written longhand

2012-02-09T20:45:00.002-04:00

The Death of the Cyberflâneur - NYTimes.com

Something similar has happened to the Internet. Transcending its original playful identity, it’s no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore. The popularity of the “app paradigm,” whereby dedicated mobile and tablet applications help us accomplish what we want without ever opening the browser or visiting the rest of the Internet, has made cyberflânerie less likely. That so much of today’s online activity revolves around shopping — for virtual presents, for virtual pets, for virtual presents for virtual pets — hasn’t helped either. Strolling through Groupon isn’t as much fun as strolling through an arcade, online or off.

The Typewriter (In the 21st Century)

2011-10-20T11:12:00.000-04:00

It would be nice--in a way--to believe that the typewriter has a future, but, heck, I am beginning to wonder if the ballpoint pen has a future. But, if I lived in a place where I could take my Underwood Standard in to a repair shop and get it working again, I probably would. And, then...

William Gibson Interview

2011-09-06T19:32:00.001-04:00

William Gibson interview: Boing Boing exclusive – Boing Boing

What things are keeping your interest lately? The sheer surreality of the Republican presidential primary, Libya, Iain Sinclair's monolithic ongoing anti-Olympics project (Hackney, That Rose Red Empire and now Ghost Milk), the "gray man" concept in personal security, the culture of personal aerial drones, parts of the United States as newly undeveloped sub-nations and the foreign outsourcing thereof...

Teaching Writing

2011-06-29T12:36:00.001-04:00

Heavy Sentences

First day of class I used to tell students that I could not teach them to be observant, to love language, to acquire a sense of drama, to be critical of their own work, or almost anything else of significance that comprises the dear little demanding art of putting proper words in their proper places. I didn’t bring it up, lest I discourage them completely, but I certainly could not help them to gain either character or an interesting point of view. All I could do, really, was point out their mistakes, and, as someone who had read much more than they, show them several possibilities about deploying words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, of which they might have been not have been aware. Hence the Zenish koan with which I began: writing cannot be taught, but it can be learned.

New Strategy for Orphan Works

2011-06-23T11:44:00.001-04:00

What is the Orphan Works Project?
The Orphan Works Project is being led by the Copyright Office of the University of Michigan Library to identify orphan works. Orphan works are books that are subject to copyright but whose copyright holders cannot be identified or contacted. Our immediate focus is on digital books held by HathiTrust, a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future.

a theory of university: one of two answers

2011-06-18T13:14:00.001-04:00

I could have answered the question in a different way. I could have said, “You’re reading these books because they teach you things about the world and yourself that, if you do not learn them in college, you are unlikely to learn anywhere else.” This reflects a different theory of college, a theory that runs like this: In a society that encourages its members to pursue the career paths that promise the greatest personal or financial rewards, people will, given a choice, learn only what they need to know for success. They will have no incentive to acquire the knowledge and skills important for life as an informed citizen, or as a reflective and culturally literate human being. College exposes future citizens to material that enlightens and empowers them, whatever careers they end up choosing.

The theory of university as a sort of indoctrination, and the encounters that students have with knowledge is planned around a number of challenging situations or topics or ideas. Frye said that all learning involves overcoming personal barriers, and this idea of education is about this type of barrier-encountering. The point is that it will not be pleasant or fun--at least some of the time--some of the time it will be exactly what the student does not want. Other times it will be exciting and even blissful.

A real typewriter

2011-05-29T07:03:00.001-04:00

Poet, novelist, dramatist, ballad singer and house-painter Brendan Behan at work in the early 60s/

The end of the typewriter

2011-05-29T06:57:00.001-04:00

Paul Bailey in the Guardian

News has come in recently that Godrej and Boyce, a long-established firm of typewriter producers based in Mumbai, have a mere 500 manual typewriters left in stock. Once these have been sold, or disposed of, they will switch to making refrigerators instead. There is, apparently, a small demand still for electric typewriters in America, particularly in schools and prisons. One can understand why the latter could make use of them, since the time hasn't come for prisoners to access porn on a humble piece of office equipment. But these are clearly the last of a dying breed.

I have my old typewriter in my office, but should I keep it there, now just a museum piece?
Museums that contain objects of use from the past or that are in fact the houses of people that display the study of the person as it was left—with the typewriter, for example—show the way that such objects are meaningless unless they are used. They are like the kitchen wood stove without a fire in the stove. They are like the bowl and rolling pin without the live ingredients which bring the objects to life.
What one has is like the skeleton of the animal rather than the animal itself. And in this way photographs, for example, are better, so long as they contain the trace of the human. So the contemporary photograph of the writer’s typewriter is meaningless—it is just a picture of an old typewriter. But the photograph of the typewriter on the writer’s lap or with the writer’s hand or with a fresh piece of paper that will actually be typed on a few seconds after the photo is taken, this is alive in a different way.

man of the crowd

2011-05-10T11:39:00.000-04:00

I have been sick for the past week, and the weather has been terrible. Today, after working for part of the morning, I just had to get out, so I came here--to Starbucks...coffee too strong and food too greasy and pasty. But I just needed to sit here, even if I am just looking out the window at the rain, even if I am still not fully recovered. Suddenly, I had a flash of recognition...

Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the large bow window of the D -- -- Coffee House in London. For some months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui -- moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs -- the _____ -- and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its everyday condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in everything. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room, and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849. "The Man of the Crowd" Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

But, this is not London and the crowds passing are mostly cars in the rain.

Book and other piracy -- research needed

2011-04-26T18:19:00.001-04:00

Research needed

Publishers need more research (and more nuanced research) about the impact of book piracy in order to have a more informed perspective on how to approach it.
People pirate for many reasons. Some do it simply for the love of pirating. Some people amass large collections of movies and music and books that they may never watch, listen to, or read. Others pirate because they feel they simply can't afford to pay. These types of pirates are probably the hardest to convert into paying customers.

Novelty Seeking research

2011-04-24T18:55:00.001-04:00

Novelty seeking

is one of four aspects that Dr. Cloninger and many other psychologists propose as the basic bricks of normal temperament, the other three being avoidance of harm, reward dependence and persistence. All four humors are thought to be attributable in good part to one's genetic makeup -- the predisposition that one is dealt at birth. They are the aspects of human nature that mark one person as a pessimistic worrywart, another as an outgoing team player.
Temperament remains fairly stable throughout life, Dr. Cloninger said, which means the shy and anxious boy is likely to be the shy and anxious grandfather, though psychiatric drugs, intense counseling or life-changing experiences can modify some aspects of temperament.
Any one person may have a mixture of varying degrees of the four temperamental dimensions. For example, a novelty seeker may have a low quotient of harm avoidance, not fretting over dangers real or imagined; a high level of persistence, and a high level of reward dependence, and so cares about making some sort of impact or statement.
Such an individual could serve as a poster person for achievement, the type with the self-confidence, optimism and originality to do something brilliant in life, assuming his or her great temperament was combined with great talent.
Alternatively, a novelty seeker who is low in reward dependence and low in harm avoidance may care little for friends or society and end up an aloof alcoholic.

London in 1825

2011-04-17T15:53:00.001-04:00

London 1825
Population: 1,335,000

While the British Empire was flung around the globe bringing in immense wealth for a small portion of England, London, was largely a slum in 1825.
And crime was rampant. Not until four years after the city reached the record for being the most populous in the world did government activate a full time police force.

Information relevant to the London De Quincey described in 1821, and Pierce Egan in Life in London.

Writing ... typing ... keyboarding

2011-04-15T19:08:00.001-04:00

What we lost in the switch

I contemplate the differences between writing tools -- Scrivener vs. Microsoft Word vs. this little Moveable Type box -- because I do notice a difference in what come out of them. Scrivener, a James Fallows favorite, makes it easy to break up your writing into tidy compartments that sit in a sidebar on the left side of your screen. In the first few months I tried it out. But I found it made my writing too choppy, as I refined each section without reference to the whole. There is something about the never-ending scroll of the Word document that I like, and not just because I bought into the Kerouac mythology. (OK, it is because I bought into the Kerouac mythology.)

I still worry about this, but I find it so difficult now to take the time to write things longhand.

data loss

2011-04-15T12:48:00.000-04:00

I am trying to understand the phenomenon of decay of information that could be seen as data loss, although this is not how the term is defined by Wikipedia (data loss). It is not an intentional or accidental loss or destruction of data. What I am thinking of is more like the loss that occurs when a digital music file is saved in a lower bit rate or when an analogue sound gets clipped in the process of digitizing.
I suspect that the same is true of information and especially of ideas. The process of encoding them in a way that enables them to be disseminated on the web--or that encourages their dissemination--requires a loss of complexity or detail. The sharp edges get knocked off, and the parts that require more processing are left out.
The result is a flattening of experience, dulling of senses and of the intellect. It leaves one satisfied, in a way, and yet empty, in another way. In a world of ubiquitous information one seeks more information, one seeks something new, not predigested, not already worn down.

