Julian Assange & Eric Schmidt recording on wikileaks

http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.html

Here is a conversation that was posted this past Friday on wikileaks.  It's mostly Julian Assange (of wikileaks) and Google CEO Eric Schmidt talking about the Fourth Estate and how they feel it's the public's right to have access to the primary source of information about the breaking news stories and the implications for governments to censor the web. It's a lengthy conversation recorded while the pair dine with Jared Cohen, a former Secretary of State advisor to Hillary Clinton, Scott Malcomson, Director of Speechwriting for Ambassador Susan Rice at the US State Department and current Communications Director of the International Crisis Group, and Lisa Shields, Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations. The information was being used for a book that is being released tomorrow titled "The New Digital World" by Cohen and Schmidt.  The full transcript of the conversation is provided as well.

CNN Video: Role of Social Media in Disasters

Just for anyone's enjoyment or curiosity: I found this video this morning on CNN, in which they analyze the role social media played during the Boston Marathon bombings and aftermath. Very interesting due to our recent discussions in class! 

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/04/19/exp-thompson-boston-social-media.cnn.html

Final Project: The Evolution of Tracking Public Opinion

Please enjoy this Prezi on The Evolution of Tracking Public Opinion: From Postcards to Clicks. I take a look at how the modern scientific poll came about and the problems that went along with it during the mass communication society, and then explore the new polling techniques that exist in today's networked society. The 21st century portion of my presentation focuses on the 2012 presidential election and social media, as well as the issues that we face now with using cell phones and social media as ways to pulse public opinion.

If you have trouble opening this link because you do not have a Prezi account, it is free to open a Prezi account if you have a .edu email account. I can also try to send you the presentation via another method if you'd like to view it outside of Prezi. 

Infographic on Google Glass

This was today's infographic from infographic.com about Google Glass. I had to share as class was the first time I heard about this invention and I'm so intrigued to see how effectively it will work (my siri sucks!). I also think back to class and how we talked that this might be the latest and greatest technology that brings our heads up from the screens as we walk around and become socially engaged again. 

Full article:  What Make Google Glass Work?

Together but not really together? New state of self in coffee shops

Beyond the free wi-fi, delicious coffee and nice environment, I’ve always wondered... why people still go to coffee houses if they are disconnected from what’s happening in the physical space? What is the appealing of going to a public place to be disconnected if you can just stay at home or in your room doing the same thing? As a long-time coffee addict and huge fan of coffee shops I have always observed this phenomenon and I include myself as the one who does the same thing most of the times except when I go with other people for meetings or to study.

The reading “Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self” by Sherry Turkle, it provides a sort of partial answer to this questions and I enjoyed reading her points about the "new state of self". It is interesting to see how the new state of self is present in a coffee shop when in one hand there is this physical self, let’s say the “coffee drinker” and on the other hand you have the “virtual” self the one who is deeply engaged in his/her wide variety of electronic devices (iPad, iPhone, laptop, Kindle). 

My guess about why people still go to these places, no matter if they are not “mentally” connected or fully aware of their surroundings, is that in some way they want to recreate the physical environment of what they are doing “virtually”. To give a better explanation, let’s suppose someone is having a Skype meeting with someone in Japan for business or to catch-up with a friend. This person in some way, unconsciously perhaps, wants to recreate the physical environment of that meeting to feel a sort of proximity to the person being far away. 

Another explanation for this phenomenon might be that coffee shops have evolved from places where people meet and interact by being physically present to places where individuals share some sense of community by performing the same activities (checking email, social media sites, writing papers, doing work stuff) but not interacting between each other like in early history of coffee houses. It would be the same as people working out in the gym, where everyone does their routines but no one might talk to each other. In some implicit way, people might be cheering each other and feel a sort of connection by seeing other people struggling to finish their workout. I often feel motivated when I go to coffee houses and I see other people with a bigger pile of papers or books to read than me. By seeing this and comparing it to the workload I have I feel kind of relieved some times. I also feel motivated to run the extra mile (literally) if I see other people keeping the hard work in the treadmill. 

While trying to find some articles that expand more on this evolution of the coffee houses as hubs for networking in the virtual world, I found an interesting post in one of the trendy social media sites: “Storify’”. Some of the points I took from this post are the vision of James Katz, a Rutgers university professor, who says that coffee shops and other similar places have become “physically inhabited by psychologically evacuated” (Faris 2012). In this post, it is interesting to read how some coffee shops owners who realized that people were so deeply immersed in their laptops and not interacting with each other, have started to include activities like jazz performances or poetry readings to rekindle the old spirit of coffee houses. In fact, as the post added, there are some coffee shops which shut off their wi-fi at certain times to promote more interaction and conversation among the people who goes to those places.

