Category Archives: Gadgets and Technology

College student survives 90 day “Amish Project” without technology

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This is a news story that could only be written in our times: a University of Wisconsin-Madison student voluntarily unplugged from all media for 90 days and lived to tell about it. Here is a quick description of his “Amish Project”:

From October to December, he unplugged from social media, email, texts, and cell phones because he felt that we spend more quality time with gadgets and keyboards than we do with the people we really care about.

During his social experiment, he found that some people he counted among his close friends really weren’t that close after all. He also discovered that taking a break from his relationship with social media and really paying attention to the people around him can revive real-life romance.

And a few short thoughts from the student about his experiences:

[on getting started] I mean, I struggle with that because everyone wants to know about it, and wants to know how different it is. It’s hard, because I was just going to turn off my phone at first. That was the thing that bothered me most, but I realized that if I turned off the phone, people were just going to email me all the time or send me a million Facebook messages. It’s kind of a hard thing, because we’re getting to the point where if you’re not responding to people’s text messages within an hour of when they send them, or within a day for emails, it’s just socially unacceptable. It’s been hard for me since I’ve been back. I’ve been bad with my phone and people are, like, “What the hell? I text messaged you…” So I haven’t been up to social standards in terms of responding and people don’t really understand that, I guess…

[on finishing the project and returning to technology] It’s definitely different, but I catch myself doing exactly what I hated. Someone is talking to me and I’m half-listening and reading a text under the table. For me, it’s trying to be more aware of it. It kind of evolved from being about technology to more of just living in the moment. I think that’s what my biggest thing is: There’s not so much chasing for me now. I’m here now, and let’s just enjoy this. You can be comfortable with yourself and not have to go to the crutch of your phone. For me, that’s more what I will take away from this.

A few thoughts:

1. The author concludes that this means “texts and Facebook wall posts can serve as an attractive veneer making relationships seem more genuine than they really are.” I wonder how many people feel this way and if many do, do they simply keep going along out of habit or because of social pressure?

2. It seems like a lot of things that there possible for this student without technology might be much more difficult for the average adult. At college, it is much easier to find people, run into others, and pass notes, even on a big campus like UW-Madison. Could the average adult who lives alone and commutes to work make this work? Perhaps the key here is living near or very close to people one cares about.

3. What if it becomes “cool” to unplug from technology or turns into a status symbol rather than a reasoned choice about paying more attention to the people that mater?

4. I find the set-up to stories like these to be humorous: how in the world could people have survived without the technology we have today?!? Somehow they managed. The comparison here to the Amish is funny as well – there is a whole lifestyle associated with this that this college student isn’t truly considering.

5. This story presents a contrast between “authentic/real” relationships versus “superficial” relationships. Is it really that easy to categorize relationships? Research suggests most people use technology like Facebook to try to maintain a connection between people they already know – is that necessarily so bad? Perhaps it does detract from the present but it also makes us more aware of our broader social networks.

Overblown concern about Google “replacing” or “destroying” our memory

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The headlines read: “Google ousts brain,” “Google replaces the brain,” “Here’s how Google search is destroying our memory.” These are all based on a new study:

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded.

In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don’t recall what it is.

The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an ‘external memory’ just as computers use an external hard drive…

‘The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.’

This an example of “distributed cognition,” the idea that humans use other sources to extend their brain’s capacity. In this case, memory space in the brain may be freed up by relying on Google and computers to store certain information. Instead of “replacing” the brain, Google is extending the brain and helping humans offload certain information that can helpfully be stored elsewhere. Google isn’t the first technology that allows this; so does the printed page. Rather than storing a bunch of arcane and typically unhelpful information in our head, we could look up basic information in a reference book.

Perhaps people are more concerned about Google itself and the idea that a corporation, an organization more interested in profit than our well-being, may be behind changes in our brain.

Just the beginning of using social media to study political and social beliefs and behaviors

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As the 2012 election nears, here is an overview of where we stand in using social media to understand people’s political and social beliefs and behaviors:

Marc A. Smith, a sociologist who studies online communities and founded the Silicon Valley-based Social Media Research Foundation, said “we are in the Model T Ford era of information systems” and analyzing their content.

