Modern Technology: Do We Rule It or Does It Rule Us?

Advances in technology always bring new opportunities, but also new threats.  In every generation, there have been developments which have increased efficiency,  changed the way people communicate and changed society.  In ours, the proliferation of the Internet has burst the doors of traditional communication wide open.  The amount of information readily available is doubling at a much higher rate than ever before as well as the capabilty to search through that information to harvest precious nuggets.  Rapid personal communication options such as cell phones and texting in particular has made conversing with friends and family more simple and timely.  The issue brought up by this weeks video and articles is whether the information available now is helpful or harmful to society as a whole.  While each article leans toward compelling the reader to argue that technology is downgrading of society, I would like to bring the pendulum slightly back toward the middle.

Don’t Bring a Knife Into a Gun Fight

Each of the articles and video spoke of the way technology is changing the world and reshaping the way we interact with it.  Sherry Turkle spoke of how texting and online postings were limiting personal interaction and leading to more loneliness.  Her argument was that people often felt as if no one was listening and that these messages were just an attempt to be heard and understood.  She spoke of how social networks were replacing spending quality time with real friends.  Cass Sunstein argued that filters available to individuals are limiting the types of information they are exposed to, and that it leads to less diversity/more extremist.  Jaron Lanier lays out a case for our over dependence on technology’s organization and filtering of data can be leading us to brainless following of technological promptings including investments and purchases.  Finally, Nicholas Carr brought up the common argument that information so readily available and read so differently is reshaping our capacity to think and the way we process or don’t process information.

My point of contention is this.  What if technology is preparing us for a world to come in such a way that our current understanding of history won’t allow us to fathom?  Could it be that rapid information skimming and the ability to make mass posts will play out as more valuable skills than we will ever imagine in future societies? The image below is from an Indiana Jones movie where a highly skilled sword fighter shows off his skills only to be shot by Indiana. 

How good is a sword if the other person has a gun.  How good is it to be well versed in reading Latin at this age if you don’t know any other languages.  I have no doubt that the findings of these authors has a lot of validity, but could it be that the skills we are losing are those that won’t be valuable in the future.  What do you think?

Masquerade Joykill (psst, the masks don’t work)

Holy Secret Identity Batman!

This may be an embarrassing fact for a grown man to admit, but I LOVE super hero movies!!  In fact, more than a few times I’ve discussed with people which super power they would like to possess.  One that has never come up, is the ability to mask your identity by removing some eye glasses or throwing on a sleep mask with holes punched out.  I mean honestly people, if you can’t recognize a man just because of some cloth around his eyes, its no wonder your law enforcement is struggling.  As I read this week’s articles, however, I’m starting to think that me and my friends have seriously underestimated the value of a secret identity.

The Masks Don’t Work

Each of the articles for this week discussed the potential repercussions of sharing personal information with those who would want to profit from it.  As I write this blog, I’m currently in Brisbane, Australia on business.  When I go online, Google automatically detects  my location and all my search results pertain to Australia.  I didn’t approve Google to have this information about my whereabouts, but they have it anyways.  In recent news, the globally loved and modest Princess Kate Middleton was photographed by paparazzi topless at a private home of the Queen’s nephew. The FTC estimates that 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year.  Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was once quoted as saying, “You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it.”*  From what the evidence shows, it may not matter how hard we try, if an identity or information about that identity is worth enough and its out there, people will find a way to get it and profit off it.

It’s Not What You’ve Got, Its How You Use It

With identity information out there, and corporations having ready access to it, the question then moves onto how companies will ethically utilize the information, or at least in such a way that it is perceived as ethical in the eyes of the public.  In the article “Privacy, Economics and Price Discrimination on the Internet”, Andrew Odlyzko goes through a long string of examples of how companies have used customer demographics for price discrimination to the mutual benefit of both the company and the customer.  Towards the end of the article, he makes a eye-opening remark that the public does not judge an industry as strictly on the level of the price that is charged, but rather on how the charges are imposed and if they are done fairly.  In the article “What was Privacy?” by Lew McCreary, McCreary suggests that while employers now have access to much more information about their employees and potential employees private lives than ever before, they should be selective in what information would limit the employees potential approbation.  He likens this to the social norm that one would pretend not to hear overhear a public conversation.  In the same way, even though many Facebook users fully understand that they are providing personal information to the company, users were taken aback when the company used their information to create targeted ads.  What seems to be apparent from research is that even though the public is aware that information is widely available, they aren’t nearly as concerned with corporations having it as how they use what they’ve got.

Don’t Count on Corporate Responsibility

In the words of Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want.” Even though customers would prefer that corporations be responsible with the information they now have, it isn’t prudent to trust them to make the right decision.  In the LinkedIn introduction for students video, it was recommended that students act as their own filters for their business social media account.  While it is nearly impossible to completely keep your identity completely private, you can significantly reduce the negative information available by taking personal precautions in what you elect to upload and link to your social media account.

