Question Technology

Humans as Selfish Equations

In an article at The Register, William Davies questions the economics of the Web 2.0.  Some  excerpts:

Of course many-to-many communication precedes even the internet we know today. Email mailing lists and message boards were features of the first Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), and migrated to the internet. They are both examples of individuals grouping together in a self-organising fashion.

What has changed is that these otherwise secluded and organic realms of social interaction are now the focus of obsessive technological innovation and commercial interest. The same technological zeal and business acumen that once was applied to improving the way we buy a book or pay our car tax is now being applied to the way we engage in social and cultural activities with others.

In short, efficiency gains are no longer being sought only in economic realms such as retail or public services, but are now being pursued in parts of our everyday lives where previously they hadn't even been imagined. Web 2.0 promises to offer us ways of improving the processes by which we find new music, new friends, or new civic causes. The hassle of undesirable content or people is easier to cut out. We have become consumers of our own social and cultural lives.

[...]

Undoubtedly there are instances where we do want our social lives to be more efficient. Organising a party can be time-consuming and tedious, and the fact that Facebook now makes this vastly easier is scarcely going to harm the atmosphere of the party.

But we should worry about this psychology seeping too far into our lives. What if there were an application that could make it easier to pass on my love to a family-member? What if I no longer needed to read books in order to cite them, but could search the quotes other people had extracted from them?

The irony is that Web 2.0 has been heralded as the dawn of a new era of community and togetherness. Through the financial eyes of a venture capitalist, this may appear to be true. For the rest of us, what this means is that community is now available to manipulate, choose and consume.

Link: The cold, cold heart of Web 2.0 (The Register),

via Putting People First.

William Davies has a blog: Potlatch.

I have ventured onto the social web sites a little (if you search hard you may find me, and I welcome your befriendsterness or whatever the kids call it), though few of these sites work for me because I'm just not very social.  I have, however, recently become enamored of LibraryThing because I'm good at collecting and befriending books (my profile).

MyDeathSpace

"Morbid curiosity and ridicule have replaced respect for the deceased at MyDeathSpace, where your life is an open book -- even when you're 6 feet under."

An article by Jamie Pietras at Salon: The New American Way of Death.

The YouTube Debates

Jon Stewart had a good bit on Tuesday's Daily Show about the silliness of last week's YouTube debate by the Democratic candidates.  Watch the video here. 

Elsewhere, Jeff Jarvis expresses his disappointment that CNN chose the questions: "CNN selected too many obvious, dutiful, silly questions. [...] The candidates gave us the same answers they always give." (BuzzMachine).

Jose Antonio Vargas at the Washington Post (July 23, July 29) and Andy Carvin at learning.now cover the digital divide angle -- what about the millions of American citizens who can't post to YouTube?  How is this more democratic again?

Valleywag tells us the perks Google served up for the press.

More at Google Blogoscoped.

David Shenk on Ten Years of Data Smog

Ten years ago David Shenk published Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut Revised and Updated Edition.  In a new article at Slate he looks at how well his arguments hold up today.  Excerpt:

[W]hile doing research in Washington into public political knowledge, I started to realize that our postindustrial society was in the midst of a true phase shift—from information scarcity to information glut. Even for a culture with a basic faith in human progress and technology, such a transformation clearly presented serious personal and political challenges. In Data Smog, I tried to suss out the most glaring potholes and suggest a few useful detours. "Something marvelous has been happening to humankind," I wrote in the book's preface. "Information is moving faster and becoming more plentiful, and people everywhere are benefiting from this change. But there's a surprising postscript to this story. When it comes to information, it turns out that one can have too much of a good thing."

Rereading the book 10 years later has been gratifying and humbling. A number of its ideas are, I think, more relevant than ever, while other passages come off as exaggerated or shortsighted. The premise still holds, and thankfully no longer requires much convincing: In our work, home, and social lives, we are saturated with data and stimulus. While our grandparents were limited by access to information and speed of communication, we are restricted largely by our ability to wade through it all. As with calories, we must work constantly to whittle down, prioritize, and pick out the choice nutritional bits. If we don't monitor our information diets carefully, our cerebral lives quickly become bloated. Attention gets diverted (sometimes dangerously so); conversations and trains-of-thought interrupted; skepticism short-circuited; stillness and silence all but eliminated. Probably the greatest overall threat is that so many potentially meaningful experiences can easily be supplanted by merely thrilling experiences.

Link: Was I right about the dangers of the Internet in 1997?