Here is also a short clip (only 2 min) of a speaker talking about the early beginnings of the coffee houses and how communication took place during those times. It would be good to discuss during class whether this evolution of coffee houses into more virtual places has more advantages for networking or not than the older model of coffee houses without technology devices. It keep us more isolated or more connected?

Sources:

Faris, M. J. (2012, November). Alone Together? Coffee Shop Writers and "Isolation"?. In Storify. Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http://storify.com/michaeljfaris/alone-together-coffee-shop-writers

Cass Sunstein on Colbert tonight

He had a new book called "Simpler: the Future of Government."

Steven Colbert noted his position as the Administrator of the White House Office for Information and Regulatory Affairs or the "Regulatory Czar" from 2008-2011. Sunstein points out that under Obama the number of laws and the cost of laws is down compared to the Bush administration. He bashes on the food pyramid and talks about giving "regulatory nudges" or low cost warnings versus laws regulating and limiting freedoms.  Colbert of course pokes fun and jests, as would be expected.  But Sunstein holds his own pretty well.

Don't Be a Weiner

The idea of a life-log scares the shit out of me. “It will provide a record of the past that includes every action, every event, every conversation, every material expression of an individual’s life; all events will be accessible at a future date because a life-log will be a searchable and recallable archive” (Dodge and Kitchin, 2005, p.2). While I do not think I personally have much to hide or be shameful about, I’m not sure the benefits of a capta life-log outweigh the potential negatives. There is already huge potential for identity theft due to the amount of personal information that we share with the world online. I remember googling myself a few years back and was shocked to see photos from my facebook page in the search results. At the time I had no idea that facebook had a default setting of “let everyone in the world know everything about you” and that you had to change the privacy settings. But even though I deleted those photos, I know they are still out there…in the cloud perhaps. And we all know you can’t delete a cloud. My main concern is that I do not really own the content that I throw out into cyberspace, which makes me believe that a life-log is not really an extension of my brain’s memory bank, but a storage locker that I rent out from google or bing, (but let’s be honest, probably not bing), and the potential is always there for corruption. Thankfully these days some other fellow out there with the same name is an attention hog and has his mug splashed all over google instead of me. Still, I wonder about the next generation who will have to defend and protect every action, comment, or mistake they have ever made. And I’m not just talking about crouching masturbaters. Today employers are frequently combing the internet for information about potential job applicants. If I were an employer and I came across a photo of an applicant who posted Anthony Weiner-esque photos of himself online, I can pretty much guarantee you I would not hire him for the job. Unless of course the job was as an underwear model. I got to admit he takes pretty good care of himself. Pilates probably.

I thought this info-graphic was almost as revealing as Mr. Weiner. In it, 45% of employers use some kind of social networking site to screen applicants. If I were to advise any teenager or college student it would be to live one’s private life as if it were public. Because it just might be that way anyway.

Overconnected, underprotected

William Davidow's take on being overconnected is a point of view that I never examined before and frankly didn't even think of. But it makes total sense. As he references Eugene Wigner's work in mathematics, he shows us that as a system becomes larger and more connected, the likeliness for instability occurs. There will eventually come a tipping point. As Davidow says, we have the convenience of paying for things online, but at the same time run the risk of putting our information out there which makes us vulnerable for fraud and identity theft. The ideas about positive and negative feedback working in the opposite manner (i.e. furnace saying "Too cold!" as negative vs. "It's hot, keep it up!" for positive") slightly blew my mind. I guess this is another thing that I never quite thought of. The intended consequence of either would result in the opposite effect. The example of feedback from a microphone in a venue is one I could easily understand and helped to "visualize" the problem more effectively.

As I read about the downfall of being overconnected, I couldn't help but think of Wile E. Coyote.  With our fast paced inter-connected world, we have seemingly run off the cliff and are left stranded in midair.  Yes, it's impossible to imagine life without smartphones. But 10 years ago cell phone technology was no where near what it is today. Now try to imagine life BEFORE cell phones. Impossible, I know.  With our dependence on these technologies we open ourselves to a world of hurt.  One electromagnetic pulse could wipe out communications for a massive area, essentially crippling communications.  So technology is seemingly a Pandora's box that needs to be monitored through an increasing loop of positive and negative feedback so as to prevent massive catastrophes such as the economic crisis in Iceland

Look at me

While this week’s readings provided plenty of food for thought, I decided to touch on one of the more negative aspects of the phatic culture of the networked age: narcissism. On one hand, phatic culture is like small talk for networked communication. This comes in the form of status updates, tweets, texts, or blibber-blabber about one’s day. I realize that a lot of this communication is meant as an attempt to connect and communicate with others, and that the content is not necessarily what matters. But even more than that I think it is a way of validating one’s existence, and saying “look at me. I’m still here”. The sad part is I think it creates a lot of narcissism. I perused the profiles of several Facebook “friends” and was shocked at how many of them posted photos of themselves via the mirror. On sites like Facebook and Twitter participants can act out their own celebrity roles. The more “friends” you have, the more popular you must be. The more “likes” you receive for posting a shirtless photo of yourself, the more desirable or emulated you must be. The more followers you have on Twitter, the more important your opinions must be. Otherwise, why would someone follow your tweets? I realize phatic communication is not always about feeding one’s ego and that we do a lot of it in our physical in-person interactions with one another too, as a way of jump-starting our conversations. But there is an awful lot of “look at me”, “like” what I’ve just posted, and give me a “lol” for enriching your life so much.

