Category Archives: Gadgets and Technology

Dunbar’s number: 150 friends is our limit

Posted on by

It seems like it is pretty easy to collect hundreds of friends on Facebook. Between people we know from years of schools plus jobs plus other activities, the number can increase quickly. But having a large number of online “friends” goes against Dunbar’s number:

Most of Dunbar’s research has focused on why the GORE-TEX model was a success. That model is based on the idea that human beings can hold only about 150 meaningful relationships in their heads. Dunbar has researched the idea so deeply, the number 150 has been dubbed “Dunbar’s Number.”

Ironically, the term was coined on Facebook, where 150 friends may seem like precious few…

Dunbar has found 150 to be the sweet spot for hunter-gatherer societies all over the world. From the Bushmen of Southern Africa to Native American tribes, a typical community is about 150 people. Amish and Hutterite communities — even most military companies around the world — seem to follow the same rule.

The reason 150 is the optimal number for a community comes from our primate ancestors, Dunbar says. In smaller groups, primates could work together to solve problems and evade predators. Today, 150 seems to be the number at which our brains just max out on memory.

Dunbar goes on to suggest that larger organizations then have to find ways to create smaller groups where people can still maintain connections with others.

I’ve thought for a while that Facebook should move away from saying that all people you are connected to are “friends.” This indicates a closeness that I suspect doesn’t really exist in many of these online relationships. They are probably more like “acquaintances” or “people you have interacted with.” But, imagine what would happen if someone you thought was a friend marks you an acquaintance or vice versa. Additionally, by calling everyone a friend, you are suggesting that you are open to a broader set of relationships and Facebook is interested in bringing more people together. If we wanted to get more sociological, we might call these “strong” and “weak” ties but this seems fairly impersonal.

Figures from a few years ago suggested that people had an average of 120 Facebook friends. This still seems like a lot even as sociological research from 2006 (read the full study here) suggests that Americans have fewer confidants and less contact with existing confidants:

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them, says a study in today’s American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all…

The percentage of people who confide only in family increased from 57% to 80%, and the number who depend totally on a spouse is up from 5% to 9%, the study found. “If something happens to that spouse or partner, you may have lost your safety net,” Smith-Lovin says.

Here are two tentative hypotheses regarding this data:

1. Younger Facebook users are more likely to have higher numbers of friends. This seems to be driven by being students in high school and college where it is common to friend lots of people across a broad swath of classroom, social activity, and living situations.

2. Older Facebook users are more uncomfortable with the term “friends” to describe online relationships. Of course, as the younger generation ages and is used to such terms, the term will become more normal.

Basic sociological question: “what does civilization as we know it rely on?”

Posted on by

Big questions about society can be great for Introduction to Sociology courses. Here is are the sorts of questions that I think could work quite well:

So, what sort of machines do you need to create an industrial civilization—kind of like the ones we have now, but more sensibly sourced. I remember taking a sociology course years ago where we started out with a similar question, although we conceived the question more broadly—what does civilization as we know it rely on? The answer then (decades ago, before the impact of The Whole Earth Catalog had been felt) was something along the lines of “technology.” But this is a much better question.

If we stuck with the second question here, “what does civilization as we know it rely on?”, I could imagine a class could generate a lot of answers:

1. The Internet. In the vast scope of human history, this may seem silly. But for people raised in the Internet era, it would be pretty hard to imagine life without it.

2. Electricity. This makes all sorts of things possible.

3. The steam engine. This helped give rise to the Industrial Revolution.

And so on. But these are all technological changes that could go back to the plow and the wheel and illustrate the human capacity to create and utilize tools. We just happen to live in an era where such technological change is rapid and our daily lives are full of machines. But what about more cultural or sociological phenomena?

1. Language. The ability to communicate in formalized ways gave rise to oral traditions, writing, etc.

2. Government. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean the big bureaucracies of today that impressed Max Weber. But just a form of ruling or authority that helped bring about communities.

3. Sustained agriculture. This has been the traditional answer to how humans were able to create more complex societies in the Fertile Crescent. This is now being challenged by a new argument based on evidence of early religion in Turkey.

I’ll have to think about using these questions in class. They seem particularly good for helping students consider the basic building blocks of human social life before diving into specific sociological phenomena.

