A blog on social software, collaboration, trust, security, privacy, and internet tools by Christopher Allen.
In my initial blog entry on the Dunbar Number I presented some statistics on group sizes based on the online game Ultimata Online. In it you could clearly see the power-law (pareto) curve, with diminishing returns at around 150, with most groups being 60 in size:
More recently, Nick Yee and other researchers at the PlayOn Blog have been researching the behaviors of players in the popular World of Warcraft online game.
In yesterday's All Things Considered, NPR commentator Jake Halpern questions why you feel like you have a relationship with the characters in your favorite TV shows. His answer: "That's because you do." This idea is interesting not just to help us understand how we relate to imaginary characters, but also to correlate with our own understanding of Dunbar Number relationship limits and how they might relate to this concept.
In his commentary, Bostonian Jake Halpern considers two academic ideas, "belongingness theory" and "para-social relationships", and how they affect the relationships we develop with television characters.
In my review last January of the amazing Seven Fingers of the Hand Circus I talk about why I like circuses that are more raw and intimate, i.e. more "human" then the pretentious and distancing style of Cirque du Soleil. However, I was disappointed that I saw the near-to-last show, so could not send my friends out to go see one of the great performances of the year.
Last night at the recommendation of Mark Finnern I went to see Circus Contraption, a marvelous burlesque-style musical comedy circus at the very intimate setting of the CELLspace warehouse in San Francisco's Mission district.