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  • thePuck 3:11 am on April 30, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: #amazonfail, Chris Brogan, , Gillmor Gang, Jason Calacanis, Leo Laporte, , , Oprah, , Robert Scoble, , , social networking, swine flu,   

    Social Media Misinformation, Disinformation, and Just Plain Stupidity 

    Twitter 6x6 1/1/08
    Image by apenny via Flickr

    OMG we’re all gonna die of swine flu!

    No, actually, we’re not. In fact, very little will happen at all. So why is it being so blown out of proportion? Think about this…more people die every day from…well, everything, than swine flu. Name it. Even the common cold has a higher body count. More people have died of being blown up in space shuttles than Americans have died of swine flu. Just think about that. Space shuttles. How rare is that? Swine flu is even rarer. So why is everyone freaked out?

    I’ll tell you why…because humans are a panicky bunch. Oh, sure, we like to make myths and stories about ourselves being fearless warriors and unstoppable killing machines, but really we are primates who evolved to live in cooperative groups. We did not gain dominance through martial prowess but through our tendency to work in concert and run when outmatched. Those that didn’t run are no longer with us, genetically or actually. When we try to make humans into these mythic creatures, these warriors, it very often breaks them. Post-traumatic stress disorder, emotional disassociation, and periodic depression are common symptoms of broken humans, but of course there are matters of degree; some are not broken but merely bent, and these often make very good soldiers but very poor humans. While this is regrettable, until humans learn a different way to resolve disputes, it is also necessary. Some must give up their humanity so that others may keep their lives.

    But the rest of us are a fearful lot. We repeat unlikely things because they scare us rather than because we know them to be true. We spread fear and inspire chaos. And, even worse, we give license to ourselves and each other to act in idiotic and horrendous ways, all because we were afraid.

    So enough. Quit it. You are spreading panic and making everyone anxious for no reason. Quit tweeting and retweeting the latest stupid update on swine flu. Stop making Google Maps mashups. Stop posting the latest WHO and CDC figures. Stop. Even if there were a real danger, this chicken-little crap would not be helpful. Save it for the zombie holocaust…I am sure Tom from accounting will get a big giggle out of your last tweets of “OMG ZOMBIES WDFFBKW” as he chomps your brains.

    And on that note…celebrities aren’t celebrities here, so quit letting the media lead you by the nose.

    That’s right, I’m talking about Oprah and Ashton and whoever else wants to ply their dirty little trade here. They don’t get it, and most likely never will. Narcissists don’t do well in social media because they give nothing back. Look at the so-called celebrities’ profiles…look at the ratio. Look at how much they interact. Ashton at least seems to make an attempt…most of the “celebrities” seem to think that Twitter is just another place for them to play “look at me!”.

    The real celebrities of our ranks are those who interact, who have ideas, and who actually do things. Robert Scoble, Howard Rheingold, Tara Hunt, Leo Laporte, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis…we all know the names. The people (and many more, some of them I am lucky enough to know personally) are the real celebrities of social media. And I know some of you are groaning about me listing all these A-listers and crowing about “internet fame” like it’s “real” fame, but hear me out: I don’t know what “real” or “unreal” fame is. All fame seems to be an abstraction; we made up the concept and apply it as a social construct. And on the basis of this construct I say that “internet famous” (I am talking about the Jason Calacanis kind of web famous, not the Numa Numa guy kind, in case you are confused) is more “real”, or at least handed out for better reasons and according to values I am more in agreement with, than the fame dished out by Hollywood, TV, and the music industries. I like our kind of fame…it comes because a person is smart, cool, funny…not because an executive someone decided to promote them and turn them into a cash cow. I will take the Gillmor Gang over The View any day.

    And for my final trick, I will also rant about #amazonfail.

    What the hell is wrong with us? Do we so enjoy schadenfreude that we will leap to offense just on suspicion? I was just as guilty in this one…I jumped up on the issue when it first surfaced in the stream and posted, tweeted, and argued as I usually do about anything remotely related to gay rights. And we were wrong. While Amazon dealt with it horribly and I am still unsure as to whether it was a hack (as was claimed on livejournal) or an honest error on their side, we allowed our collective righteous indignation to flow out and attack with no real information.