Siva Vaidhyanathan on The Googlization of Everything

That's apparently the title of forthcoming book by Siva Vaidhyanathan, and also of a recent talk.  Here are some notes by Michael at Masters of Media:

Siva’s starting point is that Google is part of our lives, and we talk about in a way that resembles the way we would talk about the Divine. Ultimately, we say, “It is a force for good.” As per the Book of Sergey and Larry, “Don’t be evil”. And in Siva’s words, the path to heaven seems lined by small, personalized advertisements. In the world of Google, moral problems are merely unsolved technological ones. But Google - the search engine - is a black box, and perhaps this is why we mere mortals must become believers.

Google has divine aims, too. Universal access to all of the world’s information? Sergey says, “It would be like the Mind of God”. (Read on and discuss below..)

New Network TheorySiva goes on to discuss the theology of the network via the theology of Google. His interests are broad, from the way the world looks through Google’s eyes, to the political and legal implications of the various precedents Google is (or will be) setting. The issues are multifarious - from the purchase of Double Click to the Viacom-Youtube lawsuit - and the of much speculation throughout the business, legal and politcal spheres.

All the while, Siva says, Google must keep its image - its halo - and so far it has.. Google demands loyalty. In return it offers the illusion of democracy, precision and objectivity.

Link: SIVACRACY.NET: Nieuw Network Theory in Amsterdam,
via Infothought.

Cult of the Muggles

I have successfully avoided an iPhone post, but, alas, I am unable to resist a Harry Potter post.

Over at BoingBoing Cory Doctorow is trumpeting the recent pirating and posting of the new Harry Potter book: Last Harry Potter Leaks Online.  There are two things I find amusing about his post: 

1) Cory links to the book at Amazon using his associates ID (link)!  So what's the message here?  Get the book for free, but if you must buy a hardcopy then kick in a few percent for me?

2) He makes a little spoiler joke: "Who dies? The publishing industry."  Ha.  No-one should feel bad for Bloomsbury/Scholastic (they'll still do just fine), and I know Cory is trying to be funny, but the implication seems to be that publishers are useless and ought to be done away with.  Is this really how he thinks?  Cory and others in the "free culture" crowd seem to have a very simplistic idea of culture -- that it just magically happens without the need for intermediaries like professional publishers, and that somehow people will be able to earn a living doing it for free.  I haven't yet read a convincing argument for how this might actually work (though Chris Anderson claims he will explain it all in his next book, Free.)

This brings me back to Andrew Keen and his book, The Cult of the Amateur.  I've mentioned the book before, but I've actually read it now, so I'll offer some amateur thoughts.  Keen does a great job pointing out the fallacies in a lot of this silly talk about Web 2.0, free culture, the wisdom of crowds, and Time's "You".  The book is a polemic aimed at a popular business audience, so you won't find any deep analysis here -- much of the argument is based on anecdote, newspaper articles and common sense.  (There are undoubtedly many smart graduate students working on more rigorous studies, for which we might have to wait a little longer.)  For what it is, though, Keen's book is great -- well-written, enjoyable, stimulating.  My only quibble is with later chapters, where he loses focus and veers off into rants against internet gambling and pornography.  Those topics are worthy of criticism, but seem like they would fit better in a different book.

See also: New York Times: New Potter Book May Have Made its Way to the Web.

p.s. I haven't read the Harry Potter books so I'm not sure if I'm using the term "muggles" in any sensible way... I just thought it sounded funny.

Countering Nuclear Power Propaganda

Rebecca Solnit has an excellent article in Orion on why nuclear power is most definitely not the solution to global warming, despite the positive spin you've probably been hearing.  She begins:

Chances are good, gentle reader, that you are going to have to sit next to someone in the coming year who will assert that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. What will you tell them? There’s so much to say. You could be sitting next to someone who hasn’t really considered the evidence yet. Or you could be sitting next to scientist and Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a supporter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy™, which quotes him saying, “We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one safe, available, energy source—now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.”

If you sit next to Lovelock, you might start by mentioning that half the farms in this country had windmills before Marie Curie figured out anything about radiation or Lise Meitner surmised that atoms could be split. Wind power is not visionary in the sense of experimental. Neither is solar, which is already widely used. Nor are nukes safe, and they take far too long to build to be considered readily available. Yet Stewart Brand, of Whole Earth Catalog fame, has jumped on the nuclear bandwagon, and so has Greenpeace founding member turned PR flack Patrick Moore. So you must be prepared.

Read the rest: Reasons Not To Glow.

Risks of Ethnic-Specific Weapons

Barry Kellman has an op-ed on this topic in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle.  Excerpts:

For $1,000, you soon will be able to purchase the text of your own DNA  -- the unique sequence of your genetic inheritance. You can get the information, that is, unless you're Russian. President Vladimir Putin has just announced a ban on the export of all human medical biological materials. He is worried that his citizens' genetic data could enable Western scientists to make ethnic-specific biological weapons for use against Russians.