The Airport and J. G. Ballard

2011-04-13T18:45:00.001-04:00

Going somewhere? AIRPORTS By J.G. Ballard
[The Observer 14/9/97]

at an airport such as Heathrow the individual is defined, not by the tangible ground mortgaged into his soul for the next 40 years, but the indeterminate flicker of flight numbers trembling on an annunciator screen. We are no longer citizens with civic obligations, but passengers for whom all destinations are theoretically open, our lightness of baggage mandated by the system. Airports have become a new kind of discontinuous city, whose vast populations, measured by annual passenger throughputs, are entirely transient, purposeful and, for the most part, happy. An easy camaraderie rules the departure lounges, along with the virtual abolition of nationality - whether we are Scots or Japanese is far less important than where we are going. I've long suspected that people are only truly happy and aware of a real purpose to their lives when they hand over their tickets at the check-in.

Airports are a number of things to Ballard. The individual is intransit, defined not by nationality, or possessions, but by "the indeterminate flicker of flight numbers". But airports are also the "discontinuous city," the city of the transient, the deracinated. Here, Ballard believes, people are "truly happy."

But here one is also the observer of the crowds who flow forever and who are always just passersby. They are never neighbours, or property owners, or people with some claim to anonymity or privacy. They are by definition random and unpredictable. Specific types or events or attitudes or experiences cannot be anticipated. The passengers offer the spectator the possibility of new experience.

Ballard also likes the newness, what Koolhaas would call the generic quality of airports:

I welcome its transience, alienation and discontinuities, and its unashamed response to the pressures of speed, disposibility and the instant impulse. Here, under the flight paths of Heathrow, everything is designed for the next five minutes. Its centrepiece, and for me the most inspiring in England today, is Michael Manser's superb Heathrow Hilton, near Terminal Four. Its vast atrium resembles a planetarium in the way that it salutes the skies above its roof.

"Transcience" and "alienation" are its hallmarks. But it is exactly these things which make it the perfect site for the type of experience Ballard praises. He wants experience removed from context, pure and without compliations. Or, if there are complications, they are ones which the observer can remove himself from, pass on, become oneself transient. Like De Quincey in his opium trance recalling his ability to "draw from opium" an escape from sad or disturbing scenes. For the observer in the airport, the generic space is its own opium.

Small Piece of a very large photo

2011-04-10T13:05:00.001-04:00

40 Gigapixel Panaoramic Image Is The World’s Largest Indoor Photo

Strahov Monastery Panorama by Jeffrey Martin

Præteriens enim, et videns simulacra vestra, inveni et aram in qua scriptum erat: Ignoto Deo. Quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio vobis. (Acts 17: 23)
[For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.]

The web, large image, image of an inscription in a dead language, referring to an inscription in another dead language--somewhat ironic.

William Gibson on Twitter

2011-04-10T08:32:00.001-04:00

deeply convinced of the merits of Twitter: “It’s the only social-media tool I ever use. The incredible simplicity of the thing strips away all the culture-building, the nation-building that comes with Facebook. Facebook feels like living in a mall; Twitter is like living in the street. You can bump into anyone. Nothing is guaranteed to be pleasant, [although] one can customize one’s experience.
“I wind up with something that is like an ever-changing 24-hour magic magazine, with a constant stream of novel, if pointless, information, which sounds like it could be lethal for a novelist, so I try to keep that in mind.”

Ten Theses on Wikileaks :: net critique by Geert Lovink

2010-09-20T19:18:00.000-04:00

Ten Theses on Wikileaks :: net critique by Geert Lovink:

"These 5.
The steady decline of investigative journalism due to diminishing support and funding is an undeniable fact. The ever-ongoing acceleration and over-crowding in the so-called attention economy makes that there is no longer enough room for complicated stories. The corporate owners of mass circulation media are also less and less inclined to see the working of the neo-liberal globalized economy and its politics detailled and discussed at length. The shift of information towards infotainment demanded by the public and media-owners has unfortunately also been embraced as a working style by journalists themselves making it difficult to publish complex stories. Wikileaks erupts in this state of affairs as an outsider within the steamy ambiance of ‘citizen journalism’ and DIY news reporting in the blogosphere. What Wikileaks anticipates, but so far has not been able to organize, is the ‘crowd sourcing’ of the actual interpretation of its leaked documents."

It is interesting that Wikileaks worked with high-profile news organizations that still do investigative journalism when it released this archive of material. In other words, it knows that this mountain of information needs analysis in order to mean something, in order for its full impact to be felt. And it is clear from the articles produced by major news organizations that it was the overwhelming impact of the large body of material that was most persuasive.
--

Google Up Close and Personal « Tennant: Digital Libraries

2010-09-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

Google Up Close and Personal « Tennant: Digital Libraries:

"I did a vanity search, to see how many characters it would take before my page sifted to the top. For me, it only took “roy te” for my web site to be the top hit. But that was for me. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that a hair salon filled the page of results for everyone else.
So that sent me on a quest to purge all knowledge Google might have of me, or what I liked in the past, in order to recreate the experience that everyone else would have. Little did I know how difficult and unsatisfying that would be.

Roy Tennant"

It turns out that it is very difficult to escape from Google's Personalized search which began in December of 2009
--

Americans Spending More Time Following the News: OVERVIEW - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

2010-09-13T14:45:00.000-04:00

Americans Spending More Time Following the News: OVERVIEW - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

"Digital platforms are playing a larger role in news consumption, and they seem to be more than making up for modest declines in the audience for traditional platforms."

Massaging the bad news...
--

The future of the internet: A virtual counter-revolution | The Economist

2010-09-07T16:07:00.000-04:00

The future of the internet: A virtual counter-revolution | The Economist: "A virtual counter-revolution
The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it"

First, governments are increasingly reasserting their sovereignty. Recently several countries have demanded that their law-enforcement agencies have access to e-mails sent from BlackBerry smart-phones. This week India, which had threatened to cut off BlackBerry service at the end of August, granted RIM, the device’s maker, an extra two months while authorities consider the firm’s proposal to comply. However, it has also said that it is going after other communication-service providers, notably Google and Skype.

Second, big IT companies are building their own digital territories, where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet. Third, network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet.

E-communication and society: A cyber-house divided | The Economist

2010-09-02T14:46:00.000-04:00

E-communication and society: A cyber-house divided | The Economist:

"Mr Zuckerman frets that the internet really serves to boost ties within countries, not between them. Using data from Google, he looked at the top 50 news sites in 30 countries. Almost every country reads all but 5% of its news from domestic sources. Mr Zuckerman believes that goods and services still travel much farther than ideas, and that the internet allows us to be “imaginary cosmopolitans”.

Geopolitical units are still powerful realities even in a borderless networked world. The Economist story points to some very interesting research in this area.
--

Op-Ed Contributor - Google’s Earth - NYTimes.com

2010-09-01T14:44:00.000-04:00

Op-Ed Contributor - Google’s Earth - NYTimes.com:

"We have yet to take Google’s measure. We’ve seen nothing like it before, and we already perceive much of our world through it. We would all very much like to be sagely and reliably advised by our own private genie; we would like the genie to make the world more transparent, more easily navigable. Google does that for us: it makes everything in the world accessible to everyone, and everyone accessible to the world. But we see everyone looking in, and blame Google."

William Gibson has some interesting thoughts on Google in his article from the NYT. Are we all now citizens of Google, watchers and the watched?

A history of folly, from the Trojan horse to Afghanistan | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian

2010-08-31T20:46:00.000-04:00

A history of folly, from the Trojan horse to Afghanistan | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"Far from defeating the enemy, technology is portrayed as shielding soldiers from the immediate result of their actions, hence distorting tactics and corrupting strategy. By recording failure in meticulous detail, the logs mock the moral basis for so-called wars among the peoples. Like Vietnam's TV images, they leave the Iraq and Afghan conflicts as bloodthirsty killing fields, devoid of rational justification.

The war logs are not so much sensational as relentless. Most of the material was known. It is the detail that bears devastating witness. Afghanistan 2001 now enters firmly into the pantheon of folly, from the wooden horse to Napoleon in Moscow to Vietnam. Indeed it bears the added crassness of coming two decades after the Russians committed the exact same folly in the same place.

What Wikileaks really revealed. What technology hides through technological warfare, the web helps to reveal.

MinnPost - The paper book is dead, long live the narrative

2010-08-31T20:14:00.001-04:00

MinnPost - The paper book is dead, long live the narrative:

Wreading. All things digital blur. Any formerly crisp boundary in the physical world becomes porous and fuzzy in the digital world by the mere fact that content is no longer captive to the container. While the ideas behind any piece of fiction or non-fiction are intangible, rendered as ink on paper, they are immutable. Kept in the native form of bits, by contrast, the expression of an idea is not only fungible, but the reader can become a writer – what I am calling a wreader. A previously solitary experience becomes a social experience (unlike this one, so far).

