“Imagine 2020,”  Doctor writes,  ”and the always-out-there-question: Will we still have print newspapers? Well, maybe, but imagine how much they’ll cost — $3 for a local daily? — and consumers will compare that to the ‘cheap’ tablet pricing, and decide, just as they doing now are with Netflix, which product to take and which to let go.”

Of course, Netflix doesn’t have to contend with the huge revenue gap between print advertising and digital advertising as newspapers do. All that is still TBD, Doctor writes, but Netflix may point the way.

Turns out, they did pretty well. According to the Web Ecology post on the contest, “In under a week, Team C’s bot was able to generate close to 200 responses from the target network, with conversations ranging from a few back and forth tweets to an actual set of lengthy interchanges between the bot and the targets.”

Think of the labor that can be saved if you outsource all those boring tweets about what you ate for lunch and the cute thing your cat did today to a bot! Free from the chains of Twitter, regular people will have scads more time for walking around outside, or engaging in F2F conversations with other actual people. And, if socialbots can pass the Turing Test, marketers have gained a powerful new spamming tool.

Apparently, the applications of the tech may be a bit more sinister than that. As The Atlantic story noted, “A week after [the Web Ecology Project's] experiment ended, Anonymous, a notorious hacker group, penetrated the e-mail accounts of the cyber-security firm HBGary Federal and revealed a solicitation of bids by the United States Air Force in June 2010 for ‘Persona Management Software’—a program that would enable the government to create multiple fake identities that trawl social-networking sites to collect data on real people and then use that data to gain credibility and to circulate propaganda.”

Besides offering a safe way for cranky New Yorkers to let off steam, the 311 service has become an important data-gathering tool for the city. As Johnson points out in his article, “A data-driven approach to urban life makes sense, because cities are in many respects problems of information management.” Read more about Steven Johnson on his blog.

By categorizing incoming calls and tagging them with time and location data, city administrators can identify patterns and pinpoint problems. For example, the first hot days of May or June will bring a spike in questions about the city’s chlorofluorocarbon recycling program as New Yorkers look to dump their old air conditioners and buy new units. Similarly, a cluster of sanitary complaints about a specific restaurant will prompt a visit from the city’s health department.

So far the Bloomberg administration hasn’t made too much of the 311 data-pile public, but the potential for reuse of this type of info is huge. Imagine the suffering that could be averted if 311 data were merged with a public service like The Bedbug Registry.

Groups like Open311 are looking to standardize the system and open all the data to the public: “Open311 refers to a standardized technology for location-based collaborative issue-tracking.” That’s a pretty cool idea — bug tracking software for your hometown.

While smartphone sales are growing fast, they still only account for about a third of all mobile phones sold in the US, according to a June Gartner study.  And, in the developing world, dumbphones are likely to be the primary mode of communication for years to come. That’s not so much because of the high cost of smartphones overseas, but the lack of reliable data networks.

Even in this country with the recent roll-out of 4G networks in major cities, consumers are staying away in droves. Why is that?

Cost is an obvious factor. Most unlimited data plans are about $30 per month. Add in voice, text and taxes, and you’re looking at about $100 a month.  That’s worth it for a salesperson who travels a lot, but for a student or stay-at-home mom? Maybe not.

Actual utility is another factor. Dropped calls, blank spots and the slow-drip of overtaxed data networks do a lot to reduce perceived value. Most mobile devices are also difficult to use. A study by Jacob Nielsen’s firm last year found that people using mobile devices only had a 59 percent success rate for simple info-finding tasks.

There’s also the wariness of consumers who’ve been through one too many product cycles. Guaranteed obsolescence is great for manufacturers, but kind of a drag for buyers. Or as Don Norman writes in “The Life Cycle of a Technology“, “The vast majority of customers are late adopters. They hold off until the technology has proved itself, and then they insist upon convenience, good user experience, and value.”

In a few years we will almost certainly have a pocket-sized computer-communication device that can take photos, play music, provide recommendations, directions and data while facilitating cheap phone calls and seamless voice-to-text translation. It will probably also be rugged, waterproof, simple to use, and take its power from the sun. Until that day comes, though, many of us cave dwellers will stick with our dumb phones.

How could a global multi-player environment not be based on standard web languages? That non-compatibility with the largest network on this planet doomed Second Life as a marketing venue from the start. All those businesses that set up shop in the virtual world in 2007 found their expensive digital venues virtually abandoned and would-be visitors from the WWW barred by the platform gap.

The real news here is that Linden Labs has finally figured out Metcalfe’s Law.