[...] It is important to stress that there does not now appear to be any independent confirmation of Putin's fears. [...] If anyone actually decided to make an ethnic-specific weapon, are there laws in place to prevent a catastrophe? Are there controls to ensure that information about ethnic-specific genetic traits is kept away from terrorist organizations? The answer must be an emphatic no.   

Today, there is too much that is unknown about bioscience. We do not know where every well-equipped laboratory is, and we have inadequate systems for tracking the movement of pathogens and equipment. There are grossly deficient capabilities for putting information together to give law enforcers the best chance to stop evil applications of emerging techniques. In many parts of the world, a terrorist or criminal group could prepare bioweapons without substantial risk of detection and could inflict unimaginable damage against unprotected populations.

Link: The potential dark side of genetics.

Kellman has a book on this topic due out in August: Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime.

NYT Gives Usability Professionals Some Love

The New York Times profiles usability professionals, who are increasingly in demand, though not yet as cool as librarians (see previous post).  Excerpt:

Sometimes there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make equipment that inadvertently increases the likelihood of repetitive stress injuries.

Enter the usability professional, whose work has recently developed into a solid career track, driven mostly by advancements in technology.

Jobs in the usability industry are varied, as are the backgrounds of the people who hold them. The work can involve testing products in a laboratory, watching people use products in the field or developing testing methods.

Link: Technology's Untanglers: They Make it Really Work.

Librarians 2.0

Librarians are now hip!  The New York Times tells us why:

How did such a nerdy profession become cool — aside from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies.

[...]

Jessamyn West, 38, an editor of “Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out” a book that promotes social responsibility in librarianship, and the librarian behind the Web site librarian.net (its tagline is “putting the rarin’ back in librarian since 1999”) agreed that many new librarians are attracted to what they call the “Library 2.0” phenomenon. “It’s become a techie profession,” she said.

In a typical day, Ms. West might send instant and e-mail messages to patrons, many of who do their research online rather than in the library. She might also check Twitter, MySpace and other social networking sites, post to her various blogs and keep current through MetaFilter and RSS feeds. Some librarians also create Wikis or podcasts.

Link: A Hipper Crowd of Shushers.

The article is mostly a fluff piece for the fashion section of the paper, but still it would have been nice if they'd dug a little deeper and interviewed someone with a slightly more traditional perspective like Rory Litwin of Library Juice.  I'm sure these hipster librarians are not as shallow as the article implies.  I think a lot of people are still attracted to the profession first and foremost because they love books (and that's always cool).

Image: Questionable Content.

Update: check out the discussion about the NYT article over at Library Juice (and elsewhere if you google it).

CBC Rebroadcasts 2006 Massey Lectures

This week the CBC radio show Ideas is rebroadcasting Margaret Somerville's 2006 Massey Lectures, titled The Ethical Imagination.  It's in five parts, airing evenings this Monday-Friday (July 2-6).  Part one is archived and always available on their site, but the rest aren't, so you'd have to catch it live on one of the streaming stations.

I read and liked the book version, but haven't heard the lectures.

Links: The Ethical Imagination, 2006 Massey Lectures, Ideas main page (with link to streaming audio).

Shoppers Step Over Stabbing Victim, Take Cellphone Photo

From the AP:

As stabbing victim LaShanda Calloway lay dying on the floor of a convenience store, five shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of her with a cell phone, stepped over the woman, police said.

The June 23 situation, captured on the store's surveillance video, got scant news coverage until a columnist for The Wichita Eagle disclosed the existence of the video and its contents Tuesday.

Police have refused to release the video, saying it is part of their investigation.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said Tuesday. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

The woman was stabbed during an altercation that was not part of a robbery, Bassham said. It took about two minutes for someone to call 911, he said.

Calloway, 27, died later at a hospital.

Link: Police: Shoppers Stepped Over Victim.

A Google Solution to Health Care Crisis: Advertising

There's a rather odd pair of posts on the official Google Health Advertising blog regarding Michael Moore's new movie Sicko.  (Who knew Google had an official health advertising program?)  The poster is apparently trying to reassure Google customers that all is well -- there's no crisis, it's just bad press; ignore Michael Moore and just buy more ads.  The second post includes this:

But the more important point, since I doubt that too many people care about my personal opinion, is that advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have. You could even argue that it's especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare. Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore's movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.

That is Google's opinion [...]

Wow, that's some astonishing faith in advertising!  No wonder Google's makes so much money from it.

I suppose one shouldn't be surprised that an employee of Google, where health care is free and on-site, is so dismissive about complaints from the rest of us.

Links: Does Negative Press Make You Sicko?, My Opinion and Google's.

via Lauren Weinstein: Google vs. Michael Moore's "Sicko"?