A wrong Communication Theory of Power

In Toward a Communication Theory of Power the author makes a wrong assumption about network-making power, the capacity to setup and program a mass comm network. The author treats content creators, News Corp and Bloomberg, the same as information disseminators, Google and Yahoo!. I think there is something fundamentally different about them.

And it’s not just me, differences are outlined by the author but they never make a distinction between the two sets of internet corporations.  The author’s critique is that these companies are, transforming humans into audience, and “designing the content of our culture according to their corporate strategies.”  In some ways this is applicable to both but there is a key reason why it’s doesn’t describe the core intention of the new internet media companies when they make the point that, “There is consumer choice, but within a range of predefined products, and presupposing consumption rather than co-production. This is why the rise of mass self communication ... may change power relationships in the communication sphere.”  This is the function of the new media internet companies, Google, Twitter and to lesser extents Facebook, Yahoo! etc - their goal is to allow self communication.

The difference can be seen in the corporation’s mission statements:

News Corp. - the creation and distribution of top-quality news, sports and entertainment around the world

Google’s - to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Not to say that the new media disseminators are completely benevolent but they don’t fall into the same category of active perception manipulators like New Corp. The example of the differences between the two is the clash over SOPA and PIPA.  The two sides held opposing stances.  In this instance the new internet companies were acting somewhat like Robin Hood.  It’s the Ruperts of the world that think they can control the masses thoughts through a unified media voice and the Google, Twitters and Facebooks of the world that are allowing duplicity of opinion.  The difference really is that New Corp sells their opinions and Google sells your opinions back to you.

I don’t know why this distinction isn’t made. The text is written in 2009 at the earliest, late enough to see this split. The theory seems like an oversimplification that attributes all developments to media oligarchs.

'I've got the power...'

"Power resides in the communication networks and in their corporate owners." Snap!

I could not agree more with Castells in "Communication Theory of Power," when he states that communication networks (social media) has the ability to shape minds through the formatting of a sender's message. The message has the power, true, but the formatting of that message in communication networks has the uncanny ability to make political rhetoric (bullshit) stick in the minds of citizens.

Overconnected

In “Overconnectivity and Surprises,” William Davidow explains how the newspaper industry fell apart due to overconnectivity. His perspective was enlightening. He points to a paper by mathematician Eugene Wigner that states that overconnected environments are unstable and subject to rapid change and also accidents. Newspapers are therefore an example of this. Davidow says the newspaper industry went from a connected state to an overconnected one, bypassing a highly connected state altogether. Because newspapers thrived for so long on the same business model, they were not equipped to handle the rapid changes the Internet brought to the industry, most notably the replacement of classified advertising.

Digital Small Talk

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“Potatoes. Boil, ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.”

“LMS for 2 words about you. :))”

“Nooooooooooooooo!”

“People are the worst. Grr.”

“Need Chinese food. And Juice Stop. #studying”

Those are just a few posts I gathered from Facebook and Twitter that are examples of phatic communication. It’s a digital version of small talk and a concept that really hit home for me.

In Small talk in the Digital Age: Making Sense of Phatic Posts, the authors identified four types of phatic posts from a study of trending topics on Twitter.

1.     Expressions like right, LOL, hmm… or smileys imply approval or disapproval in a short way, similar to nodding your head or rolling your eyes.

2.     Mundane posts that are designed to trigger a conversation. It my seem pointless but the message might contain information that would lead to others commenting on your post.

3.     Posts that both to make a public statement but protect privacy at the same time. This is common with teenagers who want to communicate with each other but hide any real information from their parents.

4.     Posts that “indicate online connected presence”.  These posts simply say, “I’m here” and ask “Is anybody else out there?”

The concept certainly has ramifications for the world we do in University Communications, especially with regard to recruiting students and communicating with current students and young alumni. As a former reporter now in public relations/marketing, I’ve lived with the mantra that “Content is King”. But Vincent Miller suggests that for many people, connecting is king and content is secondary.

Although providing compelling and relevant content will continue to be important, we need to keep in mind the importance of constant connection.

Guilty as Charged

Vincent Miller's "New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture" explores a new phenomena in online communications where the number of networks and friends is more important than the actual content itself. This concept of individualization as popularized by Giddens and Beck is "non-linear, open ended and highly ambivalent" in nature and focuses on building relationships and maintaining social bonds. 

