This was my thought last night when the Internet was unavailable at home: this is like going back to a prehistoric era. While this is hyperbolic, it’s a reminder of how common the Internet is in our everyday lives. Choosing to not have it for a while for another worthy cause (like a vacation) is one thing; not having it when you want to us it is another thing.
My second thought: it might be nice to have a smart phone so that I would never (or rarely) have to deal with an outage.
One of the innovations of online stores is the ability for users to rate what they like and then for other users to base decisions or comment on those previous ratings. A site like Amazon.com is amazing in this regard; within a few minutes, a reader can get a much better idea about a product.
But statistics from Netflix, another site that allows user reviews, indicate that many users don’t rate anything while there is a small percentage of people who might be called “mega-reviewers”:
About a tenth of one percent (0.07%) of Netflix users — more than 10,000 people — have rated more than 20,000 items. And a full one percent, or nearly 150,000 Netflixers, have rated more than 5,000 movies. By contrast, only 60 percent of Netflix users rate any movies at all, and the typical person only gives out 200 starred grades.
This rating pattern might fit a Poisson or a negative binomial regression where many people rate none or very few movies while there is a smaller percentage who rate a lot. (A useful statistic in helping to figure out the shape of the curve: while there is 40% that doesn’t rate anything, of the 60 percent who rate any movies at all, what is that median?)
The Atlantic talks to two of mega-reviewers who seem to motivated by seeing what the system would recommend to them after having all of their input. Interestingly, they suggest Netflix still recommends movies to them that they don’t like after watching them.
This is an interesting story: a journalism student tried to contact Apple public relations as part of an assignment and ends up getting an unhelpful response from Steve Jobs. After Apple PR didn’t respond to the student, she emailed Steve Jobs. Jobs responded but ended with this message: “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry.”
But it gets more interesting: Jobs apparently has a history of similar responses to others who email him. A few questions follow:
1. How many emails does Steve Jobs read a day?
2. If his responses draw comments about his “grouchy side,” why even bother responding to emails like this? How can this help Apple at all?
A number of academics comment in a USA Today story about how the concept of eavesdropping is changing. One change that I have noticed myself: one often can’t avoid eavesdropping on cell phone calls, particularly in smaller spaces like trains. A second change: compared to the past, more people are sharing more information on sites like Facebook.
Federal regulators are about to open up more of the wireless spectrum for Wi-Fi use – but commentators disagree about who will benefit most. Google and other big companies? Consumers? Rural areas? Cities? Read a useful round-up here.
English professor Mark Bauerlein takes on the younger generations in The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. I will summarize three of the main arguments from this 2008 book and offer some of my own thoughts.
1. To his credit, Bauerlein draws upon a lot of data. This primarily comes from large surveys conducted in the last ten years. It appears that a lot of the data comes to similar conclusions, increasing its validity.
2. One main argument: the new learning style of the younger generation, built around the Internet and browsing text rather than reading books, hasn’t led to improved educational or societal outcomes. While many people have praised these new skills or suggested that they are leading to a new kind of world, Bauerlein says it hasn’t improved much of anything.
3. Another main argument: having all of these options for information, primarily through the Internet but including social media and television, has not opened worlds for younger generations. Instead, younger people tend to use this information for more prosaic ends, like following pop culture or the latest doings of their friends. Just because all of this information is out there, it doesn’t mean they know what to do with it or how to use it.
4. A third argument: the older generation has failed the younger generations by not extolling the virtues of tradition and knowledge. Instead, the older generations have given in and let the younger generations dictate what they should learn and how they should be taught. Older members of society have run with anecdotal positive stories about the Internet (often based on elite, Ivy League or similar students) without considering the broad trends. With little involvement by adults, the younger generations have little interest in civic engagement or the world of big ideas. This books appears to be aimed at the older generations – of course, as Bauerlein points out, the odds of many younger people reading any book, are limited.
5. In what I think is a smart move, Bauerlein suggests early on that this is not just another jeremiad from an older adult against the younger members of society. The data he marshals in his support helps his case though the third main argument (point 4 above) seems a little less certain and more of an opinion. Another point in his claims that this is not a jeremiad: he places a lot of blame for the situation on the older generations that have let the younger generations do what they want.
6. I would have liked to have read more about how Bauerlein thinks these new changes in society, such as the Internet and technology, could be harnessed for better ends. Or is there something inherently bad about these tools – is the medium the message?
7. I am still processing these arguments on a personal level. On one hand, I have some similar questions to Bauerlein’s regarding my generation and technology. At the same time, I am a frequent user of these technologies. I think I am going to need some more time to figure it out.
Overall, this is a thought-provoking read with implications for the future of America.
I’ve read many times that newer cars don’t need oil changes every 3,000 miles. But in an article from the New York Times regarding oil changes and the optimal miles between changes, I learned some additional oil change information including what might be considered severe usage, companies that analyze oil, and how oil change businesses might change their stickers.
-Drivers with severe usage need to change their oil more frequently, roughly around 5,000 miles. And what is considered severe? The kind of driving that many people do: short trips under 10 miles.