    Why care?

    Well, I am a bit shocked at how easily we are all directed. We make a huge noise about how we have taken control of the conversation, but we are really just spinning in circles. If some of our pet theories are true and there is a collective intelligence going on in social media, then this intelligence has just woken up, is barely sentient, and reacts like an anxious teenager: eager to embrace every fad, governed and led around by emotional reactions, and unsure of its own place. If we are to take advantage of this new world, then our “smart mob” needs to get a lot smarter.

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    • Evan 11:40 am on May 1, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I don't think anyone should be surprised the the social web is no smarter than the masses it'd made up of. By the logic above, which I agree makes sense, Web 2.0 should be akin to us rushing through the trees shouting alerts calls to each other (tweets?) and picking knats out of our hair.

      Not that this is a problem. Clearly our Social mind is infantile and can be reduced to some our core emotions: fear, desire for sex, desire for communication, desire for recognition. But there is also this push to grow and mature.

      Even the borg need a queen.

  • thePuck 7:24 pm on April 24, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: cause, charity, children soldiers, Invisible Children, justice, , Rescue of Joseph Cony's Children Soldiers, , superheroes   

    Social Media Superheroes Assemble: The Rescue of Joseph Cony’s Children Soldiers 

    Alright, I know I have mentioned doing this before, but now I am doing it: putting out a call for people who want to use their social media superpowers for good and to protect the innocent. thePete, a friend and fellow unique noun, and I have discussed it and talked about starting a new site devoted to it, and I did buy the domain, but I think that for now we can just be a loose association of like-minded online folks who want to pursue altruistic and protective goals online. We have special abilities, and with great power comes great responsibility. Anyone who wants to be added to such a list should contact me.

    The Rescue of Joseph Cony’s Children Soldiers

    This is a worthy use, and time is short. Please help publicize this cause.

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  • thePuck 2:41 pm on April 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: Academia, , , HASTAC, , Social Science, , US   

    Social Media in Academia Discussion at HASTAC 

    HASTAC – Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory

    I have been wanting to talk about HASTAC for some time, and this gives me an excuse. These guys are awesome and everyone who is interested in the larger implications of social media and online technologies should head over and give them a look.

    From their site:

    A consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, and engineers, of leading researchers and nonprofit research institutions, HASTAC (“Haystack”) is committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology. Our primary members are universities, supercomputing centers, grid and teragrid associations, humanities institutes, museums, libraries, and other civic institutions. Since 2003, we have been developing tools for multimedia archiving and social interaction, gaming environments for teaching, innovative educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums, and other digital projects.

    In today’s society, technological advances and digital media are inextricably linked to most aspects of our lives. However, the historic barriers existing between the traditionally-defined disciplines of the humanities and the sciences still remain, regardless of the growing interdependence these domains have upon each other. With this in mind, HASTAC’s mission is two-fold: to ensure that humanistic and humane considerations are never far removed from technological advances; and to push education and learning to the forefront of digital innovation. Similarly, HASTAC is dedicated to the idea that this complex and world-changing digital environment requires all the lessons of history, introspection, theory, and equity that the modern humanities (broadly defined) have to offer. Our aim is to promote expansive models for research, teaching, and thinking.

    Many of the top innovators in the fields of science and technology share the necessity to draw centrally upon human and social developments and considerations as new digital possibilities are created. HASTAC has helped foster this exchange, working in complex and important partnerships with colleagues across varying domains and disciplines. HASTAC leaders have served as consultants to U.S. and international organizations and governments on grid computing and cyberinfrastructure.

    The HASTAC network consists of more than eighty institutions principally located in the US and reaches over 30,000 people worldwide. In reality, it is more a network of networks, located at the intersection of technology, engineering, and computing on one hand, and the humanities, arts and social sciences on the other. This profound interconnectivity has allowed HASTAC to develop its successful network, which in turn promotes greater interactive connections.