Miller states that one aspect which is particularly important is self-disclosure in online communications when building relationships. There's a shift of increasing willingness to "tell all" or "expose oneself"making the individual herself/himself the priority. People are no longer getting online to obtain information with substance but merely keep connected with friends and share personal pictures and status updates. 

Repercussions of a Phatic Culture

Miller’s essay on networking and phatic culture got me thinking about two points which I feel were key in his essay.

1. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have turned many individuals into somewhat of narcissists with the constant need for attention, whether that’s through the form of “likes”, comments, shares, etc.

2. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter don’t really lend themselves to quality interaction but rather serve as a tool to keep in touch with little to no substance in the communication.

'Citizen of the world,' eh?

In Cass Sunstein's "The Daily Me," many topics and issues arise concerning advanced technologies surrounding the personalization of news, web content, opinions and views. The backdrop to these issues is of course, that we--society--is headed toward fragmentation. This fragmentation, she believes, will hurt or damage democracy as we know it. I may be exaggerating or stretching her viewpoint, but I believe between the lines that is, in fact, what she is stressing. However, she counters this "inevitable" downward spiral in democracy with some very colorful language!

"Censorship is indeed a threat to democracy and freedom," she writes. "Filtering is inevitable, a fact of life." And lest we forget, society is "mainly listening to louder echoes of their own voices." I pulled these quotes not just for the vivid language, but in many respects, I agree with these statements entirely. It is impossible for us to consume all news, all opinions, and all topics, so naturally we filter out first what we don't want to hear, see or read. We often choose news or opinions that mimic or intensify our own internal voices. This is fact, and really can't be disputed. If I had to highlight the best insights Sunstein offers, I would choose the two distinctive requirements for a well-functioning system of free expression;

On Wikipedia and Reddit

About Wikipedia and its role in politics…

“(…) Wikipedia is committed to making its articles as unbiased as possible. The aim is not to write articles from a single objective point of view-this is a common misunderstanding of the policy-but rather, to fairly and sympathetically present all views on an issue.”

This is part of one of the policies of Wikipedia. It just reminds me to some sort of “news” publication that went around social media in my country. Presidential elections are going to take place in Paraguay in April, 21st and there is too much debate not only about the candidates’ proposals but also about the candidates’ doubtful backgrounds. There is not any concrete proof or evidence but there are rumors and some past events which involves one of the candidates in drug dealing and cigarette smuggling. The news publication (in Spanish) that was shared on Facebook shows a screen shot of “Wikipedia” and said “According to Wikipedia, Horacio Cartes (the presidential candidate) is a drug-dealer and a cigarette smuggler”. 

I have 2 observations about this issue:

1.       From my perception, I doubt that there is many people in my country who knows that Wikipedia is not a, let’s say official, “reliable” source and rather is just a platform where people collaborate with information about a variety of issues. In fact, the article makes clear that but at the very end. In the fast pace we live there might be some people who didn’t make it until the end of the article. I am not defending or being against this candidate, but the consequences of this fact are that people might believe what was included in Wikipedia and once it went around social media or even become viral it might be hard to stop or make people change their perception about this candidate.

2.      Of course, people working for his campaign detected this issue and they immediately changed the information and now you can read that he is just a “businessman and politician”. This led me to think how permanent or accurate the information might be and how it would be interesting to have a tool or feature that allows you to track these changes, at least to see, how the information about a same topic was being shaped up along a certain time period. This is something that one of our classmates, Wade, mentioned some time ago as well.

I think that the study mentioned in the reading “Peer Production and Sharing” that noted that the “difference in accuracy was not particularly great” among Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica might be too optimistic. Whether is true that vandalism acts can be corrected within minutes in Wikipedia, I can go now and just write back that this presidential candidate was a drug dealer and it can become an endless back and forth between the supposedly “vandals” and  the “supposedly” true about this person.

About Reddit…an interesting site to explore and play with…

            The reading also provided good examples of Slashdot, Project Gutenberg and other sites. I think one of the most current and commented sites that serves sort of the same function as those mentioned in the reading is Reddit. This site was created in 2005 and serves as a portal where people submit links or stories and others, the “redditors” can comment and rate them. In addition, the site offers cool features I think like one named IamA where one user who has an interesting life experience, job or something uncommon allows “redditors” to ask this people questions about anything or almost anything as they said in their site. I think this might be an interesting new site to explore, I already joined and I think they’ve done a good job in creating a diverse community. This example of Reddit also shows as the reading described that the merely function of posting a story from another site into a particular one is “itself an act of relevance production”.

            This is a video that talks a little bit more about Reddit and they show very cool activities they have done to create community...

Sources:

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).