Sociologist says “access to information is a fundamental human right”

Posted on by

A sociologist talks about the importance of citizens accessing information:

Access to information is a fundamental human right and democracy can’t function unless you know what government is doing, Dominique Clement, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, said Monday.

“By denying people access to information, you’re denying a human right and you’re denying them knowledge of how governments work, and ultimately that harms our democracy,” Clement, a sociology professor, said during a Canadian Historical Association panel discussion at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Calling freedom of information law in Canada “draconian,” Clement, who’s filled about 500 information requests throughout his career, said reform needs to happen nationwide in order for those laws to be effective.

He said privacy commissioners in the provinces should become more arm’s length than they are now and should be answerable to the legislative assembly or parliament, not to any premier or prime minister.

I wonder how democratic governments would respond to this argument. I imagine they would support it and then argue that certain information need to be protected because of national security and other reasons. One doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that there is quite a bit of public/government information that is not easily accessible. Of course, non-democratic governments may not be too happy with these arguments as restricting information is deemed vital – see Iran’s recent efforts to create a national Intranet.

But this is related to a thought I have had in the past: is Internet access, particularly because of its ability to share and produce information, going to become a human right in the near future? Should rights regarding information apply to all information on the Internet or just “vital information” that citizens might need to participate in the civic realm? What would be the response in Western nations if Internet access was severely limited, even if a case could be made for it (like a threat of attack)?

Become friends with your Toyota

Posted on by

Companies are looking for ways to leverage social networking sites for their own purposes. Now Toyota announces plans to create their own social networking service where you will be able to become friends with your car:

Toyota is setting up a social networking service with the help of a U.S. Internet company and Microsoft so drivers can interact with their cars in a way that’s similar to posting on Facebook or Twitter.

Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. and Salesforce.com, based in San Francisco, announced their alliance Monday to launch “Toyota Friend,” a private social network for Toyota owners…

With the popularity of social networking, cars and their makers should become part of that online interaction, [Toyota’s president] said.

“I hope cars can become friends with their users, and customers will see Toyota as a friend,” he said.

There is the whole purpose of this: strengthen the relationship between customer and product. I wonder if Toyota owners would really flock to this concept. They might be loyal customers because of the value and reliability of Toyotas but is there a fervent fan culture that would want to be part of a social network?

But there is an interesting phrase in this article: “cars can become friends with their users.” Perhaps it was not intended this way but it implies that cars have agency. The article talks about how newer cars, such as plug-in electric vehicles, need more monitoring and so users will be open to getting more information from their cars. But in the end, these cars are just cars, machines that help people get around. We are a ways from having cars that could hold human-like conversations with their owners (see this recent piece on progress in tackling the Turing Test).

While some commentators have lamented the difference between off-line and online friends, perhaps this is the next controversial step forward: friendships with products. Right now, you can be a “fan” on Facebook but a friendship implies a closer and more interactive relationship.

Getting better data on how students use laptops in class: spy on them

Posted on by

Professors like to talk about how students use laptops in the classroom. Two recent studies shed some new light on this issue and they are unique in how they obtained the data: they spied on students.

Still, there is one notable consistency that spans the literature on laptops in class: most researchers obtained their data by surveying students and professors.

The authors of two recent studies of laptops and classroom learning decided that relying on student and professor testimony would not do. They decided instead to spy on students.

In one study, a St. John’s University law professor hired research assistants to peek over students’ shoulders from the back of the lecture hall. In the other, a pair of University of Vermont business professors used computer spyware to monitor their students’ browsing activities during lectures.

The authors of both papers acknowledged that their respective studies had plenty of flaws (including possibly understating the extent of non-class use). But they also suggested that neither sweeping bans nor unalloyed permissions reflect the nuances of how laptops affect student behavior in class. And by contrasting data collected through surveys with data obtained through more sophisticated means, the Vermont professors also show why professors should be skeptical of previous studies that rely on self-reporting from students — which is to say, most of them.

While these studies might be useful for dealing with the growing use of laptops in classrooms, discussing the data itself would be interesting. A few questions come to mind:

1. What discussions took place with an IRB? It seems that this might have been a problem in the study using spyware on student computers and this was reflected in the generalizability of the data with just 46% of students agreeing to have the spyware on their computer. The other study also could run into issues if students were identifiable. (Just a thought: could a professor insist on spyware being on student computers if the students insisted on having a laptop in class?)

