Gerhard Stoltz's Library tagged control →  View Popular

Previously, the distinctive mark of social democracy was the belief that it is the duty of a community to protect all its members against the powerful forces that they are unable to resist as individuals.

The results: participants who took on the perceptive of someone exerting self-control were unable to exercise as much self-control as those who merely read about someone exerting self-control. In other words, getting into the shoes of someone making the effort wore them out as if they were doing it themselves.

The implications of these findings are very “real world.” For instance, if a group of people are working on a project, and certain members are exerting an especially high degree of effort, this study suggests that other people in the group will experience vicarious energy depletion.  An entire group’s energy could be affected by the exertion of one or two members.

There is still an "element" online willing to take the time, energy, and risk to piss on the virtual street, spray paint on a virtual building, or gang up on a real person or institute they consider a threat. You may not want to engage with this element directly, or even indirectly. But no matter how far from the Internet's wild, anarchic origins we get—no matter how much the Web starts to look and act like a copy-protecting iTunes nightmare—they're still out there. Waiting.

“In determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the consequences

It’s easy to react cynically to these results. If you rose to a position of power by following the rules, it makes sense that you would consider those guidelines inherently good and important. (Alternatively, if you got to the top by breaking the rules, it is in your interest to ensure that others don’t follow in your footsteps.)

if you care about things like games staying affordable and having some choice as a consumer, you might want to start worrying right about now.

At its core, the movement from standard methods of content delivery to virtual ones is just a big, crazy chase for dollars. This shift will have a major impact on the whole supply chain from console-makers to software publishers and retailers.