The MP3 Experiment | Hacker News Reader

The MP3 Experiment

pogue.blogs.nytimes.com

66 pointsfrisco6 comments

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The internet is not killing our culture, it amplifies it. That was beautiful.

Should push come to shove, I could imagine an "improv" that begins: "at 4:00AM, gather around the Bastille" ..

No ad agency or paid minion could muster the force that is "Internet People"; from Improv Everywhere, to Anonymous.

+1 to humanity.

Reminds me of a quote that was on the iGoogle page just a few days ago:

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect. -- Esther Dyson

We're only just starting to find ways to connect over the internet. I suspect that there will only be more examples of things like IE as connectivity spreads.

I've been to several of Improv Everywhere's events. They're always amusing. Half of the fun is doing something you know is unusual, and will have a cool effect when you look at the video later. It's an odd feeling to break out of normal behavior like that.

Try to beak out of normal behavior often, on your own; you might like it :-)

There'd be no point to it, at least for this kind of breaking out of normal behavior. By "point", I mean the kinds of things I've done at IE events are not the kinds of things that would be enjoyable to do alone. Compare it to going to a pro football game -- it's fun! But you can't recreate that experience on your own, as touch football in your backyard isn't the same.

Of course, I'm not arguing for following the crowd blindly.

This is an interesting experiment in human coordination. Everyone heard the same instructions at the same time, but no one heard the instructions given to anyone else. This is a combination of coordination by an omniscient director (the same voice directed everyone) and coordination by actors with limited knowledge (no one could hear what the voice was saying to anyone else). I've never really seen something that was a mix before.

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