Righting. Wikipedia is an example. It is about intellectual property seen as a collective process. The expansion and correcting of content is admittedly more germane to non-fiction than fiction, but the point is that text with digital readers can evolve both in terms of facts and point of view on those facts. To date with physical books, the closest approximation we have is reading somebody’s annotations in the margin. Another example is commentary at the end of a digitally published article. You might argue that the original narrative of such an article is often more considered, deliberate and refined than the comments that follow. True. But the volume (in the sense of loudness) and tone of the feedback is a form of self-correction of ideas, one that we have never had before.
- Sent using Google Toolbar

Why a Wreader and Righter? Why not a Weader and a Wrighter, or a Rweader and a Rwighter?

Slavoj Žižek: Wake up and smell the apocalypse

2010-08-31T20:00:00.003-04:00

Slavoj Žižek: Wake up and smell the apocalypse
New Scientist
30 August 2010 by Liz Else

Do these issues arise from problems about what humans are becoming, and the relationships between the public and the private?

Yes. These are problems of the commons, the resources we collectively own or share. Nature is commons, biogenetics is genetic commons, intellectual property is commons. So how did Bill Gates become the richest man on earth? We are paying him rent. He privatised part of the "general intellect", the social network of communication - it's a new enclosure of the commons. This has given a new boost to capitalism, but in the long term it will not work. It's out of control.

Take a bottle of water: I produce it, you buy it. If I drink it, you cannot. Knowledge is exactly the opposite. If it freely circulates, it doesn't lose value; if anything, it gains value. The problem for companies is how to prevent the free circulation of knowledge. Sometimes they spend more money and time trying to prevent free copying than on developing products.

And now others are working even harder to enclose part of the social network commons.

The city is a hypertext

2010-08-16T21:01:00.002-04:00

By Tim Carmody • Aug 12, 2010
on
The City is a Hypertext

And whenever I read anything about the web rewiring our brains, foretelling immanent disaster, I've always thought, geez, people -- we live in cities! Our species has evolved to survive in every climate and environment on dry land. Our brains can handle it!

Same ground that I continue to think about, Georg Simmel &c., but with some new additions.
I like relevance of this

Steve Jobs recently compared the shift from desktop to mobile computers to the shift from trucks to cars. You could maybe say something similar about the future of physical books compared to other kinds of media. The older forms don't go away, but they become more specialized, and the relationships between them become different, as our lifestyles change.

Is it that there is some basic difference in the character of our interactions with e-book readers, for example, something that connects them to a more urban, more alienated mode of existence. I can't at the moment imagine, but it is worth thinking about.

After Afghan War Leaks, Revisions in a Shield Bill - NYTimes.com

2010-08-04T07:13:00.000-04:00

After Afghan War Leaks, Revisions in a Shield Bill - NYTimes.com:

"Senators Charles E. Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, Democrats of New York and California, are drafting an amendment to make clear that the bill’s protections extend only to traditional news-gathering activities and not to Web sites that serve as a conduit for the mass dissemination of secret documents. The so-called “media shield” bill is awaiting a vote on the Senate floor."

The war on WikiLeaks continues, or gathers steam. Would the "Pentagon Papers" fall under the shield of "traditional news-gathering"? And what is traditional news-gathering anymore?

Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan... and you too. Why your reputation needs an online detox | Technology | The Observer

2010-08-04T07:08:00.000-04:00

Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan... and you too. Why your reputation needs an online detox | Technology | The Observer:

"We assume that Mr Harris would like his 'Google resume' to reflect positively on his unique career in international journalism. He can build that brand by ensuring that a Google search brings up positive and relevant content like his Observer profile, some of his best articles, his book, and his author page."

This is the first time, but probably not the last, that I have come across the term "Google resume."

The Ghosts of World War II's Past (20 photos) - My Modern Metropolis

2010-08-03T19:54:00.000-04:00

The Ghosts of World War II's Past (20 photos) - My Modern Metropolis:

"Taking old World War II photos, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov carefully photoshops them over more recent shots to make the past come alive. Not only do we get to experience places like Berlin, Prague, and Vienna in ways we could have never imagined, more importantly, we are able to appreciate our shared history in a whole new and unbelievably meaningful way."

Social networks and statehood: The future is another country | The Economist

2010-07-29T18:14:00.000-04:00

Social networks and statehood: The future is another country | The Economist

The Web Means the End of Forgetting - NYTimes.com

2010-07-26T20:17:00.000-04:00

The Web Means the End of Forgetting - NYTimes.com: "The Web Means the End of Forgetting" by Jeffrey Rosen

In a recent book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,” the cyberscholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger cites Stacy Snyder’s case as a reminder of the importance of “societal forgetting.” By “erasing external memories,” he says in the book, “our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior.”

Study Finds No Link Between Social-Networking Sites and Academic Performance - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

2010-07-16T08:14:00.000-04:00

Study Finds No Link Between Social-Networking Sites and Academic Performance - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education: "July 15, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Study Finds No Link Between Social-Networking Sites and Academic Performance
By Kelly Truong

Spend as much time on Facebook as you want—it won’t affect your GPA, a new study says.

Researchers at Northwestern University found no connection between time spent on social-networking sites and academic performance. The study, the results of which appear in the latest issue of Information, Communication & Society, included responses from approximately 1,000 first-year students at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

Martha Lane Fox introduces the data which shows the digital divide | News | guardian.co.uk

2010-07-12T07:48:00.000-04:00

Martha Lane Fox introduces the data which shows the digital divide | News | guardian.co.uk

Try to picture it: it's the equivalent of the entire populations of our five biggest cities combined - London, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Sheffield - all being left without the tool that we now heavily rely on every day.

Four million of those who are offline are society's most disadvantaged: 39% are over 65.38% are unemployed - 19% are adults in families with children.

WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker

2010-06-27T09:03:00.001-04:00

WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker: "NO SECRETS
Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency.
by Raffi Khatchadourian"

WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency.

...a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz0s3YufzzN

Part of the article reads like something from a recent William Gibson novel, and the rest is an interesting portrait of Assange.

Mick Gzowski on online reputation management

2010-06-26T22:24:00.002-04:00

The un-Googling of Mick Gzowski - The Globe and Mail

Denise Brunsdon, director of social media for the public-affairs firm GCI Group, says online reputation management is one of the fastest-growing areas of their business. It seems like whenever she tells people her title these days, she gets asked if she can do another contract.

As Gzowski shows in this article, online reputation is something many individuals and organizations want to control or manipulate. Being able to do it or help others do it has become an occupation in itself.
And by writing this blog post about this article, I may be helping Gzowski improve his own online reputation.

Social Media for Higher Education

2010-06-24T18:16:00.002-04:00

Slideshare presentation:

Social Media for Higher Education

View more presentations from Trebor Scholz.

Saying information wants to be free does more harm than good | Technology | guardian.co.uk

2010-05-18T19:52:00.001-04:00

Saying information wants to be free does more harm than good | Technology | guardian.co.uk: "'Information wants to be free' (IWTBF hereafter) is half of Stewart Brand's famous aphorism, first uttered at the Hackers Conference in Marin County, California (where else?), in 1984:

'On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.'

"
Doctorow makes a good case for not saying IWTBF anymore. It is good to remember that it was not intended to stand on its own as an absolute statement of fact but as part of a paradox.

Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options - Graphic - NYTimes.com

2010-05-16T10:11:00.002-04:00

Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options - Graphic - NYTimes.com

Infographic illustrating the way Facebook's privacy settings have changed, as part of Nick Bilton's article "The Price of Facebook Privacy?". A good illustration of Facebook's attempt to find a way of enabling it to control personal identity online.

Making the internet safe for free speech | Gus Hosein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

2010-05-12T11:06:00.001-04:00

Making the internet safe for free speech | Gus Hosein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Through a simple subpoena or unwarranted access, vast amounts of personal information on individuals may be accessible to government authorities, much of which would have been previously inaccessible. Tactics such as these are regularly used to discover the identities of journalists' sources by gaining access to telephone and email logs so surveillance creates a hostile environment for free speech.

Generation Control

2010-05-10T20:56:00.003-04:00

Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline
The NYTimes reports that students

are more diligent than older adults, however, in trying to protect themselves. In a new study to be released this month, the Pew Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves. “Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior. “Now you are responsible for everything.”

My own study shows that a large portion of students at Dal is concerned about privacy when using Facebook, but it also shows that a solid minority believes that there are no real privacy concerns.

hypnotizing chickens

2010-05-05T12:43:00.000-04:00

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint

WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

Read the full story at the NYTimes "We have met the enemy and he has PowerPoint"

Beyond The Beyond

2010-04-20T09:48:00.000-04:00

Beyond The Beyond:

"Tim O’Reilly and the future of the Internet of Things. He rambles on for half an hour. It looks like he’s just telling disconnected alpha-geek anecdotes, in his customary, avuncular, visionary fashion. What Tim’s really doing is throwing lit matches into his network. And boy is he the guru when it comes to doing that. He can’t outguess the future and deliver a single coherent narrative, that’s not even possible."

