One of the memorable talks of the second day was Ben Hammersley‘s talk on Ettiquette and the Singularity. It was entertaining, not just because of the “men’s unbifurcated garment” that was being worn, but for the enthusiasm of the speech.
There was a lot of comments made about the speech in various places, (take a look at the Technorati beta whilst you’re there). Quite a bit of it has been driven by a intimation that people need to be taught how to behave in virtual environments, as taken up by David Weinberg and picked up by a number of people, including Doc Searls. Co-incidently, the Observer had a small piece about this very issue last week. And it was reflected in a comment from Nicole Simon, in the situation where she had commented on a blog that the appreciated reading, to find the the author had done the same thing back to here.
As well as new technologies driving the needs for new behaviours, I think we also have the situation that new technologies make people completely forget the old behaviours, to ignore the current set of manners because they have something new as an excuse. As the pace of change continues to quicken, we should build on the current social norms to let new ones emerge. We should not just rip everythng up to start again.
