Once upon a time, the Infonaut tried to imagine what the space between all the ones and zeroes was about. Was there any truth to fuzzy logic, a possibility that binary theory allows for some wiggle room? Is there a space between “on” and “off”? The problem proved to be unhealthily dizzying and the puzzle was shelved. Until this month’s New Yorker arrived. Malcolm Gladwell’s piece on Epagogix, “the Formula,” reads vaguely like a Bruce Sterling short story, except apparently it’s non fiction. In an effort to successfully predict the box office outcome of studio fodder, a group of entertainment attorneys, headed up by Dick Copaken, have tapped the deep depths of risk assessment modeling to create the unthinkable - a formulaic, scientific model for predicting a script’s potential as a blockbuster. Factoring in bizarre, yet apparently salient details such as wardrobe, opening scene visuals and semantics, “the formula” is apparently hitting the mark with a suprising level of accuracy. Part marketing, part digital voodoo, and part outright absurdity, the company seems to be making its mark by running scripts through a neural network with a high degree of success. Does this help create better content? Decidedly not. It simply predicts, through the collective history of millions of statistics, the probability that one script is a better bet than another. Deal or no deal?

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Today’s news about CNET’s mounting troubles include a bit about the drastic reduction of traffic at the once all-powerful tech news site. The Infonaut believes that this drop is almost certainly due to the widespread proliferation of technology-focus blogs - there are just so many of them, that the average consumer is bound to hit up Engaget, Gizmodo or techmeme before CNET these days for a basic product scoop. Reviews are great, but the blogs’ aggregate velocity seems to appeal with particular appeal to the gadget-obssessed early adopter crowd.

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Last week, at Asia de Cuba in San Francisco, I engaged in a lively conversation with Mr. Peter Hirschberg, one of the founding minds behind Technorati. In our conversation about the role of influence on ranking and popularity, I posited the notion of quantum influence – nope, we’re not talking particle/wave theory here, just the kind of “moving target” of influence in the blogosphere. While some proclaim to hold the Holy Grail algorithm that pinpoints THE uber-blogger in any particular category, the Infonaut would suggest that just as quantum physicists determined, the observer inevitably gets intangled in the observation. Thus the uncertainty principle…and “blogebrity” have a unique and curious connection. If YOU posses the power to scientifically prove influence, kindly contact me at once.

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According to this CNN report, the backlash against the warm fuzzies of social networking might just be wearing off. Whether or not its due to the massive infusion of marketing messages to Facebook and Myspace isn’t clear, but it’s only a matter of time before the next big thing rolls around.

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