    These guys are serious academics and researchers, so while virality is definitely a fair topic for discussion, keep the LOLcats to a minimum. The discussion on Blogging & Tweeting Academia requires you to register to join in, but it’s just started getting attention. With some luck and help from the internet community (that’s right, I mean you!) it should be pretty interesting. Check them out.

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  • thePuck 2:06 am on April 13, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: Advertising, Breaking news, High school, Internet Relay Chat, Numbers game, , Social network service,   

    Dr. Strangetwitter… 

    My social network
    Image by luc legay via Flickr

    …or how I learned to stop worrying and love Twitter!

    Twitter is an odd thing.

    Fresh new ‘in’ thing, marketing mega aid, social communication tool. Chance for conversations. Measurement of popularity. Celebrity fad du jour. Breaking news source. Avenue of connection and communication in real time.

    Target for spammers, and every damned marketing guru and get rich quick schemer around. Trap for young players. Place for the banality of human nature to play out. Competitive arena of social scale. Overwhelming influx of advertising, tedious droning, self important attention seeking, and all the worst aspects of the ‘look at me’ culture.

    So, why do I enjoy it so much?

    Well, I LIKE social media, social networking, the whole enchilada, so to speak. I have been on the web for over a decade, and I have seen it all, from IRC text based chatroom style, through the email craze, IM gains, and now microblogging the  minutae of our lives.

    I do not necessarily feel the need to detail every aspect of my life, though my tea obsession may be well known by now, but I do enjoy passing on things of interest, same as I generally do on my blog, and this includes the odd and arcane act of Retweeting.

    Retweeting involves much the same as forwarding of emails – you find a tweet (post) by a Twitterer that you like, and you forward or RT(retweet) it to your network. In email terms, that is annoying and a terrible habit – to forward everything of interest to all your friends. On Twitter, it is considered jolly good form, and renders you likely to be followed by many eager new friends.

    And therein lies the rub, gentle reader. Your new followers are not often interested in you. Generally, they are interested in the benefits of a frequent retweeting acquaintaince. Perhaps you RT an area of interest, but there are more often those who hope you will RT their meanderings also. Generally, they tend to be the marketing gurus, lifestyle coach, something to sell types.

    Now I find myself in a dichotomy of the numbers game. At first, I gleefully reciprocally followed all my new ‘fans’, excited so many people were interested in my meanderings online. Now, those numbers mock me with their hollow achievement. Any geek knows the seductive nature of popularity – once, we were the weird ones in our high school, tender, vulnerable years. Now, we are shiny, sunny, POPULAR at last!

    Yet that shimmering vision before us, is, alas, a delusion of the numbers that greet us on our Twitter home page. A mirage of popularity indeed! So my cynical side whispers to me, remove those followers! Why follow those so obviously looking to leverage of your good intentions? My chirpier side contends I do not have to RT their blandishments and advertisments, and I can remove those that bother me with too frequent and obvious sales pitches.

    What to do, gentle reader? What to do, indeed?

    Well, nothing. Nada. Zip. I am continuing the experiment, and seeing where it takes me. Judging not the reasons or motivations of those who make up mere numbers, I return to my original take on it all.

    Doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t. The number is just that, a few lines on a page, easily manipulated. Instead, what matters is the people who actively engage in conversations with me, or post intruiging, interesting things I can share.

    Twitter is like any other social media tool, full of traps, ego issues, personality conflicts, and huge gains to be made with intelligent and considered approaches. And pearls of wisdom amongst the dross:)

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  • thePuck 7:45 am on April 5, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: Communication, , , , signifier, , , ,   

    “Do you see what I mean?” How a drunk-driving tweetstorm cast doubt on the solidity of the ‘signifier’ 

    Communication code scheme
    Image via Wikipedia

    Recently, I butted in on a tweetstream. A woman boasted about how she’d been worried about her drunk friend, and that she’d driven close behind her to make sure she got home safely. My retort was that if she was so concerned for her friend’s safety, why was the friend driving drunk? Why weren’t her car keys confiscated, with her ensconced safely in a cab?

