NYT’s Modern Love column (which can be pretty hit or miss) warns us about the perils of Googling your date- best avoided, despite obvious temptation!
Anybody else think unlimited access to information has catapulted us into a “way too much information” age (at least when it comes to certain social scenarios)? Facebook has even created a whole new category of social relationship: the “pseudo-acquaintance”- who you know more about than you should.
I actually wonder whether Facebook stalking will ever become a legitimate way to meet new people. If that happened, we could all stop pretending we don’t recognize each other and just start introducing ourselves instead. I guess for now, I’ll just revel in the fantastically awkward situations that result from these information asymmetries.
Gmail’s offering free stickers to promote their keyboard shortcuts. Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope (hmm, I guess they aren’t free after all), to this address for your set:
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420
In other Google fun, check out these obscure Google search tricks.
My favourite one allows you to turn Google into your own personal iTunes. Type the following search operator into Google to find audio files.
Human-Computer Interaction: A branch of technology that deals with designing intuitive interfaces. This stuff is so very awesome (yet so very geeky, I know). I really think this stuff is going to revolutionize the way we use computers. it’s hard to explain in words, so just check out these videos:
Multi-touch screens: you’ve seen it on the IPhone and also on CNN, but this is the original:
On a sidenote, HP just released one of the first multi-touch laptops on the market! Reviews are good, but not stellar. My next laptop purchase will definitely have this technology.
So Halloween and Thanksgiving have come and gone, which means the holiday season is here! In celebration of Starbuck’s festive drinks, I give you a venti-sized Things I Love: Gift Giving edition.
1. Give the gift of random chotchkies. Etsyis an online marketplace for handmade art items, i.e. useless junk! Perfect for that annoying friend who won’t tell you what they want. The coolest part of this site are the creative viewing interfaces.The Time Machine lets you “travel through space and time” while browsing items. The Geolocator puts all Etsy sellers on a 3D globe. The showcase features best-selling items, in an interface where you can move the blocks around like a puzzle. It’s pretty awesome. Babushka dolls, anyone?
2. Give the gift of time. Internet resources for people who measure time by the second.
a) Tinyurl lets you shorten ridiculously gargantuan URL’s into manageable packets to send in emails.
b) Stinto lets you create disposable chat rooms for group discussion. Save friendships by avoiding the inevitable gchat vs. msn discussion.
c) Dodgit lets you avoid Internet spam by creating a fake “receive-only” Internet address for all of those pesky online registration forms.
d) Grand Central is a cool little program that gives you one special phone number that calls all your phones. It also gives you one voicemail box and has a handy visual voicemail function. Google recently bought the program, which is still in private beta. I signed up a while back, but still haven’t heard anything. Only US availability right now.
e) LifeHacker: The ultimate resource for people who shave time in five second increments.
3. Give the most generic gifts ever…in the least generic way possible:
Chocablog: All sorts of obscure and not-so-obscure chocolates described in tantalizing detail. They save you the calories by reviewing the chocolate. Warning: I had to physically restrain myself from running to A&P at 3AM after reading some of these descriptions. On a whim, I recently bought Lindt’s 99% cocoa (NOT CHOCOLATE), which comes with this funny disclaimer:
If you REALLY want to give a gift card, check out Charity Choice Gift Cards, which offer fully tax-refundable philanthropic gift cards. Or trade-in your Sears gift card for something a bit more useful at Leverage Card or Giftcardrescue both of which offer insurance policies against bankruptcy. Or if you really want to be a creative, give the gift of the Best Buy Gift Card with built-in speakers.
Lawyer Lawrence Lessig is one of the world’s biggest proponents of the “open copyright” movement- something I’m pretty interested in, myself. His TED talk, is a great primer on how copyright law impedes creativity and innovation, by removing our generation’s ability to express ourselves. In the talk, he argues that the advent of the Internet has rendered our current IP laws outdated. Definitely a must-see for anyone interested in the future of user generated content.
His conclusion really brought it home for me:
As we see what this technology can do, we need to recognize you can’t kill the instinct that technology produces, we can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using it, we can only drive it underground. We can’t make our kids passive again- we can only make them “pirates.” Is that good? We live in this weird time, this age of prohibitions where in many areas of our life, we live life against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law and that’s what we’re doing to our kids. They live life knowing that they live against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting. And in a democracy, we ought to be able to do better.