Scott Keeter, the president of the American Assn. of Public Opinion Research, said that members of the professional organization and journalists should “proceed with a degree of humility” in deciding what social media can tell us about political campaigns. “Until we have more experience with real world outcomes, it’s hard to know the meaning of what we have captured from social media,” said Keeter, director of survey research at the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Much of the debate followed a Jan. 12 article by Politico, the online news site, which reported that it had partnered with Facebook to examine all “posting, sharing and linking about candidates” from Dec. 12 to Jan. 10. The arrangement was a first not only in that Facebook delved into both public and private messages but also used computer analysis to “identify positive and negative emotion in text.” (The company stressed that while computers draw an aggregate view of user sentiment, human beings do not monitor individual messages.)

Facebook said it employed a “well-validated software tool used frequently in social psychological research.” But Smith said he was “highly skeptical” of some of the precise findings in the Facebook analysis. He added that the intellectual disciplines focused on deciphering texts — natural language processing and computational linguistics — “are very deep and can do remarkable things, but they don’t necessarily have the ability to predict the next president of the United States of America.”

A few thoughts:

1. I like the urge to be cautious: too many news outlets jump on relatively small and meaningless events in the realm of social media and try to draw big conclusions. For example, the size of a Facebook group doesn’t say much. Similarly, I am still surprised by the number of media outlets that show the results of unofficial (and often low-count) poll results (though they now say they are not scientific results).

2. While being cautious is good now, it does suggest that this is a burgeoning area with lots of potential. The researchers who develop good methodologies and get access to specific or unique data will get a lot of attention. I wonder how much companies like Facebook really want to contribute to social science research as opposed to using their data to make money.

3. The counts of positive and negative feelings seem fairly unhelpful to me. For example, what does tracking the emotions of the world through tweets really tell us? Another example from the offline realm: “how the Bible feels.” This is where we need more than just descriptive research.

The real question to ask about the iBooks 2, textbook killer: will it help students learn?

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There is a lot of buzz about the iBooks 2 but I have a simple question: will students learn more using it? In one description of the new program, this isn’t really covered:

Yet, the iPad offers a big opportunity for students to get excited about learning again. The iPad has already demonstrated it can help children with learning disabilities make leaps in bounds in their development, and schools have already invested heavily in Apple’s tablet. Roughly 1.5 million iPads are currently in use in educational institutions.

Schiller said that the problem with textbooks is not the content, which is “amazing,” but the weight of the physical book. They need to last five or six years when they’re written, and they’re not very durable or interactive. Searching is also difficult.

At that point, Schiller introduced iBooks 2, which has a new textbook experience for the iPad. The first demonstration showed what it’s like to open a biology textbook, and see an intro movie playing right before you even get to the book’s contents. When you get to the book itself, images are large and beautiful, and thumbnails accompany the text. To make searching easier, all users need to do is tap on a word and they go straight to the glossary and index section in the back of the book…

Jobs had long hoped to bring sweeping changes to higher education for much of his life. When he left Apple and launched NeXT in 1986, Jobs wanted the company’s first computer — a distinctive all-black magnesium cube — to be designed specifically for higher education establishments and what Jobs called “aggressive end users.”…

“‘The process by which states certify texbooks is corrupt,’ he said. ‘But if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don’t have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent the whole process and save money.'”

Based on this article, I see five things that are good about iBooks 2: it will excite students, it is lighter to use so don’t have to carry so much weight around, it will be cheaper for everyone in the long run, there are some cool features like searching and embedded videos, and it could make Apple a lot of money (and presumably traditional textbook publishers will lose money unless they adapt?).

But, we have been told for decades that better technology in the classroom, computers, laptops, the Internet, etc., will lead to improvements in learning and test scores. Isn’t this how iBooks 2 should be measured? It is good if kids are excited about learning again but will this tool actually help them learn more? The technology may be better and cheaper in the long run but this doesn’t necessarily mean it will lead to improvements in the education system.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that iPads or iBooks 2 can’t lead to better learning but I would want to know a lot more about its effect on educational outcomes before simply adopting the technology.