BBC News - Today - A world without planes

2010-04-17T20:35:00.000-04:00

BBC News - Today - A world without planes:

"Uncynical, unvigilant
Everything would, of course, go very slowly. It would take two days to reach Rome, a month before one finally sailed exultantly into Sydney harbour. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor.
Those who had known the age of planes would recall the confusion they had felt upon arriving in Mumbai or Rio, Auckland or Montego Bay, only hours after leaving home, their slight sickness and bewilderment lending credence to the old Arabic saying that the soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel."

Edge: THE REALITY CLUB: "DIGITAL POWER AND ITS DISCONTENTS"

2010-04-16T11:44:00.000-04:00

Edge: THE REALITY CLUB: "DIGITAL POWER AND ITS DISCONTENTS":

"It seems apparent, alas, that Facebook, Twitter, etc. have not improved American democracy, and yet we expect these tools to promote democracy elsewhere.

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena. There are some nice mob effects, but the intensity of the failures is more profound than the delights of the successes."

Edge: DIGITAL POWER AND ITS DISCONTENTS — Morozov & Shirky: An Edge Conversation

2010-04-16T11:42:00.000-04:00

Edge: DIGITAL POWER AND ITS DISCONTENTS — Morozov & Shirky: An Edge Conversation:

"The dreams of network utopians vs. the realists. Is the Internet is a medium of emancipation and of revolution — or a tool of control and repression? Did Twitter and Facebook have stoke the flames of rebellion in Iran, or did they help the authorities unmask the rebels? — Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"

In E-Book Era, You Can’t Even Judge a Cover - NYTimes.com

2010-03-31T09:53:00.000-04:00

In E-Book Era, You Can’t Even Judge a Cover - NYTimes.com:

"Bindu Wiles was on a Q train in Brooklyn this month when she spotted a woman reading a book whose cover had an arresting black silhouette of a girl’s head set against a bright orange background.
Ms. Wiles noticed that the woman looked about her age, 45, and was carrying a yoga mat, so she figured that they were like-minded and leaned in to catch the title: “Little Bee,” a novel by Chris Cleave. Ms. Wiles, a graduate student in nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, tapped a note into her iPhone and bought the book later that week."

The unanticipated encounter--the subway train, the affinity with the fellow passenger, the discovery of an unknown book--all more difficult in the age of ebooks, where the cover ceases to exist as a sign to the world.

Cognitive Surplus -- Clay Shirky

2010-03-29T20:23:00.001-04:00

CITE Journal - Editorial

The Pew Internet and American Life project reports that the majority of all teens are now engaged in active creation of online content. The rise of social media reflects new opportunities and outlets for creativity.

Increased youth engagement through these activities represents a repurposing of what Clay Shirky terms a cognitive surplus. Shirky, a professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, believes that a movement from passive activities such as watching television to more active and creative pursuits is emerging as a use of the cognitive surplus in the Web 2.0 era. Collaborative projects such as Wikipedia demonstrate that a previously unexploited collective intelligence can be tapped when the right conditions are established.

It is almost as if one of the goals of teaching with technology or using the technology that students use is a way of trying to squeeze educational goals into the creative activities of students.
Cognitive surplus is an interesting term--does it mean light or just heat? does it mean cognitive power put to the task of solving problems and creating new things, or is it just employing brain cycles to filter and recycle ideas and objects found on the web?

MoMA | @ at MoMA

2010-03-27T09:41:00.000-04:00

MoMA | @ at MoMA
History of @

Danah Boyd: How Technology Makes A Mess Of Privacy and Publicity

2010-03-14T13:59:00.002-04:00

Danah Boyd: How Technology Makes A Mess Of Privacy and Publicity:

a compelling talk that challenged the notion that personal information is on a binary spectrum of public or private

Boyd then discussed how different groups of people think about privacy. She says that teenagers are much more conscious about what they have to gain by being in public, whereas adults are more concerned about what they have to lose.

There is another summary of this presentation at ReadWriteWeb
Boyd's own notes for the presentation are also available at her website: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html

Giz Explains: How You're Gonna Get Screwed By Ebook Formats - Ebooks - Gizmodo

2010-03-12T09:24:00.000-04:00

Giz Explains: How You're Gonna Get Screwed By Ebook Formats - Ebooks - Gizmodo
Detailed explanation of ebook formats for major ebook readers, discussing how much freedom one will have to move ebooks from one device to another -- not much as it turns out. It also raises the question of whether the epub or the PDF is superior. An interesting point for debate.

Miller-McCune Research Essay — Handwriting Is History | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

2010-03-05T15:19:00.000-04:00

Miller-McCune Research Essay — Handwriting Is History | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. | Miller-McCune Online Magazine:

"Most of us know, but often forget, that handwriting is not natural. We are not born to do it. There is no genetic basis for writing. Writing is not like seeing or talking, which are innate. Writing must be taught."

And yet, it has become part of most people's minds so that if (or when) our ability to write ends or declines...

We may, however, forsake some neurological memory. I imagine some pathways in our brains will atrophy. Then again, I imagine my brain is developing new cognitive pathways each time I hit control C or double click Firefox.

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine

2010-03-02T16:23:00.002-04:00

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine:

"Perhaps our regimented Facebook selves have made things more vanilla. Perhaps you did stumble down more idiosyncratic paths of knowledge before Wikipedia dominated the top Google search results. But these are the kinds of nostalgic observations that are ridiculous to anyone young. The Web hasn't lost flavor; you've lost flavor."

Interesting review of Lanier's book, but this passage caught my eye. It may be worth looking at Lanier to see if he does make any argument related to the loss of the unanticipated. And while Lanier does have a solution for the economic problem he sees in the web's open structure, he does not have a solution to the culture of Google.
And an interview with Lanier by Aleks Krotoski

Atemporality for the Creative Artist | Beyond The Beyond

2010-02-25T21:05:00.001-04:00

Atemporality for the Creative Artist | Beyond The Beyond:

"There are new asynchronous communication forms that are globalized and offshored, and there is the loss of a canon and a record. There is no single authoritative voice of history. Instead we get wildly empowered cranks, lunatics, and every kind of long-tail intellectual market appearing in network culture. Everything from brilliant insight to scurillous rumor."

Bruce Sterling, as usual, stimulating and weird at the same time. And, doubtless, yes, perhaps now, because of the internet / web there is a cacophony of voices... but...
Someone -- who, I forget who, but someone much smarter than me -- wrote about the fact that the present is always on the brink of a future that is unknown. There is always a basic "atemporality" in Sterling's sense, but I don't think it is the right word. He laments that the master narrative has been lost, but the fact is that the master narratives we create are always failing, not because some line of history is being lost, but because we never really understand the present in a complex enough way -- the way we will understand it when it is past. Atemporality may be messy or an intractable problem at the moment, but why lament the lack of a master narrative -- this is just for a dionysian moment a realization of the truth: there is no real master narrative, there never was.

FT.com / Comment / Editorial - Google’s size puts it in the searchlight

2010-02-25T11:23:00.001-04:00

FT.com / Comment / Editorial - Google’s size puts it in the searchlight:

"The overarching issue is: does the gatekeeping role of web search give it a public utility-like role? That is the difficult question that Mr Almunia must help to answer."

Several things lately have made me come back to the idea of the web as a city, one that started out as a medieval city of small houses close together--smaller communities that grew and merged organically into a densely populated and crowded urban space, where getting anywhere was difficult and finding things tricky and uncertain.
Google is like Baron Haussmann, who cut boulevards through the structure of Paris bringing ease of movement as well as water and sewer service, to the city.
As the FT article points out, Google is like a utility (and like a gatekeeper (another medieval urban image)). Its roles actually reshape the information space. So, yes, it is a utility.

Google Massive infographic

2010-02-24T17:20:00.002-04:00

Google facts and figures (massive infographic) | Royal Pingdom

>

The Future of the Internet IV | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

2010-02-19T13:25:00.001-04:00

The Future of the Internet IV | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project:

"the Internet will enhance our intelligence – not make us stupid. It will also change the functions of reading and writing and be built around still-unanticipated gadgetry and applications. The battle over control of the internet will rage on."

Short history of the future of the Web

BBC News - MEPs condemn Nokia Siemens 'surveillance tech' in Iran

2010-02-17T13:06:00.001-04:00

BBC News - MEPs condemn Nokia Siemens 'surveillance tech' in Iran:

"Euro MPs have 'strongly' criticised telecoms firm Nokia Siemens Networks for providing 'surveillance technology' to the Iranian authorities.
In a resolution adopted on Wednesday, the MEPs said the hardware was instrumental in the 'persecution and arrests of Iranian dissidents'."

