Last year, we asked you for questions.

You gave them to us.

This year, we’d like to do the same thing, shockingly enough.

It’s THE GRINDER’S GUIDE TO THE NEXT 5 MINUTES: 2013 EDITION!

Here’s the deal. Ask us anything — anything at all — via our formspring account here: http://www.formspring.me/Grinding We will then answer your questions in a hopefully entertaining manner.

Remember to use the Formspring account and not the increasingly compromised comments system for this. That’s http://www.formspring.me/Grinding — stay anon if you want or not. No topic is off limits, but things involving Grinding, the future, or whatnot would probably be a good idea.

Go forth to our Formspring and sin no more…  unless that’s what you’re into.

Today’s worthy Kickstarter project:

Defrag is an iPad magazine that features creative writing, music, visual art, multimedia and music videos from around the world, introducing you to the vibrant, multifaceted cultural life of your planet. No political soundbites, no celebrity profiles and no corporate propaganda.

In the first issue you’ll discover an indie rock scene in China, fine artists from India and a Heavy metal band from Iran. You’ll read poetry from Egypt, participatory fiction from California and see what club VJ’s are doing in Sweden. You’ll also hear experimental music from the UK, psychedelic blues from NYC, and experience multimedia hip-hop from the West Bank. Not the sort of content you’re likely to find on Fox News or in People Magazine.

It’s Cyberpunk Future Present, and full of There Is No They. And Phase 3 is to move it to Android tablets & PC. I like this a lot.

Via core77:

Whether you use QR codes or not, its undeniable that mobile tagging has become an integrated part of the marketing landscape. Popping up in print advertising and corporate-sponsored event/experiences, there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the application and usage of mobile tagging in delivering a more comprehensive marketing and retail message. PSFK just released a great “Future Of” report exploring some key trends in the field and interviews with experts an innovators in the field.

Panel preview, sent by the mysterious 13:

There have been clues in a few places, including the secret Doktor Sleepless community.

io9′s Charlie Anders reports on Worldcon’s  ”The Singularity: Are We Getting Any Closer?” panel.

Some highlights:

Wilson pointed out that if the Singularity really is coming, then it’s inevitable — so there’s no need for people to be cheerleaders for it. He compared it to “telepathy or dianetics,” science-fictional ideas which some people adopted “with religious fervor.” A core question in science fiction is “where is our technology going, and what can we do with it,” noted Wilson. “The Singularity is just one answer.”

…

“The question I sometimes ask myself is, How would the Singularity work in Darfur?” says Wilson.

Interesting stuff, and questions well worth asking even if you’re not a Sci-Fi fan.  Me?  The only sci-fi stuff I read tends to either be so near-future that calling it Sci-Fi is just pointles genre-pigeonholing (like say Spook Country ) or transhumanist stuff.  But, by and large that’s because tranhumanist-themed books seem to be where the heirs to Cyberpunk ended up.

Via ~Evidence~, who also has some great pictures in the Garden of Decay book.

Yesterday’s Buzz Bin Blog has a pretty interesting article about applying the rules from Dale Carnagie’s “How To Win Friends and Influence People” to social networking.  I think it’s of particular interest because the rules they lay out echo my own oft-repeated mantra of “treat conversation on the internet like you treat conversation in real life”.

Of course there’s a focus on marketing and conversation as marketing to both the blog entry (and the book itself) but as much as I sometimes get grumpy in the presence of a marketing-based approach to communications, the same rules that help you sell yourself and your ideas to others can also create better and more stable lines of communication — maximizing the bandwith of your “Friend” connections on various social networks.

Also?  I want “It’s 140 characters, not a debate club” on a goddamned t-shirt.

Win People to Your Way of Thinking
10.The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
11.Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
12.If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
13.Begin in a friendly way.
14.Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
15.Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
16.Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
17.Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
18.Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
19.Appeal to the nobler motives.
20.Dramatize your ideas.
21.Throw down a challenge.

Actions to Win: LinkedIn & Facebook

Create a group to engage thought leaders, interesting parties. Ask their opinions.

If logic/position is not factual, ask them how they came to that position.

Don’t say they’re wrong, yet state your facts. Ask them what they think.

Socratic method is a great way to engage. Sometimes writing out logic in an online group helps expose and address weaknesses.

Admit & amend wrongs

Challenge people to come up with answers.

Acknowledge and seriously weigh responses on any of these issues.

In areas of conflicting opinion, ask people to find a compromise.

Give credit to anyone who contributes to ideas used.

Actions to Win on Twitter

Engage in a dialogue on meaningful issues.

Remember, Twitter is public. Let folks save face.

Admit and amend wrongs.

Don’t flame, rather ask and state your dialogue.

Give people an out. It’s 140 characters, not a debate club.

Look for the positive result, and celebrate it. Laud your conversation partners

Out this week!

For those that missed the issues, the trade ships this week:

Image via pronea.com.

See also:

• Transhuman #1
• Transhuman #2
• Transhuman #3
• Transhuman #4

Chad Michael Ward, writer, artist, photographer and producer. If anyone would be visually stimulated by the slow demise of Heavenside, this man would. He’s already brought these gorgeous books to the table (all of which currently grace my library shelves):

Chad is not interested in the mundane. Instead the oddly beautiful are captured by the camera in his latest book, DANGEROUS BEAUTIES. Click through for a preview and try not to drool on the screen.

Bruce Sterling’s got his design-fiction/Futurist hat on again, giving us Big Mama, Greifswald, Rebel kids, Brixels: The People of kashklash.

This explores “possible futures, based on two important variables…The first is the stability in exchange systems…The second variable is telecommunication technology.”

Which he illustrates nicely with this graphic:

So that’s four tales, or scenarios, of living in four different ‘worlds’.

Here’s an excerpt from the fourth scenario:

A brick house was a byword for solidity. “Solid as a brick house.” For a brick house to be malleable, temporary, gaseous, was a weird, crazy, extreme idea — as crazy as a trip to the moon. But a brixel was a brick: a mobile brick. A smart brick that was also a phone. A brick built around a phonechip, phones so high tech, so cheap, that they were cheaper than bricks. So that yesterday’s crown jewels, mobile phones, because building blocks.

Brixels locked together like children’s toys, and they were picked up and dropped, not by honest union bricklayers, but by little blind robots like an iPod lashed to Roomba. It took very little machine intelligence to move “brixels” around or to stack a huge wall out of “brixels.” A wall of brixels grew overnight. It was extravagantly patterned, like a computer screensaver. It was gorgeous. It was magnificent. It was very Italian.

Crazy, huh. Go read them all!

Thrills, chills and more Sarah Berlin?

Image via Avatar Press‘ flickr.

TRANSHUMAN #4 is out this week. Have you picked up your copy yet?

- photo from imagecomics.com

Transhuman #3 is out today (or tomorrow) depending on your locale.

Picked it up yet? I would – it contains interesting revelations about the company.

Have you read it yet?

- image via pronea.com

By Johnathan Hickman.

In the not so distant future, pharmaceutical companies fight over the next advancement in their field. Heinrich Dowidet is our narrator in this documentary of how Chimera Corp and Humonics, Incoporated took iPharm’s folly with a R&D project and fought to rule the world. What is this advancement? Quite simply, the means to create post humans.

- Broken Frontier.