The key in this whole debate is trying to figure out a way to convince businesses that new “open” business models can be profitable. Without this economic lever, I find it difficult to believe there could be “private” solution to the problem. No company is going to give up its right to protect its assets for purely ideological reasons.
What’s really interesting though, is the possibility that these companies could actually be forced by users to adopt new open business models. Perhaps, certain industries will stop trying to prevent this “illegal” activity and make business changes that provide legitimate alternatives. We’ve already seen steps towards this in a number of areas- particularly, the music and TV industry. Record companies have been forced to adapt to the availability of illegal online music by launching legal downloading sites. Broadcasting networks are streaming “official” content online with commercials, to prevent people from watching it on Youtube. Despite this new found openness on the part of some, the vast majority of private actors would rather fight tooth and nail for the protection of their rights and content. What a huge waste of resources.
Wired presents a nice summary of Obama’s revolutionary use of technology and social media in his campaign. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of these ideas in the future. Although it couldn’t hurt to have one of Facebook’s founders advising him, apparently Obama’s online campaign is modeled after some Harvard research commissioned by the Sierra Club:
In 2003, the Sierra Club realized that its local grassroots volunteer programs weren’t effective. In late 2005, it commissioned the Harvard scholars to undertake a two-year research project to figure out why, and how to fix it. The researchers discovered that the kind of volunteers that the Sierra Club attracted were “lone ranger” types who focused on accomplishing goals on their own, rather than effectively working with others with “shared purpose.”The danger of this approach, Ganz says, is that individuals burn out easily. They try to do everything themselves rather than breaking the goals out into specific tasks that members of interdependent teams can accomplish in pieces. That’s why relationships are so important, they found.
Another great example of Internet collaboration… this is how I justify having Facebook.
Needless to say, the Canadian political scene is fairly behind on the use of social media. None of the major parties had anything remotely resembling creativity/interactivity in its use of technology. That might help explain the record low turn-out by youth in the last election. The Liberal party (and its new leader) should take heed of these new techniques, given it desperately needs to revamp its fundraising model.
Here’s an interesting article in Democracy Magazine (put out by the Roosevelt Institute, a US-based student think-tank) that discusses possible applications of the network effect in the world of public policy. [For a quick background on some of this stuff, see my earlier post titled "the Power of Networks: a Primer."]
In a representative democracy, we entrust elected and appointed officials to make informed decisions on our behalf. Of course, the system is imperfect and other than the occasional “town-hall” meeting, opportunities for real public consultation are few and far between.
Thus, applying the collaborative power of networks to public policy is an intriguing prospect. At its essence, the Internet’s strengths lie in its ability to decrease information asymmetries and connect disparate people together by giving them a platform to collaborate. Thus, the Internet and public policy are intuitive bedfellows- technology can strengthen public institutions, by lowering the cost of access to both specialized knowledge and public opinion. The article describes a great example of this type of project:
On June 15, 2007, the USPTO [United States Patent Office- a public institution] launched an experiment, the “Peer-to-Patent: Community Patent Review,” which could become a model for precisely this sort of collaborative governance. The program solicits public participation in the patent examination process via the Web. This system (the design and implementation of which I direct in cooperation with the USPTO) allows the public to research and upload publications–known in patent law as “prior art”–that will inform the patent examiner about the novelty and obviousness of the invention and enable her to decide whether it deserves a patent. This is truly revolutionary: In the 200 years since Thomas Jefferson founded the patent office, there has been no direct communication between the patent examiner and the public.
How can patent officers be expected to judge the merit of applications on topics that they know nothing about? This project allows patent officers access to the public’s wealth of specialized information. Results show significant progress in reducing the back-log in patent offices.
I think there is exciting potential for these types of projects to improve public institutions. What better way to strengthen our democracy, than by applying the very democratizer of information itself.
A quick post about things that I wanted to share… loosely related to technology.
1. Urtak: The recent presidential election has made the inadequacies of modern polling all too apparent. The art of polling has been revealed to be less scientific (and prescient) than I ever imagined. Enter Urtak, a new experiment in democratic polling, started by a couple of gents that went to my high school. It’s a neat little project, but also very addictive. “The polls may not be representative, but they’re 100% authentic!” (Please mention my name when you sign up!)