And also a comment from Amnesty International:

Technology, particularly Internet and telecommunications technology, provides ‘the good guys’ with new tools to help them do their job: documenting human rights abuses, telling as many people as possible about it, mobilising people to try to stop them. But it also provides ‘the bad guys’ with new tools to do their job too – bugging people’s conversations, snooping on their emails, tracking their location.

Is technology really good for human rights?

E-books: Publishers poised for victory in latest battle - Times Online

2010-02-15T09:25:00.001-04:00

E-books: Publishers poised for victory in latest battle - Times Online:

"It is believed that allowing buyers to print copies from Google Editions, or allowing the copying and pasting of extracts, is also now off the table."

Old media, doing what old media seems to do best in the information age.

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 - New York Times

2010-02-14T16:49:00.001-04:00

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 - New York Times:

"But the detailed records of searches conducted by Ms. Arnold and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines — and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data."

The more you search, the more the search engine knows what you are looking for. And on the other side of the coin, the more you search, the less anonymous you are to the search engine.

China Alarmed by Security Threat From Internet - NYTimes.com

2010-02-12T12:29:00.001-04:00

China Alarmed by Security Threat From Internet - NYTimes.com:

"In the view of both political analysts and technology experts here and in the United States, China’s attempts to tighten its grip on Internet use are driven in part by the conviction that the West — and particularly the United States — is wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally."

The view from the other side: America and American technology as a tool for destabilization and disruptive change.

Google's Superbowl Ad

2010-02-09T12:33:00.001-04:00

Edge: CLOUD CULTURE: THE PROMISE AND THE THREAT by Charles Leadbeater

2010-02-07T21:41:00.001-04:00

Edge: CLOUD CULTURE: THE PROMISE AND THE THREAT by Charles Leadbeater:

"Digital clouds will be either commercial, social or public."

Charles Leadbeater gives a classification of digital clouds. And the growth of these clouds creates the possibility of what he calls "Cloud Culture" which could lead, he says, to "Exponential growth in mass cultural expression". And all of this culture could be / should be

a rare and delicate mix: more decentralised, plural and collaborative; less hierarchical, proprietary and money driven; the boundaries between amateur and professional, consumer and producer, grassroots and mainstream are breached, if not erased.

Yet, he is not blind to the other possibility, pointed out by Evgeny Morozov--the fact that authoritarian governments can also make use of the cloud.
Leadbeater is "hopeful but realistic," as much as it is possible to be about the unfolding future, but the truth remains to be seen.

Two futures of the internet: next cold war or up in the clouds | Technology | The Observer

2010-02-07T10:58:00.001-04:00

Two futures of the internet: next cold war or up in the clouds | Technology | The Observer

Future 1: cyber war

"the world's dominant internet company is now in the crossfire of early skirmishes of the next cold war.

This thought was reinforced by Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman. He'd been to the International Institute for Strategic Studies for a briefing on its annual survey, Military Balance. 'The thing I found most interesting,' he said, 'was the confirmation that cyber-security is the hot issue … John Chipman, the head of the IISS, says the institute is about to launch a study of cyber-security which raises all sorts of issues. What if a country's infrastructure could be destroyed as effectively by a cyber-attack as by an invasion of tanks? How do you defend against that? How do you identify the culprits? What does international law have to say – might we have to revise our definitions of what constitutes an act of war?

'Chipman argues, plausibly, that we are now at an equivalent period to the early 1950s. Just as strategists had to devise whole new doctrines to cope with the nuclear age, so they will have to come up with new ideas to cope with the information age.'"

Visitors and Residents (from blip.tv)

2010-01-26T16:49:00.004-04:00

from blip.tv

Visitors & Residents

This video explains the useful distinction between Visitors and Residents on the web.

From Tall blog: tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk

‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web

2010-01-22T13:07:00.003-04:00

Most of us do this to some degree. We are no longer just consumers of content, we have become curators of it too.
If someone approached me even five years ago and explained that one day in the near future I would be filtering, collecting and sharing content for thousands of perfect strangers to read — and doing it for free — I would have responded with a pretty perplexed look. Yet today I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t filter, collect and share.

Yes, maybe, but...

It isn't exactly controlled serendipity, it is more creating structures which allow one to control that which otherwise would be left to serendipity. So, in many ways, it is not in the least serendipitous. It is, however, the use of channels or paths that are unusual, but are adapted for an organizational, a resource-finding purpose that were not originally designed for this. It is path making.

Top 10 technologies for tyranny - Software - Technology - News - CRN Australia

2010-01-19T22:36:00.001-04:00

Top 10 technologies for tyranny - Software - Technology - News - CRN Australia: "Top 10 technologies for tyranny"

Top 10 technologies for tyranny

By Iain Thomson
Jan 18, 2010 9:29 AM

Essential tools for up-and-coming despots."

The top five
5. Malware/keyloggers
4. CCTV

3. Databases

The beauty of the database is that it creates a streamlined, efficient method for reducing everyday human activity to a collection of statistics. A well-maintained database is particularly effective in times of strife, as modern tools have made it possible to cross-reference names and locations with previously flagged entries.

2. Web monitoring

...some countries have set up their own internal web monitoring systems, notably China although other countries also practice this. Such systems not only allow content to be blocked at source but also allow the authorities to keep track of what individuals are doing online. They are helped in this by companies operating in the country in question more often than not.

Basically web monitoring is just another form of undercover surveillance, but as the world becomes to rely more and more on the internet so web monitoring is becoming more useful as a method for crushing dissent.

1. Firewalls

Truly, for the ruler who demands the finest in information suppression, the large-scale public firewall is a must.

Is it really doomsday for books? Not while English casts its spell | Books | Books | The Observer

2010-01-17T20:31:00.000-04:00

Is it really doomsday for books? Not while English casts its spell | Books | Books | The Observer:

"The books themselves, with some egregious exceptions, are better printed, bound and jacketed than ever before. Take any volume published in the 1970s and place it next to, say, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall or Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn. The contrast is shocking. Narrow margins, cheap paper, and hideous typography have all had a comprehensive aesthetic makeover."

Interesting that the rise of e-books and the rising threat to the existence of the book might reinvigorate the quality of books produced.

Digital Humanities the Next Big Thing at the MLA

2009-12-30T19:31:00.001-04:00

Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Clearly, the merger of literature and technology is no longer the obsession of a few hobbyists, though too many are still working in the academic equivalent of their parents' basements.
Digital literacy is going to be as essential as information literacy and critical thinking. And English departments can have an important role to play in fostering those new skills. Or -- if we overstress traditionalism and resist innovation because it's more comfortable -- we can cede that ground to other departments such as communications and computer science, making ourselves even less relevant and supportable than we presently are.

Is it the bandwagon of fear, opportunity, or commitment. Sounds like all those New Year's resolutions one can't help but reading now--full of optimism, determined to make the future better, but as Pannapacker points out lacking much of the skilled people to bring about the transition.

We are all digital immigrants now.

2009-12-13T19:23:00.001-04:00

Interview | Danah Boyd: 'People looked at me like I was an alien' | Technology | The Guardian

But there's one cliche in particular that annoys Danah Boyd: the "digital native".
"There's nothing native about young people's engagement with technology," she says, adamantly.
The Microsoft researcher, who has made a career from studying the way younger people use the web, doesn't think much of the widely held assumption that children are innately better at coping with the web or negotiating the hurdles of digital life. Instead, she suggests, they're pretty much like everyone else.
"Young people are learning, they're learning about the social world around them," she says. "The social world around them today has mediated technologies, thus in order to learn about the social world they're learning about the mediated technologies..."
When you think about it, it makes sense. Why would they be different? Perhaps young people spend more time in the online world, and perhaps they are more invested in it, but they still have to figure out the rules, same as everyone else.

Social Networks and Anti-Social Power

2009-12-11T12:47:00.002-04:00

How dictators watch us on the web « Prospect Magazine
by Evgeny Morozov

Social networking, then, has inadvertently made it easier to gather intelligence about activist networks. Even a tiny security flaw in the settings of one Facebook profile can compromise the security of many others. A study by two MIT students, reported in September, showed it is possible to predict a person’s sexual orientation by analysing their Facebook friends; bad news for those in regions where homosexuality carries the threat of beatings and prison. And many authoritarian regimes are turning to data-mining companies to help them identify troublemakers. TRS Technologies in China is one such company. It boasts that “thanks to our technology, the work of ten internet cops can now be done by just one.”

The technologies that allow freedom also allow control. This all makes perfect sense, sadly. Everything can be hacked, by any side. But the growing theme for all social network users--wherever they are--is the creeping (or galloping) loss of freedom and loss of anonymity.

A whole Library of Congress, eh?

2009-12-08T12:37:00.001-04:00

Books of The Times - In ‘Googled,’ Ken Auletta Explores Company’s Inner Workings - Review - NYTimes.com

Google has become such a household term that its name has morphed into a verb. “Its index contained one trillion Web pages in 2008,” Mr. Auletta writes, “and according to Brin, every four hours Google indexed the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress.”

