Google revolutionised the advertising world by serving consumers with relevant advertising based on what they were looking for online. Over the last five years, Facebook has manoeuvred itself into a position that might see it offer an even more potent service, in which users perform advertising for a brand without realising it. By turning ‘like’ from a verb into a noun, it has transformed our personal tastes, alliances and communications into clickable marketing opportunities.

Elsewhere, social networks are multiplying to serve ever more niche concerns, and virtual economies of status and reputation are rising to the fore, and being harnessed by enterprising individuals and companies alike.

But exactly how are our desires being commoditised? Can our personal identity, reputation and status really be transacted? And with our lives being played out online and our complex tastes being reduced to thumbs up/thumbs down binaries, are we seeing our personalities changing as a result?

Joining podcast host Jack Roberts to discuss these questions are fellow futurehumanista Ben Beaumont-Thomas; social networking CEO Alex Halliday, who runs the ‘make your own social network’ site SocialGo; and the London Business School’s Xi Zou, who is conducting pioneering research into human behaviour within social networks.

They discuss the commercial opportunities, status anxieties and behavioural patterns that are redefining the rapidly evolving world of interactive social networks. Listen to it below via Soundcloud (and check out the whole series here) or listen in iTunes here. Podcast die-hards should note that we’ll now be publishing one episode per month.

Below is a Storify of the best tweets from the night, complete with some eye-opening links to discover more about world of data visualisation. A big thanks to everyone involved, and we hope you can make it to our March event, Gaming Normal.

Many people associate videogaming with hackneyed storylines and chauvinistic characters, yet for all the flaws of the medium, it’s an active form of storytelling that forces us to think in an original and frequently tangential manner. ‘Play’ is a state in which we’re forced to be creative, competitive and guileless – qualities that also characterise many of the world’s most productive and innovative work environments.

More industries are beginning to recognise the creative benefits of facilitating ‘play states’ in the workplace, and how the installation of game-like structures can incentivise productivity and inspiration. Services like Seriosity and Badgeville use the psychological and economic principles of online multiplayer games to drive productivity; employees can win ‘points’ by completing training videos and other workplace tasks, while firms with geographically diffuse workforces use gaming techniques to make their staff work together effectively.

And with Angry Birds becoming almost as well known as Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, the wider populace is becoming accustomed to gaming interfaces, something that the smarter, early adopting entrepreneurs and brands have noticed. By sucking consumers into worlds of task and reward, they are finding new ways to retain customers and more deeply engage them. Meanwhile ‘gamification’ techniques are being used to desensitise soldiers to the chaos of battlefield experience, and education and health organisations are also offering fun, game-like instructional programmes to engage students and patients.

Is this blurring between the worlds of work and leisure just a fad or will the ‘gamification’ movement continue apace? Are services like foursquare, which invest our everyday interactions with a gaming reward system, genuinely useful or an infantilising force? And how do our brains behave when we’re playing games, and how can knowledge of this cognitive science be harnessed to help us work more effectively? From Oblique Strategies to World of Warcraft, we’ll explore the games across history that have enhanced our problem-solving capabilities, and discuss the psychological implications of ‘gaming the normal’.

We have three fantastic gaming professionals as guests, who will be discussing this shift and sharing new ideas of where it should go:

Adrian Hon is the co-founder of Six To Start, a gaming company which eschews the traditional console in favour of the smartphone, the Internet and the great outdoors. One recent crowdfunded project called Zombies, Run! turns jogging into an escape from the undead. He’s also overseen games for clients including Channel 4, Disney and the BBC and blogs each month for The Daily Telegraph.

Louise Downe is a senior consultant at Seren Partners, designing interactive learning experiences for the likes of BBC and Nesta, as well as honing the mobile services of O2, Vodafone and Visa. She previously worked with the Tate, helping create interactive installations, locational games and audio tours that filled the potentially dry space of the gallery with inquisitive new audiences.

Anja-Karina Pahl is the founder of The Gamification Network, the UK’s first collective dedicated to sharing and exploring the strategies of gamification. She is also the founder of The PRIZM Game Company, who use games to draw out creativity and solve problems in the workplace.

So join them and us for Future Human’s unique cocktail of cocktails, presentations, interactive games, big-screen Twitter slanging matches, and of course brilliant, mind-expanding debate.

Gaming Normal takes place 7-9.30pm on Wednesday March 14 at The Book Club, Shoreditch, London EC2A 4RH. It’s an essential event for anyone who works in digital media or is interested in the ‘gamification’ phenomenon – or, for that matter, anyone who has ever turned their tax return or weekly swim into some kind of hairbrained competition. You know who you are!

Once again, tickets are available here and we strongly advise purchasing early to secure a spot.

If you do have a ticket, we’ll be opening the doors at 7pm at The Book Club, and the event will go on until around 9.30-10pm. As was mentioned on the shop page, no tickets will be mailed out ahead of the event; we’ll have your name on the door so please bring name I.D. If you missed out this month, don’t worry – we’ll be announcing the details of our next event, Gaming Normal, in the next couple of days…

Over the next 10 years, we’re going to see digital economics upturn industrial production and the physical world of ‘things’, as emerging printing technologies and the distribution efficiencies of the Internet give individuals the power to challenge the giants of the manufacturing sector.

The advent of affordable 3D printers is offering would-be designers the scope to produce a panoply of products: plastic toys, furniture fixtures, electronic components – even finely crafted chocolates. All of these items can be reproduced today using 3D design files supplied from anywhere in the world, with printing projects like RepRap and Makerbot lowering the economic barriers every year. Meanwhile, enthusiastic communities are creating skill-sharing hackspaces and open source initiatives to support product design.

But will the Micro Manufacturing movement really challenge the behemoths of global trade or will it remain a niche concern? And how will these hordes of ‘makers’ circumvent the problems of digital piracy and ensure their printing enterprises remain profitable?

Podcast host Ben Beaumont-Thomas discusses these questions and others with fellow Futurehumanista Jack Roberts, as well as two Micro Manufacturing pioneers: Assa Ashuach, a product designer and co-founder of 3D printing company Digital Forming, and Soner Ozenc, founder of Razorlab, a laser-cutting company who recently partnered with Ponoko, the global leaders in Micro Manufacturing. We also hear from Brendan Dawes of Beep Industries, a product designer who uses 3D printing to prototype his designs at home.

So download this new episode at iTunes or join the thousands who are following The Future Human Podcast on Soundcloud for updates on new episodes.

The explosion in smartphone and tablet computer adoption has provided artists with a new canvas, with apps like Procreate and Brushes offering new possibilities for the composition, distribution and sale of digital artwork. The way that art is valued and sold is also changing, with ventures like Art.sy and Saatchi Online using powerful algorithms to serve up potential art purchases to users. But will the ‘tap revolution’ herald a great flattening of the art market? Or will the old elites ensure collecting fine art remains a pursuit of the ultra wealthy?

Future Human regulars Jack Roberts and Ben Beaumont-Thomas discuss this new frontier of the art world with two digital art startup pioneers, Ian Barham and Nick Boyce, who have worked with a series of different companies including The Art Group, MagnoliaBox, Artistic.ly and easyart. They discuss their work in bringing great art to the masses via print-on-demand technology, as well as the prospects for virtualised sales of digital artwork, the future of the high-market for art, and the increasingly blurry definition of the ‘art object’.

We also hear from Julian Stallabrass of the Courtauld Institute, a theorist who has followed Internet-based art since the mid-90s, and from Brian Fulkerson of the innovative UK-based startup Artfinder, who explains why he thinks mobile is opening up an entirely new and global market for art.

Listen below via Soundcloud, or download in iTunes.