Not exactly new bits, but I enjoyed seeing The Economist
pick up on the similarity between computer and social

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"Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com>, FoRK List <fork@spamassassin.taint.org>
From fork-admin@xent.com  Fri Oct  4 18:19:18 2002

I actually thought of this kind of active chat at AOL (in 1996 I think),
bringing up ads based on what was being discussed and other features.
For a while, the VP of dev. (now still CTO I think) was really hot on
the idea and they discussed patenting it. Then they lost interest.
>On 10/2/02 12:00 PM, "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the bot, but
>>they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc?
>>example: two people discussing trips, etc. may trigger a weather bot to
>>mention what the forecast says - without directly being asked.
>My guess is it's more insidious than that, it's going to be ActiveSpam.
>"Oh, you're going to Seattle? I can get you airline tickets for less"

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
bringing up ads based on what was being discussed and other features. &nbsp;For
a while, the VP of dev. (now still CTO I think) was really hot on the idea
and they discussed patenting it. &nbsp;Then they lost interest. &nbsp;Probably a good
<pre wrap="">On 10/2/02 12:00 PM, "Mr. FoRK" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:fork_list@hotmail.com">&lt;fork_list@hotmail.com&gt;</a> wrote:
<pre wrap="">What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the bot, but
they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc?
example: two people discussing trips, etc. may trigger a weather bot to
mention what the forecast says - without directly being asked.
My guess is it's more insidious than that, it's going to be ActiveSpam.
"Oh, you're going to Seattle? I can get you airline tickets for less"