2. Googletext: Those of you who know me, know that I love Google. Here’s another reason for me to love it even more. Use it to look-up phone numbers, find that sushi place around the corner or resolve a bet that you made with your friend in the car.
3. The Kindle. I want one. But I think I’ll wait for Version 2.0. (Note: only available in the US).
Over the summer, I developed a strong interest in examining the impact of technology on our society. The Internet is a particularly poignant example of one such transformative technology. Even to the least tech savvy, its benefits are enormous. Among other things, the Internet gives us unlimited access to information (Google), allows us to communicate over great distances with minimal effort (email) and even provides us with channels to express our many opinions (blogs).
In the Wealth of Networks (full review to come), Benkler explains the internet’s transformative power using economics terms. He asserts that the Internet has empowered individuals by facilitating collaboration and creating a powerful “networked information economy.” Essentially, the magic of the Internet lies in its ability to connect disparate individuals- a collective can create something much larger than any individual could. By providing a medium for collaboration, information technology essentially increases the value of an individual’s output. This is the power of networks.
The net is littered with countless examples of this phenomenon. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia run by volunteers, has turned its traditional counterparts (e.g. Encyclopedia Britannica) into expensive paper weights. Linux, an open-source operating system designed by programmers in their spare time, is a legitimate alternative to Microsoft’s corporate behemoth, Windows. Obama’s wildly successful presidential fund raising campaign relies on millions of dollars of individual donations rather than corporate or public funding. Political blogs and hundreds of independent online media sources are challenging and revolutionizing traditional journalistic mediums.
In my opinion, the most exciting applications of these ideas are still to come. The ability to harness the power of networks has yet to be fully explored (or exploited) by the private or public sectors. The world of public policy, in particular, is long overdue for some innovation. The Internet is probably one of the best champions of democracy- having essentially democratized the market for information… more on this later
One more thing before I end this post: new developments in the regulatory environment for the Internet (particularly intellectual property law) may threaten the network information economy. These laws restrict the flow of information, which is critical for any network to survive. The “open everything” movement is the brainchild of proponents of the the freedom of information and its ability to create power innovation. Look no further for a worthy cause…
Interested in reading more? Try:
1) Benkler’s book available for free here. Lawrence Lessig is another authority on the topic worth checking out.
2) Economics of Sharing, Economist, Feb. 3rd 2005. (Short and sweet)
3) James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds (Explains why a crowd might actually be better than an “expert.”)
After much lurking and indecision, I have unceremoniously joined the ranks of web 2.0 junkies and started a blog. Ironically enough, it was my need to procrastinate from banal course work that finally spurred me to make this oft-considered move. Inertia beget action, if you will.
As of yet, this blog has no particular mandate. I suspect it will center around on some of my many interests:
1. Current events. Politics. Economics.
2. Technology. the Internet. Networks.
3. Social entrepreneurship. Innovation.
I would not be surprised if this blog also doubled as a photoblog, travelblog, personal calendar, digital file-drawer, book/movie/music review site or any other self-serving purpose that comes to mind. Mainly, I just want an opportunity to write (before I forget how) and a place to collect the random assortment of thoughts and observations that I usually force onto my friends and family. Perhaps, a theme might even emerge in the future.
Before I end this post, I should credit this blog’s name, Thumbspeak, to a New Yorker article by Louis Menand. The article centers around the new digital language that has evolved from cellphone texting (BRB, LOL, GR8 etc). You will see none of that on this blog. I do, however, think this concept is a telling illustration of how technology has fundamentally and undeniably changed the way we communicate and interact. Even language, long held to be the bastion of the literary, has not managed to escape unscathed. [For an interesting treatise on the importance of language, see Steven Pinker's Stuff of Thought- or see his Ted Talk here]. At its heart, thumbspeak underscores two other phenomena brought upon man by modern technology: 1. the need to feel constantly connected and 2. the sense of immediacy/urgency that this connective-ness creates (no time to delay- reply to that email on your blackberry NOW). Both have contributed to the ongoing internal struggle between my fascination, but also distaste for technology and the internet.
Anyways, I thought the term was catchy, albeit probably unrepresentative of the tone of this blog. That seems long enough for a first post.