Your future GPS to have an “avoid ghetto” option?

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Here is some interesting news out of the world of GPS patents:

Microsoft has been granted a patent for its “avoid ghetto” feature for GPS devices.

A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but Microsoft’s patent states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.”

Created for mobile phones, the technology uses the latest crime statistics and weather data and includes them when calculating a route.

The patent, written in a combination of tech-speak and legalese, was awarded to Microsoft earlier this week. It also described other uses for the new GPS technology.

I wonder how exactly they will define an “unsafe neighborhood.” Even with access to crime statistics, it sounds like they will have to draw a cutoff line to distinguish between safe and unsafe areas. Where exactly is this line or is usually more about perceptions about which neighborhoods are unsafe in day-to-day life? “Ghetto” itself is a loaded term involving race and class and I’m sure there will come up in discussions of this new GPS feature.

I know companies are looking for advantages but is there a big need for this sort of information? Are people clamoring for help in avoiding certain neighborhoods?

Sociologist talks about the downside of choosing your own news

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A sociologist suggests you may be missing something by only choosing what news you want to read:

It’s in no sense odd to find American academe wrangling over journalism. Dean Starkman of the Columbia Journalism Review and Clay Shirky of New York University have recently been hammering away at each other, seeking to determine whether investigative journalism can only be conducted by highly resourced news machines (like the Guardian’s) or by a more individual, digital-first approach (like… um… the Guardian’s). But what’s sociology got to contribute here?

Plenty, Klinenberg says, outlining the fundamental bargain that underpins newspaper life. You, the reader, want crosswords and cartoons, recipes and TV programme guides. You want all the stuff that journalists serve up with a sigh (because, well, it’s not exactly journalism, is it?). And, in return, as part of the deal, journalism is allowed to have a civic purpose – to report and analyse the workings and frailties of democracy – beyond quick ways to whip up a cottage pie.

That bargain, sealed in print, means you can’t have one without the other. Put your cash on the newsagent’s counter and you get some things you desire and other things, from Cardiff or Chad, that you didn’t know had happened until you turned to page five.

Of course, like any other neat thesis, there are readers and editors who don’t quite fit. But the nature of print – flipping from column to column, noticing stories that intrigue you, naturally expanding your spheres of interest – isn’t “versioning” at all – it’s more eclectic. An iPad or Kindle version works within narrower bounds. A Facebook version is even more selective, tailored to your most immediate demands. And the logical version at the end of this line is utterly simple: no deals, no bargains – just what you want, electronically provided on the basis of past predilection.

This is part of a larger question about the consequences of people only being exposed to certain points of view. Only selecting news that we want to read can be self-reinforcing as then we only seek out certain kinds of stories, limiting our view of the world.

I wonder, though, about blaming this issue on the medium. How much does having a newspaper in hand really increase the odds that someone will read something that didn’t plan to? Can’t people simply pick out parts of the newspaper that they want to read as well? Further, was there ever really a “golden age” where average citizens always tried to engage with alternative points of view? I would guess not though that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile ideal. We need citizens (and journalists) who can understand our complex world which transcends simply “left” or “right” understandings. Perhaps the Internet makes this easier in some ways but I would guess the Internet could be changed to meet these challenges or people’s behaviors could be altered.

This reminds of an argument I was reading last night. People could argue, rightly, that all media viewpoints are biased in some way. However, this doesn’t mean that we can just throw out all news sources and say they don’t have something of value. What should be consistent across different sources are facts and then there can be disagreement about the interpretation of these facts. Of course, what is considered “fact” may be up for grabs as well – see the recent debate over Politifact’s “Lie of the Year.”

Study: people tend to make friends on Facebook with people of similar tastes

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A recently published study of college students argues that people become Facebook friends with people of similar tastes:

“The more tastes that you and I share in common, the more likely we are to become friends,” said study author Kevin Lewis, a graduate student in sociology at Harvard University.