The NYT provides a link to other articles about the Library of Congress, but not to a definition of the unit--neither, presumably did Brin. The unit is frequently an abstraction based on the number of books in the library. Michael Hart's calculation is that a library of congress equals about 13 terabytes. But Matt Raymond writing in the Library of Congress blog, notes that

we can as of this moment say that the approximate amount of our collections that are digitized and freely and publicly available on the Internet is about 74 terabytes. We can also say that we have about 15.3 million digital items online.

Perhaps Mr. Brin or other people who throw around this unit of measurement, should be more specific.

Ken Auletta's cut last chapter from his book on Google

2009-12-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

Ken Auletta : Media Maxims

In the 'deep web'

2009-11-26T19:51:00.002-04:00

The dark side of the internet | Technology | The Guardian

As Kosmix and other search engines improve, he says, they will make the internet truly transparent: "You will be on the same level playing field as the bad guys." The internet as a sort of electronic panopticon, everything on it unforgivingly visible and retrievable – suddenly its current murky depths seem in some ways preferable.

Fascinating article in the Guardian about the dark web. There is a tendency in the visible web towards the visible, the named, the identified and the controlled. But as we more and more walk along well lighted and controlled streets, there are the dark side streets where one can walk in shadow, where one can experience the unanticipated and the random. In many ways, the web, like the city, seeks a balance between the safe and controlled, on the one hand, and the dangerous and uncontrolled, on the other.

Coming soon to Canada: something similar

2009-11-23T12:20:00.001-04:00

Digital economy bill: A punishing future | Comment is free | The Guardian

The digital economy bill is misnamed. A more honest title for the legislation, recently introduced in the Lords, would be the copyright protection and punishment bill. It is less about creating the digital businesses of the 21st century than protecting the particular 20th century business models used in music and film.

The Noble Savage Space

2009-11-22T16:32:00.002-04:00

Cyberspace the liberator is now a tyrant’s tool | Bryan Appleyard - Times Online

Cyberspace was born free, but everywhere it is in chains. Once a promised land inhabited by visionaries, libertarians and freedom fighters, it has become a war zone. “The Harry Potter age of the internet,” says Professor Ron Deibert, “is over.”
Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at Toronto University, which monitors state and corporate control of cyberspace. In a recent Citizen Lab survey of 69 countries, it learnt that 40 had internet restrictions.

I have been reading lately about Deibert and the Citizen lab. They are doing interesting work (citizenlab.org)

H1N1 symptoms -- they didn't mention hallucinations

2009-11-17T13:07:00.003-04:00

t is important that as swine flu spreads, you hump the symptoms of the disease so you can recall it in yourself and others at an aboriginal platform.

Delight construe this attender and reckon your symptoms carefully before using the Human Pandemic Flu Delivery mentioned below.

So far, most swine flu cases score been moderate, with symptoms same to those of seasonal flu. Only a miniature circumscribe of people hit had author sobering symptoms.

If you or a member of your kin has any of the followers symptoms and a temperature of 38°C or above, you may hold swine flu.

The representative symptoms are:

* a sharp pyrexia (a luxuriously body temperature of 38°C/100.4°F or above), and

* a fast cough.

New symptoms may permit:

* headache,

* tiredness,

(http://www.symptomsswineflu.net/)

My body temperature is luxurious, and my cough is fast--at times, but I have not construed delight, and I hope I am not in the miniature circumscribe of people.

the type in Mad Men

2009-11-17T13:01:00.001-04:00

The same applies to TV shows, including the otherwise excellent “Mad Men.” It is rare to find a review of the show that does not rave about the accuracy of its early 1960s styling, yet the “Mad Men” team is woefully sloppy when it comes to typography. Mark Simonson, a graphic designer in St. Paul, Minnesota, blogs about typographic misdemeanors on his Web site, www.marksimonson.com, and he once catalogued the flaws in “Mad Men.” The 1992 typeface, Lucida Handwriting, appears in an ad in the opening titles. Gill Sans, a British typeface designed in 1930 but rarely used in the United States until the 1970s, is used for office signage. A lipstick ad features one wholly appropriate 1958 font, Amazone, but two incongruous ones, 1978’s Balmoral and 1980’s Fenice. He noted lots of other clunkers too, but admits that he has spotted fewer new errors in the most recent episodes of “Mad Men.”

from Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists
NYTimes November 15, 2009

Social Network world changing

2009-11-05T12:16:00.001-04:00

In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it's 33, a good seven years older.

ReadWriteWeb reports a strong uptake in the last year in those 18 - 24 using Twitter.

The reason Craigslist is a mess

2009-09-15T11:23:00.002-04:00

This ends the debate for him, but his tone is oddly non-triumphal; in fact, Buckmaster's statement of fealty to users has a weary sound that I don't understand until weeks later. Only after I have spent every spare hour on craigslist—browsing the ads, tracking the spam, reading the help forums, contacting users—do I finally begin to grasp something of his situation. The truth is that a lot of people complain about craigslist. Buckmaster is correct that few of them complain about the design. They complain about spam, they complain about fraud, they complain about the posting rules, they complain about the search, they complain about uploading images. They complain about every way a classified transaction can go wrong. They seldom complain about amazing new features they imagine they might possibly want to use, because they are too busy complaining about the simple features they depend on that don't work as well as they'd like. By eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, craigslist's programmers have cut out all the cushioning layers that separate them from the users they serve, and any right they have to teach lessons in public service comes from the odd situation of running a company that is directly subservient only to the public. Here's the lesson: The public is a motherfucker.

from Why Craigslist is such a mess
Now this is really interesting.

Are fewer young people using social networks such as Twitter? How we all use the internet | News | guardian.co.uk

2009-08-06T10:27:00.001-04:00

Are fewer young people using social networks such as Twitter? How we all use the internet | News | guardian.co.uk:

"Apparently, it is SO over: the kids don't like social networking anymore. Even more gallingly, it appears part of the reason is that older users do."

Figures show a drop in use of social networks by users between the ages of 25 to 54. So, what do they mean by older?

Serendipity

2009-08-06T10:23:00.001-04:00

Ping - The Digital Age Is Stamping Out Serendipity - NYTimes.com:
Is it possible to build in some randomness or chaos into an information system?

Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, wrote to the Twitterati, 'Repositioning the product to focus more on discovery is an important first step in presenting Twitter to a wider audience of folks around the world who are eager to start engaging with new people, ideas, opinions, events and sources of information.'

Interesting observation that the digital world hides so many things that were formerly visible, a person's music collection, choices of movies, even now, I suppose, books. Now, we reveal things about ourselves on our Facebook pages, or through the random pictures of us others might post.
But note, randomness has to be anarchic and disorderly. Serendipity, is really the wrong word. The word was coined by Horace Walpole (in 1754) according to the Wikipedia. Walpole gives an example definition:

One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table.

"Accidental sagacity" is not how we would define the term today. Walpole's example shows what we would more likely call deduction, putting together clues to find out something that one would otherwise not have known. It shows simply a discovery, suddenly understanding something, but it is not necessarily a fortunate or happy discovery, the most important element of our current definition.
The idea of the accidental encounter contains the possibility of the happy chance discovery, but also of the unhappy or unpleasant discovery. And, in any system to do what Biz Stone wants to do, viz. engaging with new people, ideas, opinions, &c, the happy is only just a part of it.

The prospects of Microsoft Word in the wiki-based world - Ars Technica

2009-08-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

The prospects of Microsoft Word in the wiki-based world - Ars Technica:

"One day you wake up and everything is on a wiki somewhere. How did that happen? It happens in much the same way as typewriters suddenly disappeared—because a better alternative arrived. Word—and I know I'll be attacked for saying this—is the new typewriter."

Well maybe not on a wiki somewhere but somewhere in the cloud. And doubtless it will happen. From the point of view of people like this writer who are concerned with finding the real document / the most recent / the final version of a document. For many others the reality is still the printout.

What everyone had lost track of in the heat of battle was why we were still using Word (or OpenOffice Writer, which is—let's face it—just a clone of Word) to create documents that were likely never going to be printed.

Yes, maybe this is true, but a document is in many people's minds something that could be printed out--even if in reality it will never be. It is only when the document on the screen becomes the real document--in people's minds--and the printout is seen as only a copy, an instance of that reality that the shift will have been made.
I think that the regularity and rules of design that have accreted around the 8 1/2 x 11 page have given it the authority of some consistency (a replacement of the typewriter created page). And a new design standard of an electronic document will have to replace this, and perhaps the author is correct in finding this (at least for himself) in the wiki page

Wikipedia's CSS files automatically make everything look pretty, and more importantly, consistently pretty.

danah boyd on ... the real social network

2009-07-29T13:01:00.001-04:00

apophenia: Would the real social network please stand up?
danah boyd distinguishes between three types or views of social networks determined by how they are conceptualized or investigated, and these are, she says, "often collapsed in public discourse":
--Sociological "personal" networks
--Behavioral social networks
and
--Publicly articulated social networks
The sociological, she points out, is the source of many of the terms we use to describe online social networks: friend, social capital, &c. And frequently we would probably like to think that online social networks are structures like this type of network, assuming for example, that a friend in this type of network is someone you could approach if you wanted to get some notes from a class you missed. But, in reality, online social networks are more complex, made up of people we work with or are in a class with, or would like to be associated with in some way.
So, it it important in researching social networks to try to focus on what you want to measure: behaviours, attitudes, self-conceptions, &c.