2. These studies get at the disparities between self-reported data and other forms of data collection. I would guess that students would underestimate their distractable laptop use on self-reported surveys because they would suspect that this is the answer that they should give (social desirability bias). But it could also reveal things about how cognizant computer/Internet users are about how many windows and applications they actually cycle through.

3. Both of these studies are on a relatively small scale: one had 45 students, the other had a little more than 1,000 but the data was “less precise” since it involved TAs sitting in the back monitoring students. Expanding the Vermont study and linking laptop use to outcomes on a larger scale is even better: move beyond just talking about the classroom experience and look at its impact on learning outcomes. Why doesn’t someone do this on a larger scale and in multiple settings? Would it be too difficult to get past some of the IRB issues?

In looking at the comments about this story, it seems like having better data on this topic would go a long ways to moving the discussion beyond anecdotal evidence.

Acquire the bookstore chain to get the digital reading device

Posted on by

With the recent bankruptcy of Borders (see some reaction here), who knows how long Barnes & Noble might be able to hold on (and the news wasn’t good last August). But at least one businessman thinks B&N would make for a worthwhile purchase:

Barnes & Noble is well-situated to get a piece of the action: the company claims that the Nook already accounts for one-quarter of the e-book market. (Amazon’s rival Kindle product accounts for over 70 percent, although neither company discloses actual sales figures.)

Candidly, the Nook’s success is important, because more competition in the space will help keep prices in check and spur innovation. Sony also has a credible market entrant with its Reader product.

Malone’s company Liberty Media offered $17 per share Thursday — or about $1 billion — for a 70 percent stake in Barnes & Noble, a 20 percent premium over the Thursday closing price. Investors greeted the news warmly, pushing Barnes & Noble shares up over 30 percent — yes that’s higher than Malone’s bid! — in midday market action Friday. As a result, Malone will likely have to sweeten his offer to at least $20 per share.

In a statement announcing the offer, Liberty described Barnes & Noble as being at the “forefront of the transition to digital.”

While there is a lot of talk about how all of this affects bookstores and reading, I would love to see more about what this might mean for all brick-and-mortar businesses. The saving grace for Barnes & Noble is this particular digital reader which is well-positioned in a burgeoning market. In the near future, the B&N stores might disappear even as corporate name goes on through this device.

More broadly, how many other companies are actually creating digital content or devices rather than simply putting a Facebook page together and slapping the Facebook logo on all of their commercials?

Righthaven class action?

Posted on by

Ars Technica is reporting that one Righthaven defendant is “launching a class-action counterclaim against Righthaven”:

BuzzFeed…quickly moves from a defense of its own conduct to an attack on the conduct of Righthaven, and it asks the judge to put every Colorado defendant into a class which can pursue Righthaven for extortion-style behavior.

I’m not sure that Righthaven’s behavior should be turned into some sort of perverse-reverse legal payday for defendants, but I suppose this was an inevitable development.

The limits of GPS in the West

Posted on by

Technology can be a good thing but it can also lead people astray. Hence, a warning out West regarding using GPS in certain areas:

Travelers in the western U.S. should not rely solely on technology such as GPS for navigation, authorities said, after a Canadian couple were lost in the Nevada wilderness for 48 days.

Albert Chretien, 59, and his wife Rita Chretien, 56, sought a shorter route between Boise, Idaho and Jackpot, Nevada during a road trip from British Columbia to Las Vegas…

Sheriff’s offices in remote, high-elevation parts of Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming report the past two years have brought a rise in the number of GPS-guided travelers driving off marked and paved highways and into trouble.

The spike has prompted Death Valley National Park in California to caution on its web site that “GPS navigation to sites to remote locations like Death Valley are notoriously unreliable.”

When two roads diverge in Western lands, take the one more traveled, authorities said.

Perhaps this could be read as a warning about over-reliance on technology: it is not infallible.You can occasionally find stories of people driving into retention ponds or crashing into things because the GPS told them to turn. At the same time, how bad are these GPS maps that people can get lost so easily? This would seem to be bad news for GPS makers if they don’t cover certain areas very well. Could a GPS maker ever have any liability for any of these unpleasant occurrences? Additionally, I wonder how many GPS owners also carry around a map of some kind in their vehicle or on their person.