The findings seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that people are easily influenced by those around them. Instead, “we’re seeking out people we already resemble rather than learning new perspectives and liking new things,” Lewis said…

The goal of the study was to understand how people choose friendships, Lewis said. The researchers started with 1,640 students at an unnamed U.S. college in 2006 and tracked their Facebook friendships and tastes — in popular music, movies and books — until they were seniors in 2009…

The study found that “students who share some tastes in movies and music are more likely to become friends,” Lewis said. Shared tastes in books were less influential.

Sounds like an interesting study. I haven’t read the full study but there are two other things I would want to know:

1. The study is restricted to college students. Might this influence the results? Of course, these college students will become the adults of the next few decades.

2. How does this fit with existing research that shows that people tend to be Facebook friends with people they already know? Things are a little different in college where students are more willing to friend people in these classes (actual academic courses and year in school). But, most Facebook users are not going online to find new friends with whom they don’t previously have a connection.

3. The last paragraph I cited above makes me think of branding. Younger people in particular define themselves by some of their tastes and it doesn’t shock me that this is done more through music and movies than books. So are books more private tastes or are very few people in college reading?

Sociologist: phone call or text like “catnip” for humans

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Amidst a larger conversation about using cell phones in vehicles, a sociologist gets at an interesting question: why can’t people resist the allure of cell phones?

The lure of multitasking may be, in at least one respect, more powerful for drivers than for other people, said Clifford Nass, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies electronic distraction. Drivers are typically isolated and alone, he said, and humans are fundamentally social animals.

The ring of a phone or the ping of a text becomes a promise of human connection, which is “like catnip for humans,” Nass said.

“When you tap into a totally fundamental, universal human impulse,” he added, “it’s very hard to stop.”

Humans are indeed social animals and driving is uniquely isolating. On one hand, it is an oddly social activity as drivers must interact with other drivers and there is an interesting set of non-verbal interactions. On the other hand, one is in a sealed, moving vehicle and it may be one of the few regular moments people have where they are not near enough to talk to other people. Couldn’t someone examine this hypothesis by looking at how many cell phone caused or influenced car accidents took place when there was a solo driver?

It would be interesting to see how people respond to cell phones differently when alone opposed to in more social settings where they have opportunities to interact with people.

I imagine this could easily become a marketing campaign for cell phones: your phone is “a promise of human connection.” Indeed, a number of cell phone campaigns have stressed how they bring people together. The commercials might not add this but here is the kicker: sometimes this urge to make a human connection might be be problematic…

Why a small minority of Americans don’t use Facebook

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The New York Times has a piece looking at why some Americans don’t use Facebook:

As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population…

Many of the holdouts mention concerns about privacy. Those who study social networking say this issue boils down to trust. Amanda Lenhart, who directs research on teenagers, children and families at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that people who use Facebook tend to have “a general sense of trust in others and trust in institutions.” She added: “Some people make the decision not to use it because they are afraid of what might happen.”…

Facebook executives say they don’t expect everyone in the country to sign up. Instead they are working on ways to keep current users on the site longer, which gives the company more chances to show them ads. And the company’s biggest growth is now in places like Asia and Latin America, where there might actually be people who have not yet heard of Facebook…

And whether there is haranguing involved or not, the rebels say their no-Facebook status tends to be a hot topic of conversation — much as a decision not to own a television might have been in an earlier media era…

Some quick thoughts:

1. This is a relatively small percentage of Americans who don’t use Facebook. If 200 million Americans are on Facebook, that is the vast majority of people 13 years old and above. Roughly 15-20% of Americans are not eligible for Facebook (older 2000 figures here). The comparison made in the article is to the percent of people without cell phones which is roughly 16%.

1a. Because of its general ubiquity, perhaps it would be more interesting then to differentiate between people who it frequently (multiple times a day?) versus those who check infrequently (say once a week or less).

1b. Is this the activity Americans most share in common perhaps beside watching TV?

2. Privacy issues don’t seem to bother most Facebook users. Even though there may be little revolts when Facebook changes its privacy policy or makes a mistake, this isn’t driving people away in large numbers. And, as I’ve said before, if you want to remain private you should probably stay off the Internet all together. Another warning for non-users: Facebook may already have information about you anyway.

3. It would be interesting to see figures of how long people stay on Facebook. And speaking of getting people to see advertisements, this small study used eye tracking to see what catches people’s attention when they look at profiles.