The different types of driving are usually known as severe and mild (which is also sometimes called normal), Mr. Sutherland said, which seems counter-intuitive since most of us probably don’t think we drive in severe conditions. But we do.
The reason, he said, is that if you take a trip of less than 10 miles or so, the engine and the oil are not completely warmed up. And if the oil is still cool, he said, it cannot absorb the contaminants that come from internal combustion as efficiently.
-There are companies that analyze car oil for consumers and tell them what is in the oil and then what might be wrong with their car:
[Y]ou can send your engine oil out to be analyzed. Blackstone Laboratories in Fort Wayne, Ind., one of the best-known places for engine oil analysis, will send you a free kit.
You send back an oil sample and for $25, they’ll tell you all sorts of things about your car.
“We would compare what your oil looks like compared to the average Mazda5 of that year,” said Kristen Huff, a vice president at Blackstone. If there is a lot more lead in my oil than in a typical Mazda5, for example, it means I have a bearing problem, she said.
Her lab runs about 150 samples a day and a fair percentage of those are consumers looking to find out how often they need to change their oil, Ms. Huff said.
-Based on these changes in cars, companies like JiffyLube will soon begin using new stickers that leave the mileage between oil change decisions to consumers:
But Jiffy Lube, the largest quick oil change company in North America, is now under pressure to change its automatic 3,000-mile recommendation.
For about a year, the company has run a pilot program with some franchises across the country suggesting that instead of a blanket recommendation, mechanics tell customers what the manufacturer recommends under mild or severe driving conditions.
“By this time next year, every Jiffy Lube will do it,” said Rick Altizer, president of Jiffy Lube International. And the little sticker on your windshield will no longer simply state when the next oil change should occur, but, “I choose to change my oil” at a specific mileage.
“It’s so it’s not some arbitrary technician saying this,” Mr. Altizer said, but the consumer’s decision.
I wonder how many consumers would feel better/more secure if the sticker did say when they should get an oil change. That way, they wouldn’t have to make a decision about a machine they may not feel comfortable around.
According to figures from August, web users in the United States now spend more time per day on Facebook than Google’s sites (which includes YouTube). This can’t be good news for Google – but it shows the power of Facebook:
In August, people spent a total of 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, comScore said Thursday, about 9.9% of their Web-surfing minutes for the month. That just barely surpassed the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6%, people spent on all of Google Inc.’s sites combined, including YouTube, the free Gmail e-mail program, Google news and other content sites.
U.S. Web users spent 37.7 million minutes on Yahoo Inc. sites, or 9.1% of their time, putting Yahoo third in terms of time spent browsing. In July, Facebook crept past Yahoo for the first time, according to comScore.
Facebook appears to be growing more and more popular. Google can’t figure out a way to introduce social connectivity throughout their sites – whatever happened to Google Wave?
Social media is ever-present on college campuses. It appears that some institutions are thinking about ways to encourage thinking about using social media – by restricting it:
Professors have experimented with assigning technology fasts for their students—by discouraging gadget use for five days, for example, or rewarding extra credit for a semester without Facebook.
Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is going one step further with a “social-media blackout.” Starting Monday, the Pennsylvania institution will block Facebook, Twitter, AOL Instant Messenger, and MySpace on the campus network for a week. Faculty and staff members will be affected as well as students.
“Telling students to imagine a time before Facebook is like telling them to imagine living in a world with dinosaurs,” said Eric D. Darr, Harrisburg’s executive vice president and provost. “It’s not real. What we’re doing is trying to make it real.”
Ah, equating life with no social media with the age of dinosaurs – this is quite funny (though probably accurate).
When I first saw this headline, I thought this school might be doing this to help students to use the time they might spend on social media in other ways. To discover the world outside of Facebook. Alas, the school has other aims:
Mr. Darr said his hope is that people…would take the week to reflect on outside-the-box ways to use social media—such as for entrepreneurship or political advocacy.
So the goal in restricting social media use is to help people think about social media use? And I was hoping for a social experiment where students might discover other virtuous things to do with their time…
A recent study compared hybrid models to their traditional counterpart models and found that the hybrids are not a very good value:
Everyone knows hybrids get better fuel economy and emit less CO2 than their conventional counterparts, but they also cost more because of the added technology. And that makes them a lousy value because you won’t recoup that added cost in fuel savings.
So say the car gurus at CarGurus.com, who repeat a common argument against hybrids but back it up with some stats. They examined the purchase price and operating costs of 45 popular hybrid models and discovered the average gas-electric automobiles costs 25 percent more to own and operate than its gasoline-only sibling.
This may help explain why hybrids still are only a small part of the market – just under 3% according to this study.
But for those who currently drive hybrids, is financial value the primary reason? While this seems to be key to the larger market, I would guess there are a lot of current hybrid drivers who drive them for other reasons like being (or perhaps appearing) green. If more people truly wanted to be green or were worried about pollution from cars as opposed to saving money, then they would probably purchase more hybrids.
Legally Sociable 