Tag: foodspotting

Social Studies

Foragers and Foodspotters

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So why was I sharing a picture of a roast chicken  (food source) at a Spanish restaurant in NYC (foraging spot) with Foodspotting.com (my tribe)?  I’m not getting paid for this activity, though the cost of taking the pic and uploading is vanishingly small. Am I being purely altruistic or is something else at work?

Inspired recently by Clay Shirky’s talk on his newest book,  Cognitive Surplus, I took a brief tour through some of the foundational ideas behind generosity and altruism.

Our kindness to strangers may be mostly in our genes, but as Shirky and other point have pointed out, being in a network has its own benefits.
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@NYC

Summer in the City: Shirky, Kind Strangers, and Neat Startups

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Last night was my fourth NYC Tech Meetup, and I think the first time I’ve been in Manhattan in recent memory during a major heat wave. Thankfully, the electro-mechanical HVAC at Skirball worked flawlessly, far better than this new venue’s Internet access.

One of the highpoints for me was listening to Clay Shirky talk about his new book, Cognitive Surplus. Shirky is a gifted narrator and explainer, and the TED videos I’ve seen of him only hint at the powerful thought waves he radiates during a live presentation.

He is an optimist, a true believer on the Internet’s ability to beneficially channel otherwise wasted human CPU cycles devoted to legacy TV watching into crowdsourced content creation: Wikipedia, Amazon book reviews, Aardvark experts on tap, tweets, and as you’ll see after the jump, food photography.Continue reading