Facebook Says It Wants You to Be Less Private - But Why?

2009-07-01T20:58:00.001-04:00

Facebook Says It Wants You to Be Less Private - But Why?:

"Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker told us this in response to our 'why' question:
Sharing is at the core of our product. Finding people you know, learning about people you don't know, searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you can generally only happen when people are open and choose to share. By recommending more open defaults, more people will be able to connect on the site.
Is that really true? Facebook is about learning about people you don't know and searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you? Far more often, we've heard the saying 'Facebook is about people you know, Twitter is about people you want to know and MySpace is about people you used to know.'

It is interesting that Facebook started off as a private space, controlled and limited, and that now it wants to become a more open space. Of course, it could be that Facebook wants to use this openness to sell users things, to convert the space into a market where interactions are less and less a the user's control. It is like the developments of urbanization, except in reverse. It may create some benefits as well as some irritations.

Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet

2009-06-28T10:33:00.002-04:00

Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet:

"More than 200 million people—about one-fifth of all Internet users—have Facebook accounts. They spend an average of 20 minutes on the site every day."

And more importantly in this article, the point that Facebook sees itself more as a rival to Google than as a rival to other SNSs:

"We never liked those guys [Google]," says one former Facebook engineer. "We all had that audacity, 'Anything Google does, we can do better.' No one talked about MySpace or the other social networks. We just talked about Google."

The ultimate direction of Facebook is as an alternative model for the web to Google and its approach to organizing the world's information. But, the real question is: is this model possible? For one thing, will the social network model scale, and especially will it remain human, community-like, or will it come to feel inhuman, monolithic, and autocratic?
In this regard, I think that readwriteweb has got it right:

These are the diminishing returns. The more the model scales, the more it will irritate users, and the more users will switch off, and the sooner growth will slow down and reverse. As with email, Facebook can "make up for this with volume." But unlike with email, which is virtually free, Facebook has to pay money to serve each user.
Sorry, "Coca-Cola wants to be your friend" is in no way an enduring revenue model. If it sounds phony, maybe that is because it is phony.
The one lesson from social media marketing is that authenticity matters. What no one has shown -- and methinks this would be impossible -- is how to scale authenticity.

Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers - Chronicle.com

2009-06-15T09:31:00.001-04:00

Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers - Chronicle.com:

"In a shorter project, undergraduates in a first-year writing class at Michigan State University were asked to keep a diary of the writing they did in any environment, whether blogging, text messaging, or gaming. For each act of writing over a two-week period, they recorded the time, genre, audience, location, and purpose of their writing.
'What was interesting to us was how small a percentage of the total writing the school writing was,' says Jeffrey T. Grabill, the study's lead author, who is director of the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center at Michigan State. In the diaries and in follow-up interviews, he says, students often described their social, out-of-class writing as more persistent and meaningful to them than their in-class work was.
'Digital technologies, computer networks, the Web — all of those things have led to an explosion in writing,' Mr. Grabill says. 'People write more now than ever. In order to interact on the Web, you have to write.'"

On the one hand students write more, but on the other, as Mark Bauerlein notes, citing "the reading and writing scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which have remained fairly flat for decades. It is a paradox, he says: 'Why is it that with young people reading and writing more words than ever before in human history, we find no gains in reading and writing scores?'" I suppose one could ask, even if students are doing more are they doing enough? And, where does the feedback come from to make them try to write better?

Well, so much for the paid content model

2009-06-08T09:57:00.001-04:00

Xark!: The newspaper suicide pact:

"I think I'll remember last week as the moment when I finally knew, with a certainty approaching fatigue, that the newspaper industry – the business and passion that both shaped and warped me over the past 20 years – had chosen ritual suicide. The choice appears grimly reached and irrevocable."

Read the whole article at Xark...

The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation -- New York Magazine

2009-05-31T11:13:00.002-04:00

The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation -- New York Magazine: "In Defense of Distraction"
As the writer points out

"Over the last twenty years, Meyer and a host of other researchers have proved again and again that multitasking, at least as our culture has come to know and love and institutionalize it, is a myth. When you think you’re doing two things at once, you’re almost always just switching rapidly between them, leaking a little mental efficiency with every switch."

In other words our minds are capable of paying attention to only one thing at once. We are capable of sharing our attention between two or more tasks only because we are capable, or seem capable in our own minds, of doing them with relatively efficiency by doing this rapid switching back and forth. However, don't be fooled.

Only in the last ten years—thanks to neuroscientists and their functional MRIs—have we been able to watch the attending human brain in action, with its coordinated storms of neural firing, rapid blood surges, and oxygen flows. This has yielded all kinds of fascinating insights—for instance, that when forced to multitask, the overloaded brain shifts its processing from the hippocampus (responsible for memory) to the striatum (responsible for rote tasks), making it hard to learn a task or even recall what you’ve been doing once you’re done.

So, certain kinds of tasks can be accomplished using this method, but ones that rely on bringing together ideas or whose goal is to remember something obviously would not be successfully accomplished. However, the writer notes:

The only time multitasking does work efficiently, Meyer says, is when multiple simple tasks operate on entirely separate channels—for example, folding laundry (a visual-manual task) while listening to a stock report (a verbal task). But real-world scenarios that fit those specifications are very rare.

So, sometimes we may have the sense that we are actually succeeding in multitasking and this may give us the illusion that we are capable of truly doing several things at once at any time.
The unanticipated encounter
However, as much as we want to be the type of people who are capable of concentration and attention to tasks, we have to acknowledge the power of the interruptions that surround us, and most of us would not willingly give all of them up, at least all of the time. As the writer points out:

The Internet is basically a Skinner box engineered to tap right into our deepest mechanisms of addiction. As B. F. Skinner’s army of lever-pressing rats and pigeons taught us, the most irresistible reward schedule is not, counterintuitively, the one in which we’re rewarded constantly but something called “variable ratio schedule,” in which the rewards arrive at random. And that randomness is practically the Internet’s defining feature: It dispenses its never-ending little shots of positivity—a life-changing e-mail here, a funny YouTube video there—in gloriously unpredictable cycles.

This is the reality, the life-changing is frequently the unanticipated. And, as the writer goes on to discuss, one of the problems of drugs people take to concentrate their attention is the very narrowness and restricted nature of the focus it provides.

Adderall users frequently complain that the drug stifles their creativity—that it’s best for doing ultrarational, structured tasks. (As Foer put it, “I had a nagging suspicion that I was thinking with blinders on.”)

How (Not) to Write like a Designer: 5 Tricks You Didn't Learn in Studio - Core77

2009-05-23T12:18:00.001-04:00

How (Not) to Write like a Designer: 5 Tricks You Didn't Learn in Studio - Core77:

"1. Use your skills. You’re a designer, which means you’re good at the same kinds of things writers are good at, but you use different tools. You’re a fixer: you work within constraints to find elegant solutions to complicated problems, and that’s kind of what writing is, too. So, faced with a writing task, do what you do best. Break it down into a problem you can solve. Ask yourself: Who’s this for? What’s the big idea? What are the pieces I’m using? What do I want to say? Like designing, writing can straddle the line between art and craft—half blinding flashes of inspiration and unexplainable moments of brilliance (maybe a little less than half), and half moving words around, making and breaking sentences, typing commas then deleting them. Nuts and bolts stuff. If you get too caught in one side, move to the other. Writing’s about thinking big and thinking small, putting complex ideas into simple boxes, and you can do that."

Maybe we should all learn to think of writing as a design problem.

Exploring the 2010 Web

2009-05-22T17:48:00.001-04:00

Exploring the 2010 Web:

"“OK, Scoble, so what are you learning about the 2010 web so far?”
Well, I’m seeing it has a few attributes:
1. It’s real time. Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed are all moving toward architectures and displays that refresh in real time, or let you see what’s happening right now. We are at the extreme beginnings of that trend."

2. It's mobile
3. It's decentralized
4. Pages now built out of premade blocks.
5. It's social
6. It's smart
7. Hybrid infrastructure
(all points from Scoble--for details see posting)

Will Blackboard be the new Twitter?

2009-04-22T12:12:00.001-04:00

Forget E-Mail: New Messaging Service Has Students and Professors Atwitter - Chronicle.com:

"Blackboard plans to add a Twitter-like messaging tool to its course-management system, which is used at hundreds of colleges around the country. The company recently announced plans to acquire NTI Group, a company that sells text-message notification systems to colleges for use in emergencies. NTI's systems don't have all the features of Twitter, but they could be used in similar ways."