More broadly, this is a reminder that one doesn’t have to travel very far to leave the comforts of the modern world and get lost in nature.

Facebook as “the most appalling spying machine ever invented”

Posted on by

The Drudge Report has a link to a story that details what Wikileak’s Julian Assange thinks about government monitoring of Facebook:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook “the most appalling spying machine ever invented” in an interview with Russia Today, pointing to the popular social networking site as one of the top tools for the U.S. to spy on its citizens.

“Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other and their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US Intelligence,” he said. “Facebook, Google, Yahoo, all these major U.S. organizations have built-in infaces for US intelligence.

“Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook they are doing free work for the United States intelligence agencies,” he added.

The comments were a bit strange, coming from the founder of a website best known for pushing spilling secret information.

In an email to the Daily News, a Facebook spokesman denied the company was doing anything that they weren’t legally obligated to do, saying that “the legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.”

This article suggests Assange’s idea is a bit daft. And while I’m just guessing at the reason for Drudge’s link, this headline could be a sobering thought for many a Facebook user and is also evidence for conspiracy theorists who think the government is out to get them. So what should we make of such comments?

On one hand, I am skeptical that the government has to-the-minute access to everything that these websites offer. On the other hand, why shouldn’t the government be monitoring online activity? If employers routinely check Facebook in order to learn more about applicants or their own workers, why shouldn’t or can’t the government? In fact, in today’s world, wouldn’t the average Internet user expect that the government is looking at websites in order to monitor and investigate certain threats that are harmful to society? Privacy (account numbers, passwords, etc.) is one thing but if people are conducting illegal activity online, don’t we want the government to check it out?

Perhaps these comments should serve as a reminder for all Internet users: what is posted to the Internet can be found by all sorts of people, your friends and your enemies.

Using cell phone data to research social networks

Posted on by

Social network analysis is a growing area within sociology and other disciplines. The Wall Street Journal reports on the advantages of examining cell phone data:

As a tool for field research, the cellphone is unique. Unlike a conventional land-line telephone, a mobile phone usually is used by only one person, and it stays with that person everywhere, throughout the day. Phone companies routinely track a handset’s location (in part to connect it to the nearest cellphone tower) along with the timing and duration of phone calls and the user’s billing address…

Advances in statistics, psychology and the science of social networks are giving researchers the tools to find patterns of human dynamics too subtle to detect by other means. At Northeastern University in Boston, network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users.

After analyzing more than 16 million records of call date, time and position, the researchers determined that, taken together, people’s movements appeared to follow a mathematical pattern. The scientists said that, with enough information about past movements, they could forecast someone’s future whereabouts with 93.6% accuracy.

The pattern held true whether people stayed close to home or traveled widely, and wasn’t affected by the phone user’s age or gender.

The rest of the article then goes on to talk about a lot of interesting research on topics like social contagions (see an example of this research here) and social relationships using this data.

Some may be concerned about privacy, particularly with recent reports about iPhones and iPads containing a file that records the movements of users. I have a few thoughts about this:

1. Compared to other possible data sources (surveys, time diaries, interviews, ethnography), this seems like a treasure trove of information. The article suggests that nearly 75% of people in the world have cell phones – what other data source can compare with that? Could the research potential outweigh individual privacy concerns? In thinking about some of these research questions, it would be very difficult to use more traditional methods to address the same concerns. And just the sheer number of cases a researcher could access and work with is fantastic. In order to build more complex models of human behavior, this is exactly the kind of data one could use.

2. I would be less concerned about researchers using this data than companies. Researchers don’t particularly care about the individual cases in the data but rather are looking for broad patterns. I would also guess that the cell phone data is anonymized so that researchers would have a difficult time pinpointing specific individuals even if they wanted to.

3. How much of a surprise is it that this available data is being used? Don’t cell phone carriers include some sort of statement in their contracts about using data in such ways? One option here would be to not get a smart phone. But if you want a smart phone (and it seems that a lot of Americans do), then this is the tradeoff. This is similar to the tradeoff with Facebook: users willingly give their information to enhance their social lives and then the company can look for ways to profit from this information.

h/t Instapundit