*McCreary, Lew. “Great and Not-So-Great Landmarks in Privacy History”. Harvard Business Review. May 2009

Social Media and Couponing

Couponing and social media took a big turn in 2008, when Groupon began its crowd-sourced, city-centered coupons. See how couponing and social media are tied together today and new technology is having on the market. I’d love any comments or suggestions you might have.

Social Media and Couponing Introduction

Buyer’s Remorse: Pressures Cause Investors to Regret

Social Media Expedites Corporate Buyer’s Remorse

If you’ve ever made a large purchase, you know what it feels like to begin seeing flaws in your purchased “dream item” within the first few days or weeks of owning it.  No matter how much time you spent evaluating the item, you never quite see all the flaws until you have spent time time with it.  In a sense, social media serves as an amplifier which can exposes and exploit any weakness of a company sometimes before an owner even knows it exists and is prepared to deal with it.  In the case of a social networking company named Friendster, the company started with some seemingly minor technological cracks and a lack of strong leadership, but the flood of customers added by such a viral market exacerbated the issues rapidly and left Friendster’s angel investors and venture capitalists with a serious case of buyer’s remorse.

Where There is No Vision, the People Perish*

Jonathan Abrams founded Friendster on the premise that he would create a “dating site that wasn’t about dating”.  What he didn’t anticipate, was that in his efforts he was trying to map and coordinate much of the complexity of human relationships.  Martin Giles, in his interview with The Economist, talks about the difficulties that online networks have experienced in making internet relationships seem more personable.  In his talk The hidden influence of social networks, Nicholas Christakis describes why social networks are so effective and so difficult to explain.  One of the models he used to demonstrate relationships is below**.  As you can see, the mapping of relationships is no simple task.  Abrams had an ingenious idea of attempting to maximize all of the complexities of the human relationship and not just the desire for anonymous romance.  He had the right idea, but unfortunately his creativity bit off more than his leadership could handle.

Mikolaj Piskorski goes into detail on the history of Friendster in his case study for the Harvard Business School.  In the developmental stages of Friendster the company noticed some technical problems that were causing delays and crashes in the software.  Abrams had a hard time knowing how to respond. On page 4, he states that in 2004, Friendster was “not cohesive” and had a lot of difficulty reaching decisions.  On the next page he again states that “few concrete decisions were made to address…[emergency engineering situations]…directly.”  So early on in the company, chinks in the armor were starting to reveal themselves, all that was needed to complete the process was a little pressure.  The company grew rapidly, and its software and engineers never caught up.  The viral growth and expansion of social media overwhelmed the company and customers were unforgiving with delayed repairs and complications within the system.  Because Abrams lacked the leadership to make the necessary decisions, the board began deferring to John Doerr who was a business man without a lot of technological sense and in at the end not much business sense either.  It wasn’t until 3 years (an eternity in the technology world) and two CEOs later that the company performed any kind of consumer research.  At this point however, Friendster was a second mover in the market with costly and complicated software.  The lack of leadership continued as the board and new CEOs attempted abandoning ship with a sell strategy without improving their outdated product.

Who Got it Right?

In recent history we have seen CEOs such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Bill Gates take the lead for their companies and dictate the direction of their company.  While this is not the only contributing factor, very few people would not credit these CEOs with a significant contributions to the success of their companies.  These guys not only had the ideas, but they had the understanding and leadership skills to execute the plan.  Mark Zuckerberg was able to take the complex network of human relationships, and narrow down some essential structures that a majority of people would be interested in discussing.  Now, Zuckerberg not only has individuals begun taking advantage of the interpersonal connections via social media, but corporations are utilizing his online media for the sharing of ideas.

Is It Worth the Opportunity Cost?

The question then remains, is this form of media which was founded to profit off individual’s social lives going to do anything but detriment to businesses?  In his blog “Social Media – My initial thoughts”, Robert Kracke mentioned that businesses may be eager to “get the word out”, but that they might wind up releasing more information than for which they had originally bargained.  While sensitive information always has some potential to be leaked, the majority concern of employers with social media is not as much the leaking of secrets as it is the outflow of employee time and work ethic.  According to the article A World of Connections, Australia hosts the worlds “most avid online networkers.”  Yet, a study performed by Ernst & Young on the Australian market revealed that Aussies only spent approximately of 4% of their work time (approximately 1.5 hrs/week) on Social Media.  While ideally, managers would prefer that employees not waste any time, this is proportionally less than half the time wasted on unnecessary meetings (some of which may have been to reprimand the use of SM).  On the contrary, relationships and ideas fostered in a sharing environment do create opportunities for synergy.  Later in his talk, Nicholas Christakis points out that the form and organization of relationships matter (as demonstrated in the carbon diagram of diamonds and graphite below).  The goal of businesses is now to utilize social media to maximize the forms of relationships that produce long-term sustainable profitability.

