On social media, terrorism, and academia #dyr

working online also pushes education beyond the confines of school, allowing kids to broaden discussion of their work. And it forces them to do "authentic" work that gets tested out in the real world, as outside viewers see it and respond to it.

 

Today's online experience is really the experience of being part of a gigantic crowd of people, said Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor of Computer Science at Cornell, in a lecture about what social media and other popular websites can teach us about ourselves, July 20 in Kennedy Hall.

When we go online, we do not just learn about an event, said Kleinberg...We also learn about the experiences, opinions and reactions of millions of people.

 

psychologists call it "deindividuation". It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed...And it's why under the cover of an alias or an avatar on a website or a blog – surrounded by virtual strangers – conventionally restrained individuals might be moved to suggest a comedian should suffer all manner of violent torture because they don't like his jokes, or his face. Digital media allow almost unlimited opportunity for wilful deindividuation. They almost require it. The implications of those liberties, of the ubiquity of anonymity and the language of the crowd, are only beginning to be felt.

 

Don't talk, then, about the wildness in our rhetoric today, and its undeniable roots in that deep strain of political violence that runs through our national DNA, on a gene that is not always recessive. Don't relate Centennial Park in Atlanta in 1996 to Oklahoma City to murdered doctors to Columbine, and then to Tucson and to the bag on the bench in Spokane. Ignore the patterns, deep and wide, that connect each event to the other like a slow-burning fuse to a charge. That there are among us rage-hardened, powerless people who resort to the gun and the bomb. That there are powerful people who deplore the gun and the bomb, but who do not hesitate to profit from their use. And when the gun goes off or the bomb explodes, the powerful will deplore the actions of the powerless, and they will reassure the rest of us that We are not like Them, who are violent and crazy and whose acts have no reason beyond unfathomable madness. But above all, they will say, Ignore the fact that there is still a horrible utility in political violence, the way there was during Reconstruction, or during the labor wars of the early twentieth century. If there were not, it wouldn't be so hard to get an abortion in Kansas, and assault weapons would not have been accessories of choice at recent rallies purportedly held to discuss changes in the way the country organizes its health-care system.

 

Breivik wrote about different classifications of “traitors,” or individuals he felt could be killed during his imagined revolution.  In his handbook, he suggested that revolutionaries consider attacking both “literature conferences and festivals” and “annual gatherings for journalists.

 

Almost by definition, academics have gotten to where they are by playing a highly scripted game extremely well. That means understanding and following self-reinforcing rules for success.

 

Academic journals generally get their articles for nothing and may pay little to editors and peer reviewers. They sell to the very universities that provide that cheap labour.

 

I can only recommend graduate school in the humanities—and, increasingly, the social sciences and sciences—if you are independently wealthy, well-connected in the field you plan to enter (e.g., your mom is the president of an Ivy League university), or earning a credential to advance in a position you already hold

 

"a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age" #wymhm

Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement — perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana — reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen’s recent posts were, in order: “Guinea holds first free election since 1958” and “Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!” This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft.

"Digital communication is not just prevalent in teenagers' lives. It IS teenagers' lives." #wymhm

There's a very straightforward reason, says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior research specialist. "Simply, these technologies meet teens' developmental needs," she says. "Mobile phones and social networking sites make the things teens have always done – defining their own identity, establishing themselves as independent of their parents, looking cool, impressing members of the opposite sex – a whole lot easier."

Flirting, boasting, gossiping, teasing, hanging out, confessing: all that classic teen stuff has always happened, Lenhart says. It's just that it used to happen behind the bike sheds, or via tightly folded notes pressed urgently into sweating hands in the corridor between lessons. Social networking sites and mobile phones have simply facilitated the whole business

"what we really need is to break the carrier’s stranglehold on devices" #wymhm

We should free the makers and small companies of the world to make devices without having to negotiate with carriers to get their approval.

Say you wanted to make a phone just for weekend nights, say one that included a lighter and a slot for holding whatever kind of cigarette you like. What carrier would offer that phone?

Or how about ones designed for kids, the elderly or the disabled?

A company could make a phone with guts that mesh with a number of networks, making the wireless companies have to compete for your business.

Google made a half-hearted effort to break the carrier’s grip with its Nexus One, which they wanted to sell directly to individuals who could then choose their carrier. Among the problems leading Google to close its online store was that the carriers soon decided that playing that game wasn’t in their long-term interest. Verizon and Sprint backed out of their commitment to support the device — leaving U.S. customers with only T-Mobile.

The carriers’s lobbying association likes to point to all the cool new phones and ask “Where’s the harm?” The problem is the harm comes from the devices and services that haven’t been invented yet, because wireless isn’t an open platform.

We literally don’t know what we are missing.

I worry that this piece, while I agree with it, is too idealistic in its suggestions. Perhaps my cynicism is showing too much in this regard, but given how the FCC and the Obama administration have (mis)handled net neutrality, I haven't much hope for this kind of revolution for wireless.