ReadWriteWeb

Half the discussion surrounding the digital world seems to revolve around its utility in the real world. How does digital life produce wealth? How can it be used to increase political participation? Can art be made from or in it? It's no wonder that some digital citizens throw up their hands and write the questions off as the carping of eternal grandparents.

Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit in San Francisco, has chosen a different route, neither exegesis nor abandonment. Instead (get ready for the sexy), they are the Large Hadron Collider of the digital world, banging people, ideas, approaches, concerns and populations together for the sheer joy of seeing how bright a flash and big a bang they can make.

• Zombie Cyborg Beetles! Implanted with electrodes at birth! Flown via radio signals! [Video] http://bit.ly/fZjB0H via @scienceblogs
• Unexpected hazards of e-book lending: http://bit.ly/dQbenZ via @maudnewton
• A Tale of Two Googles: Race, Labor, and Hierarchy in the Digital Age: http://bit.ly/eUPg93 via @ThoughtCatalog
• How blogs have changed journalism: http://reut.rs/fuugUl via @FelixSalmon
• "Putting Eric Schmidt in charge of policing online privacy is like appointing Bernie Madoff to direct the SEC" http://bit.ly/fjDLn5 via @HilliconValley

A new report from GlobalWebIndex has some thought-provoking data about "social entertainment," a term for when entertainment is augmented by social media technologies. For example, the real-time discussion happening around TV shows on Twitter. In the GlobalWebindex report, entitled GlobalWebIndex Wave 1-3 2010, author Tom Smith notes three main trends. The first two are well known: the rise of 'real-time' in consumer entertainment and the growth of what he terms "packaged platforms." By the latter, he means services that live outside of the browser - smartphone and tablet apps, gaming consoles, eReaders and Internet-connected TV sets.

The third trend is more contentious. The report states that in the new era of social entertainment, traditional media holds the power - a change from the 'web 2.0' era, when the user ruled. The report argues that this will lead to a return to passive experiences by consumers.

I'm 16 and, unusually, I use Twitter quite a bit. I say unusually because perhaps you've heard that teens don't tweet. This first came to light last year when a 15-year-old Morgan Stanley intern wrote a report [PDF] where he explained that teens "realize they are not going to update it," and that "no one is viewing their profile, so their 'tweets' are pointless."

Teens' lives are entirely built around their actual friends. Quite simply, why would teenagers bother using Twitter when Facebook exists, and offers so much more? Teens want a platform that allows easy, fully-functional communication to an exclusive social circle. That is, solely to their friends and peers. Twitter is a platform built for inclusive broadcast (to everyone), and to teenagers it offers no obvious value.

Parramatta, a city in the Australian state of New South Wales, is on the way to becoming a showcase city for the integration of digital services into community life in that country.

The project, Parra Connect, focuses on a suburban community about 14 miles away from Sydney. It will cover about 50,000 households. It is the first such digital city in the country and one of the first in the world, though it is part of an increasing trend.

If you mainly rely on an automobile to get around, ask yourself this question: What kind of improvements to public transit or new service offerings would make me go car-less? A public transit mobile app with real-time, open data available? A city-wide bike-sharing program? A more efficient ride-sharing community? How about something as basic as bike-friendly buses?

Latitude (who recently partnered with RWW on the Children's "Future Requests" for Computer and the Internet study) is conducting a new study to investigate how cities, transportation providers and technology companies can use Web, mobile, real-time, and location-aware technologies to improve transportation modes so that they work together as a fluid system, adding value to individuals' lives.

It has been said that geeks are cool. I disagree. Cool is for chumps. Geeks, not to mention weirdies, grotesques, exiles and stone cold superfreaks, are better than cool and have their own pantheon that transcends cool.

Depending on your age and predilection, the Stooges stand atop the altar of that pantheon or occupy a niche at the side, but they're there, somewhere. Little did we know, however, that one of our own, a geek, was responsible for the most vicious guitar playing and savage songwriting in rock history. Raw Power-era guitarist James Williamson became a computer chip programming geek and Vice President for Technology Standards at Sony. And vice versa.

As different Internet-connected devices become scattered around your home - laptop, smartphone, iPad, netbook, Internet TV box, and more - it's useful to have apps that connect them together and sync data when necessary. Below we look at 5 products that do this. Ultimately, they help you take control of your multiple devices!

Some of these apps have been suggested to us by the company founders we've interviewed for our product innovation series. These are people who are themselves building innovative apps, so their tips are worth heeding. We'd love to know which apps you use to connect or sync devices in your home, so tell us in the comments.

If you're looking for another way to waste the next fifteen minutes, rest of the afternoon, what have you, then look no further - we give you the YouTube Time Machine.

It's all the time-wasting goodness you've come to expect from YouTube, but with controls to select what type of historical introspection or nostalgic throwback you'd like. In the mood for a choppy video of a bathhouse from 1902? How about some 4 Non Blondes from 1992? The YouTube Time Machine has it all.