    Needless to say, things got heated. She was tweeting in the USA after a long hard night out drinking with her buddy. I was tweeting across numerous timezones fresh eyed, sitting in the morning sun in South Africa.

    I softened my tone.

    Let me rephrase that. In MY opinion, I softened my tone.

    From where I was standing, I felt like I was offering the peace olive.

    That’s not what she took out of my communication. All she could hear was the supercilious, snide, judgemental haranguing of some creep on the southern tip of a continent she couldn’t even stab at on a map.

    I’ve since blocked her Twitter account. I have no interest in following the thoughts of a partygoing condoner of drunk driving.

    But heck… What if we could have aligned our meanings? What if we could have shared access to our inner thoughts? We both tried. But with varying levels of skill and intent.

    A fundamental in communication is verification that one’s message has indeed been delivered intact.

    Because signifiers — the ‘carriers of signs’, the ‘deliverers of meaning’ — are slippery beasts, they shift, and are differently understood from person to person.

    The trouble is that we tend to take our signifiers for granted. We don’t really think for a moment that the signifiers we use — our very words — might run the risk of being misunderstood. We are, after all, communicators, no? And signifiers are, after all, the pack mules of communication.

    When I say the word ‘Love’, for instance, it is a signifier that carries a vast payload. So vast that it’s unlikely you’ll understand it the same way I do. I might be issuing it as a declarative verb. I might be INSTRUCTING you to go out and love!

    You might have ‘heard’ a noun, a wishy washy, ‘Ah, love is such a joy.’ Or a vicious, ‘Love is disgusting, and causes pain and misery.’

    As the sender of a message, I trust and pray that the message I THINK I’m sending is the same one you’re receiving.

    There’s a fair amount of hard work we can do to try and encode our intent into a message. We can provide context. We can use logical thought progressions. We can ground our speech in practical, real-world examples. We can seek verification from those who receive our message.

    But ultimately, no matter how skillfully we encode our messages, the slippery nature of signifiers always eludes us. Put simply… It is impossible for you and me to calibrate our understanding so that what I grasp in the privacy of my own head matches what YOU grasp. You may SAY you get my meaning. I may even AGREE that your summary of my meaning is indeed what I intended. But the signifiers we use are too slippery for certainty.

    This puts pressure on our social media communications. As an avid Twitterer (or Tweeter, or twit, or whatever signifier you’d like to assign to the concept), I’m well aware of the power of the shifting signifier to cause great misunderstanding and anger.

    Here’s the rub. In social media, we’re confined to conveying loads of info in very small channels. Twitter gives us 140 characters to convey our message. So we use ‘lowest common denominator’ words as our signifiers. We simplify our language to fit all of our meaning in. Which means that we lose richness. We dumb down. And even so, our basic words have so much slippage that we’re misunderstood.

    I’ll try and summarize this post as a tweet:

    ‘@royblumenthal: D’ya understand what I think I said? And if so, could you lemme know what you think I said? Significant? And don’t drink’n'drive!’

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    • Michael Hafner 8:04 am on September 18, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      hey that a great post; I´ve written a lot about the meaninglessness of the signifier, but unfortunately most of it in german.
      the challenge with social media and understanding is not only speed and limited space, but in my eyes also the moving and changig contexts:
      if you read my book, I have a fairly good idea about what you are doing
      if you are reading my weppage, I loose a little bit of control – I don’t know where you start, how you come there, what device you use
      if you read my rss feed – I have no idea of how, when, where and what you are actually doing
      and here, it´s actually the worst and most unsecure case: I THINK I have an idea about what you said, and I THINK that what I post here should make some meaning – but shouldn’I actually get back and have a closer look on what you actually wrote? shouldn’t I try to find out more on who you are, to make sure I get your background and know in whcih context you are talking?
      On the other hand – why should I? Your existence, to me, are just a few lines of text, there will probably never be any closer encounter. So why shouldn’t I just take this, do what ever I want, understand it however I think, and not care about your “real” intentions at all?

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