3a. If Facebook does need to keep users’ attention, is there a line between always having to change things versus helping people feel comfortable with the site? I say this as we await the Timeline change and the inevitable negative responses.

4. As the article hints at by briefly looking at the pressure non-users get from Facebook users, there is a whole set of social norms that have arisen around the use of Facebook.

Sociologist discusses the problems of the publishing industry

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A sociologist discusses the major issues facing the publishing industry:

One year ago I interviewed John B. Thompson in the Rail about the state of the publishing industry. Thompson is a Cambridge University sociology professor, and his 2010 book Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the 21st Century was the result of more than five years of talking to editors, publishers, writers, and agents in the U.S. and the U.K. about the rapid changes in the traditional structures of book publishing. Given that these transformations have only continued, I thought it worth checking in with Thompson a year on. An updated second edition of Merchants of Culture will be published in March by Penguin (U.S.) and Polity (U.K.)…

[Thompson:] There are two major developments that are having a profound effect on the publishing industry today and that are creating a situation of deep uncertainty about the future. The first is the continuing economic crisis that has metamorphosed since then into a deeper and more pervasive recession and that has created a tough economic climate for publishers and booksellers. Retailers are often operating on tight margins and reduce their liabilities by ordering less and stocking more cautiously. Booksellers will return more books to publishers in order to reduce the amount of capital tied up in unsold stock. But even these measures may be insufficient as many retailers have been and will be forced out of business. And when retailers close, publishers lose shop windows to display their books and are faced with substantial write-offs for bad debts. This further depresses profit margins that were already under pressure from static or declining sales. It’s an economic snowball effect…

Well, it’s the intensification of a surge in e-book sales, especially in the U.S. While physical book sales are static or declining for most publishers, e-book sales are surging ahead—it is one of the only areas today where trade publishers are seeing serious growth. And the growth is startling: For most U.S. trade publishers e-books accounted for 1 percent or less of overall revenue in 2008. In 2011 the figure is likely to be between 18 and 22 percent (possibly even higher for some houses). And, interestingly, the biggest shift from print to digital has been in commercial fiction, especially genre fiction like romance, science fiction, mystery, and thriller. For fiction as a whole, e-books accounted for around 40 percent of overall sales for some large trade houses by mid-2011. But in some categories of genre fiction and for some authors the percentages were even higher—60 percent for some categories like romance, and even up to 80 percent for some authors. Narrative non-fiction has also seen a significant but smaller shift to digital. Anything more complicated—such as books that use color, like art books or children’s books—has so far lagged far behind. This change is already forcing the key players in publishing to reconsider their positions. Practices that have become settled conventions in the field are suddenly opened up to scrutiny, and players who have interacted amicably for years suddenly find themselves locking horns in new conflicts where the rules are no longer clear (as happened, for example, when Random House and Andrew Wylie clashed over Wylie’s decision to launch Odyssey Editions). To what extent the game of trade publishing will actually be transformed by this development remains, at this stage, unclear. Much will depend on how quickly and effectively the key players are able to adapt to the new information environment that is emerging around them. We are living through a revolution of sorts, and one of the few things you can say for certain about a revolution is that when you’re in the middle of one, you have no idea where and when it will end.

New technology means that a lot of people need to adapt, producers and readers included. Two additional areas I wish Thompson had commented on here:

1. It would be interesting to hear more about publishers and other actors are trying out some new ideas in order to make money off e-publishing. Amazon now has a publishing wing. Are the major publishers really shifting major resources and people to this or are they trying to hold the line? Do the recent commercials on TV and radio for books (examples from James Patterson here and here) represent these publishers continuing to hold to the old model? How much overlap is there between the e-book and traditional publishing world?

2. Thompson talks a bit about the future role of books. I’d be interested in hearing more about whether how the “long tail” phenomenon and growing e-book sales in certain genres will change larger cultural meanings and understandings. Not so much whether books will matter (I think they still will) but how they matter. Will popular e-books really only matter if a movie gets made or the author makes it to a popular daytime talk show? What books will become “classics”? Fifty years from now, which books will form a “canon” for this era?