*KJV Bible, Proverbs 29:18

U.S. Foundations are based on Crowds working together, but is there danger of Groupthink?

Imagine you find yourself unhappy with the current country you live in for various reasons.  How would you go about setting up a country that you thought would be a better one?  I would like to think I would have the smarts to think up a foundation of a civilization that could last for a thousand years, but my experience with setting up my weekly calendar tells otherwise.  The U.S. founding fathers set up a system in which checks and balances were made not only by branches of government, but also by a voting public who could evaluate and replace those who were not making the cut.  I am unaware of how thorough our founding fathers were of the benefits of a crowds input, but their use of it has proved to create one of the greatest nations in history.

In the article “The Wisdom of the Crowds”, Surowiecki provides a handful of examples from recent history of documented advantages of group decision making over that of individuals.  His examples range from stock markets to search engines, but the common thread is that when a large group of informed individuals work together to come up with a decision, it is usually much better than any individual could ascertain on their own.  T.W. Malone’s article “Collaborative Innovation”, Malone walks the reader through a series of understandings for why and how a group would participate in collaboration and what makes it successful.  The main motivations he determined were money, love or glory.  U.S. citizens have all three motivations when considering the implications of the decisions of our country and I believe that is part of the reason why the system works.  

Potential Hazzard!!

One potential hazard that none of the articles mentioned was group-think.  This tends to happen more in organizations when those under the leader run the risk of losing benefit if they think outside the box.  This is my current concern for America.  We all have experienced so many benefits and now there are such a large number of individuals who benefit from the welfare of the U.S. that I am concerned people will stop making decisions based on the best interest of the country, and only think about how it could affect their pocketbook.  What do you think?  Do you think our country can pull it out?  Will the citizens in the long run work together for the best interest or only default to a communist regime?

Group Think

Can the U.S. pull through?

Social Media: Just For Narcissists or Exhibitionist?

My Preconceived Notions of Social Media

I have long mocked Social Media as a place where people emotionally deprived people share their lives in hopes that others prowling about the internet would care enough to notice.

• MySpace seemed to be a spot where those who couldn’t find a date could try one last ditch effort to make connections.
• Chat rooms were for people who couldn’t make real friends.
• Twitter, the pinnacle of these phenomenon in my opinion, was where people shared the most meaningless events of their lives in 140 characters.  It all seemed a desperate attempt for people to make relational connections they desperately longed for.
• Facebook seemed to have the most legitimate solution to the issue (i.e. I want to reconnect with old friends and share ongoing life with my family), however, the status update is only one step beyond twitter in my view.

For the past several years, I have noticed the trending of our generation to be as non-committal as possible and yet still be a part of something much bigger than themselves.  In Clay Shirky’s lecture on the effects of social media, he goes into detail on the flash mob movement.  He reports on the social experiment performed by Bill Wasik of Harper’s Magazine in which Wasik attempts to prove the mindless following of the hipster culture.  Wasik’s experiment proved true as he had thousands of individuals at his command without inhibition as long as they considered their actions to be revolutionary.  To me, this is further evidence of the desire for connection amidst individuals in our generation.

Social Media Redeemed

At this point, I am aware that my aforementioned opinion has been formed in ignorance and I’m looking forward to growing in my knowledge and understanding of the social media world.  My opinion has changed slightly over the few days due to two main sources:

1. The consideration of Shirky’s further documentation and some consideration of additional uses of social media.  As Shirky continued in his lecture, he documented the spread of the flash mob beyond the United States.  His example of the flash mob’s display in Minsk, Belarus helped me to see that the effectiveness of social media is not always used for self-actualization, but can provide collaboration opportunities for groups to rebel against oppression.  Before that he had shown how social media had lead to improvements in the rights of airplane passengers.  As I watched this video, I realized that my negative disposition against social media was rooted not in a thorough knowledge, but by my limited exposure to its application in a highly free and needless society.  Shirky’s comment that resonated with me was, “A big part of how these [social media] tools get used actually depends on the political context in which they are operating.”
2. As I read Gallaugher’s Information Systems, I began to realize how many forms of social media I use that to me were just parts of the internet.  Once I moved beyond social networks into Wikis I noticed that a lot of the information I reference on a daily basis heavily benefits from the application of this technology.  My company uses Microsoft SharePoint, a wiki formatted software that allows all of our staff to gain from shared resources and knowledge.  As I work for a non-profit, I am also beginning to see how much momentum can be gained by maximizing on the social crazes of Flikr, Twitter, Vimeo and Facebook.  I have had friends who have taken advantage of corporate SMARTs by tweeting about the company after receiving bad service only to be contacted rapidly by the company to see how they could resolve the complaint.  Since being married, my wife has introduced me to Pintrest and coupon blogs that have helped her save us money and find home improvement ideas.

I have no doubt that this process is going to adjust my understanding of not only the opportunities that exist, but also the possibilities of how they are being applied throughout the world.  I’m looking forward to leveraging social media more effectively in the future.