best: anticipating at what will be next...

The "It's (so-and-so's) birthday" feature on Facebook is simultaneously one of the best and worst examples of how social networks can impact our digital lives. Best, in that it lets us know when something important and personal is happening to people we are connected to, and makes it easy for us to connect with them in that context. Worst, in that it elicits inauthentic responses and reduces the process of responding to such an event to a relatively hollow "Happy birthday!!!!!!" on their wall that shows up among a sea of similar announcements. The true lack of time and care the responders are giving back to that announcement is clearly apparent by the similarity and curtness of their responses. Indeed, while some or even all may truly be having good feelings and a lingering moment for the person they are "celebrating", that does not come across in the sea of short and generic comments.

I've had a few brushes recently with different tracking technology deployed in automobiles used by professionals. When the Geek Squad came by to help with printer problems, the tech explained that his company-provided car has a tracking device that logs where the vehicle is at all times. Today I read an article, pointed to by Jason Long, about similar technology being used in the truck driving industry. In the later example, the author lamented how these devices contribute to "draining their enthusiasm for this life." I'm not surprised.

Jared Spool delights in being provocative. Listen: I like provocative. Much of the way people frame our professional world is outdated or out-of-touch. It takes provocateurs to get most of us to look in a different direction and consider new things. Unfortunately, many of those who make provocative statements as a matter of routine espouse half-baked and incorrect things alongside their other good ideas. Such is the case with Jared's latest attempt to stir up a shit storm, Agencies Don't Like Me Very Much.

For Immediate Release
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (U.S.) – May 26, 2011 – Raptr, the only online platform that allows gamers to share, interact, and discover personalized gaming content across all major gaming platforms and IM services, was featured on industry bellwether TechCrunch today.

"Raptr is the only service out there to aggregate essentially one's entire gaming life into a single communication and management platform," said Dirk Knemeyer, a founder of Involution Studios. "Dennis' (Fong, Raptr CEO) vision for Raptr preceded the social networking explosion and led to a service that was designed from the start to be ahead of the latest trends in cloud computing and cross-device communication. We're thrilled, but certainly not surprised, to see Dennis and the Raptr team enjoying such overwhelming success."

This weekend I attended the Humanity+ Conference at Parsons in New York City. Subtitled "Transhumanism Meets Design", the conference aspired to "explor(e) emerging technology, transdisciplinary design, culture and media theory, and biotech."

For Immediate Release
NEW YORK CITY (U.S.) – April 19, 2011 – Involution Studios Creative Director Juhan Sonin was announced today as one of just 11 Respect Advisors for the NextGen:Health Conference. Scheduled for February 2012, NextGen:Health aspires to bring together "the greatest minds in modern medicine and healthcare from around the world."

Always self-deprecating, Sonin commented: "The Respected Advisors is an all-start team. You know they are going to bring together an incredible collection of minds. I'm not really sure what they're doing putting me in that group but I'm going to really enjoy being part of it."

If you enjoyed our recent series on tech in Africa you might be interested in actually checking the situation out, on the ground, with the foremost tech experts on the continent.

This series on technology in Africa is written by Involution friends and emerging markets experts Niti Bhan and Muchiri Nyaggah.