Facebook, Grades, and Media Hype Hype - Chronicle.com

2009-04-21T21:23:00.001-04:00

Facebook, Grades, and Media Hype Hype - Chronicle.com:

"A researcher at Ohio State University has found that students who use Facebook reported earning lower grade-point averages than nonusers of the social-networking service. But the researcher, Aryn C. Karpinski, said in an interview with The Chronicle that she did not have enough data to determine whether Facebook use causes students to do poorly in their studies, despite a string of media reports that she says overstate her findings."

It is understandable that the researcher, Ms. Karpinski, is frustrated. It seems that the media, and others, want to be able to jump to conclusions about Fb and other SNSs. There is the sense that as an application or as a tool, it must be for time wasting and non-academic-work related activities.
Eszter Hargittai writes in a posting on Crooked Timber that

based on data about 1,060 first-year students at the University of Illinois, Chicago collected on a paper-pencil survey in Winter, 2007 (data set described in detail here), I find no relationship between whether someone uses Facebook and self-reported GPA (collected in categories, not in specific grade-point average terms). Additionally, I also have data on number of times the respondent used a social networking site the day before taking the survey and there is no correlation between that measure and grades either.
It is also worth noting that an important finding of my study was how Facebook use is not randomly distributed among participants (e.g., parental education, race, ethnicity predicted adoption) so it’s helpful to look at the relationship of various factors such as grades (or whatever else) to Facebook usage while controlling for other variables.
There are lots of reasons why one may or may not find a relationship between Facebook use and grades. I won’t get into that here, it could make for a very long essay. The point of this post is mainly to suggest a careful approach to what we see in the press and at conferences.

Searching for Bruce Sterling : Bad at Sports

2009-04-21T09:23:00.004-04:00

Mike Rohde, Sketchnotes captured on-site and live in a Moleskine pocket sketchbook while attending SXSW Interactive, March 13-17, 2009 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

Searching for Bruce Sterling : Bad at Sports:

"Note too that Rohde’s notes have Sterling saying, “connectivity will be an indicator of poverty rather than an indicator of wealth,” and not connectivity = poverty."

Note on the previous post.

Let Them Eat Tweets

2009-04-21T08:07:00.001-04:00

The Medium - Let Them Eat Tweets - Why Twitter Is a Trap - NYTimes.com:

"Where once it was “hypnotic” and “mesmerizing” (words often used to describe Twitter) to read about a friend’s fever or a cousin’s job complaints, today the same kind of posts, and from broader and broader audiences, seem . . . threatening. Encroaching. Suffocating. Twitter may now be like a jampacked, polluted city where the ambient awareness we all have of one another’s bodies might seem picturesque to sociologists (who coined “ambient awareness” to describe this sense of physical proximity) but has become stifling to those in the middle of it."

Again the the images of the urban street, of poverty, homelessness, wandering lost in the crowd surface in the description.

As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den), but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid—as that ebony to which has been likened the style of Tertullian.
The wild effects of the light enchained me to an examination of individual faces; and although the rapidity with which the world of light flitted before the window prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each visage, still it seemed that, in my then peculiar mental state, I could frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of long years. (Poe, "The Man of the Crowd")

And in the last paragraph of the story, the narrator describes the man he has been following who seeks to be surrounded always by the crowd:

It was something even more intense than despair that I then observed upon the countenance of the singular being whom I had watched so pertinaciously. Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D—— Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid the momently increasing confusion, did I persist in my pursuit of the stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and fro, and during the day did not pass from out the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. ‘The old man,’ I said at length, ‘is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. (Poe, "The Man of the Crowd")

Facebook and MySpace users 'fed up with spam marketing messages

2009-04-21T07:47:00.001-04:00

Media | guardian.co.uk:

"Research by the IAB also suggested that despite the rush by brands to tap into the potential of websites such as Facebook and MySpace, the reality is that users are turned off by marketing tactics.
Only 5% of those surveyed said they had signed up to a social networking profile set up or sponsored by a brand.
The report also found that 12% of those surveyed do not like the fact that other people can monitor online activity on websites such as MySpace and Facebook. The survey concluded that this suggested that users were not particularly aware of the privacy functions that can be set to limit what can be seen."

As the space of SNSs becomes increasingly populated by advertisers and spam dealers, the self-defensiveness of users will rise, as well as their resentment about intrusions into what they see as their private space, or the space of their social network.
On the other hand joining groups set up by brands is quite a lot like joining a group of people who support a cause--it is more a badge of alignment tacked on to one's profile than something that requires one to actually do something. Or am I wrong?
And, this clamour of voices from the margins of the page will make it more difficult for other useful developments to emerge. So, for example, teachers who wish to find a way to sue SNSs to reach students where they are will be just another voice in the crowd, indistinguishable from marketers. This is a worry even if teachers are offering something of value:

However, the survey, carried out by research firm Opinion Matters for the IAB, found that 28% of social networkers were happy to join a new group if it offered exclusive content.
"Despite its popularity this study shows that respect for the user is just as important in social media, users will not respond to spam or irrelevant advertising," said the IAB senior marketing manager, Amy Kean.

Does there come a point where there is just too much noise in the channel for valuable messages to get through?

Twitter Demographics

2009-04-15T11:41:00.001-04:00

Twitter Traffic Explodes...And Not Being Driven by the Usual Suspects!:

"Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic recently authored an interesting blog post about the demographics of Twitter users. What he discovered was that 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter (Index of 88). It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely."

What Twitter does for people my age is clearly different from what Facebook does for the 18-24 age bracket. It is interesting that Fb is seeking to become more like Twitter in some respects doubtless to please the people in the older age brackets--not to please those who are still undergrads. Can Fb be all things to all people? Does it want to be?

Facebook usage stats

2009-04-15T11:28:00.001-04:00

Facebook now accounts for one third of all online social networking time | Media | guardian.co.uk:

"The latest comScore data is good news for Facebook, ranking the site as the sixth most popular website in the world with 275 million unique users each month. That exceeds the 200 million user mark that Facebook recently made public, but regardless of different metrics the trends are interesting here.

Facebook now accounts for 4.1 minutes of every 100 minutes we spend online, which is a sign that we are using the site more deeply - or just getting lost because of that new design. The site accounts for more than 30% of all time spend on social networking sites, up from just over 12% a year earlier."

Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook's Future - BusinessWeek

2009-04-10T09:41:00.002-04:00

Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook's Future - BusinessWeek:

On the questions about Facebook's business strategy

It's a really simple answer, which is that our business is advertising. We're not waiting to find our business. We found it, and it's actually working very well.

Keep this in mind. Fb is not about serving the social needs of its users, it is about finding ways to use the social to sell things to its users. But, who are academics who want to use Fb to connect with students? Are they "Friends"--part of the social network? Or, are they just other advertisers, in search of capturing eyeballs, of selling something to the real clients--whose attention is or wants to be elsewhere?

Me Media

2009-04-04T21:47:00.001-04:00

Me Media: The New Yorker:

"Ultimately, though, the success of sites like MySpace and Facebook may have less to do with the opportunities they provide for self-expression than with peer pressure. Once Facebook is available, many students feel compelled to join simply because everybody else is using it. “I tried to hold out and go against the flow,” Cal Nannes, a junior at Davidson College, in North Carolina, said. “But so many of my friends were members that I finally gave in.” Many Facebook users also admit that they tailor their profiles to win the approval of their peers. “I want to seem self-aware, but not a pretentious asshole,” Matt Morello, a Yale graduate who logs on to Facebook about a dozen times a day, wrote in an e-mail. He described how simply listing his favorite music became an agonizing task: “I never used to update this, thinking it was just too fraught a category (like Favorite Books still is, unless there’s some joke to make). I’m a musician: what I play and listen to has always been an important part of my identity, and it’s only fairly recently that I’ve developed the confidence to say, you know, I like this, and I don’t really care if you don’t. So what’s there now?"

A passage from John Cassidy's "Me Media", an account of the origins and development of Facebook, combined with some reflections--like this--on what it all means. Peer pressure to join, and to join one needs to create a representation of oneself.
Nicholas Carr, also writes about this anxiety of creating this online existence "avatar anxiety"

Your online self ... is entirely self-created, and because it determines your identity and social standing in an internet community, each decision you make about how you portray yourself - about which facts (or falsehoods) to reveal, which photos to upload, which people "to friend," which bands or movies or books to list as favorites, which words to put in a blog - is fraught, subtly or not, with a kind of existential danger. And you are entirely responsible for the consequences as you navigate that danger. You are, after all, your avatar's parents; there's no one else to blame. So leaving the real world to participate in an online community - or a virtual world like Second Life - doesn't relieve the anxiety of self-consciousness; it magnifies it. You become more, not less, exposed.

(Nicholas Carr -- The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar)