Almost missed in reading through the NYTimes Magazine annual special ideas issue: Zygotic Social Networking or tying genetic testing results to social networking. The idea shared and exploited by Ancestry.com, GeneTree.com and startup 23andMe is that you can connect with people who are like you — at a DNA level of some sort. This takes friend-of-a-friend to a different depth. It also assumes that you will want to make friends or mate with someone a lot like yourself. So much for genetic diversity. Or will our already confusing diversity confound the companies who are building on research that is so new and undeveloped that the answers are only slightly more reliable than say a Chinese horoscope?
Day: December 9, 2007
Yesterday’s News and Observer featured a nice long column (albeit a skinny one) discussing a conversation that the author, Dan Barkin, had with Fred Stutzman about Facebook usage. Because I had had an earlier coffee with Dan, ibiblio and I also get a mention, an honorable one. The article is a very good one despite that honor ;->
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