Not Liking something is not the same as not “liking” something
Posted on | June 2, 2010 | No Comments
I’ve noticed a worrying trend among news agencies. It seems that it has become de rigeur to use the number of members of a facebook group as an indication of the popularity of a trend or movement.
For example, here is a quote from a recent CNN.com article discussing the “quit facebook” movement:
“More than 2,700 people had pledged to quit Facebook on the group’s website Monday morning…By contrast, more than seven times that many people are fans of former “Top Chef” contestant Kevin Gillespie’s beard. A fairly random user-created page called “I Love Facebook” had roughly the same number of members as the “Quit Facebook” page.”
Other major magazines are skipping the more accurate random poll and simply cite the number of facebook members a group has to indicate support. Business Week cherry picked a single “Boycott BP” group (out of many) to illustrate a ground swell of support. Even ReadWriteWeb gets in on the fallacy of using Facebook group data to critique another inaccurate survey.
So where is this going?
Clearly the fallacy that CNN and other news agencies using the number of people in one Facebook group to compare against another is that the nature of the “like” button is not taken into account. Facebook group counts suffer from “selection bias.”
Firstly, users are more likely to be exposed to causes for which they are already sympathetic too from friends with similar view points. The same person who signs up for Pro-Obama groups may not be exposed to Pro-Republican groups. Secondly, there is no “dislike” button; therefore many news agencies commit the fallacy of using this data while ignoring that a lack of members indicates a lack of support or that a fast growing group indicates a groundswell of support. This is simply not true. Many users do not like anything; therefore their views will not be counted. If one out of every 3 people disagree with a cause, but it still gets one Million members, those 3 million go completely unmeasured. If only 1.4 million people Support our vets on Facebook, does that mean that the other 298.6 million automatically do not?
I think we have to be careful of using Facebook group information to tell us anything at all, and I think our news agencies have to be a little less hasty to use Facebook group data when a real survey of people’s opinion is what the story really needs.
Do more people want to quit Facebook than support Kevin Gillespie’s beard? Unfortunately, I guess we’ll never know.
What I would do for Five Bucks….
Posted on | May 24, 2010 | No Comments
I was intrigued. The question of what I would do for five bucks lingered for days; obsessively I thought about what I could do. I needed a mental break on the weekends away from work and school work and thought that this was the perfect chance to monetize some of my hobbies. I liked to paint, but had never sold any. In fact, I lost money putting them on Etsy. I also liked to make music, but had never successfully been able to put together an EP.
So I listed two jobs on this site called Fiverr. I offered to paint a 3 x 5 index card with an abstract painting for five dollars; I also offered to write a song about the topic of a person’s choosing for five dollars. Quickly, I was inundated with jobs.
Paint me a Picture
This job was all about me. I stated simply that I would determine the composition of the paintings. I had thought about trying to keep costs down so I went with a very inexpensive medium that I had a large number of lying around from working on my thesis. Yes, I used index cards. I also then chose to only use leftovers of paint that I had from previous projects. The mistake I made was offering to send the images by mail to the people who had ordered them. This is only a net loss of 45 cents; however, was not aware, many people in the United Kingdom were also avid users of Fiverr, and I ended up taking a hit of nearly a dollar per picture.
Cost of supplies: $0
Cost of Mailing: .40 – $1
Fiverr’s Cut: $1
Total Profit: ~3.50 per image.
Time taken: ~45 minutes per painting
Earnings: about $4.60 per hour of work
I quickly realized that despite the costs of the supplies being zero that I was making below minimum wage by doing something that I enjoyed. I had successfully monetized my hobby! But at what cost? By doing paintings that I worked hard on, was I cheapening the work of those who do paint for a living? (See the Paintings that I made)
Sing me a Song
I also offered to write people a song about a topic of their choosing. I had done improv music with my friend over the years and it never seemed hard. Put a couple of chords together, sing some funny words and presto! song! The first job was relatively easy- it seemed- write a short song about a friend who had been betrayed by her boyfriend.
I had come up with a chorus pretty quickly; however, I remembered that songwriting is serious work. And then to be funny?! I could have written anything and maybe gotten the five dollars; however, I felt the pressure of this being my first job. I poured over the lyrics, re-wrote them. I turned on the camera and began playing. Yes, it takes more than one take to nail a song. It took about ten takes before I came up with a version I thought was worth five dollars.
For a five dollar song, I spent nearly three and a half hours writing and trying to get it right. In the meantime I had about ten other requests for songs. I was trying to write all of these other songs and maintain some level of quality, but it was impossible. I eventually succumbed to pressure and had to cancel all of the jobs. I had about ten fragments, but nothing that I felt was worth five dollars.
So were my standards too high? Perhaps. I admit that I could have been the one holding myself back. But also, was I myself undervaluing what I had once taken so much joy in? Music was surely worth more than I was getting paid for it. After Fiverr’s $1 cut, I earned just under $1.15 an hour for my work.
Lessons Learned?
Unlike previous experience with five dollar work for hire like the short lived Brijit.com, I realized that doing this work for five four dollars was a bad deal for artists and creators. I put more work and effort into what I put out there than five dollars could buy.
But perhaps Fiverr wasn’t the right venue, two of the users I sent my work to did say I was “bargain.”
What an amazing bargain! houseofsuns created a beautiful and unique piece of abstract art and I would highly recommend this gifted and creative artist. – Petrichor
Hilarious song… it would have paid $10 for it… luckily it was a bargain at $5. Would totally recommend this guy for personalized songs! -JessicaHoek
In the end I’m not sure. Is Fiverr.com a bad deal for artists and creators? Or was it a bad deal for me because I undervalued my own work?
Peak Oil in Higher Education, Part II
Posted on | April 23, 2010 | No Comments
I had another thought while attending the Digital University Conference at CUNY on Wednesday and that was a serious question about who the experts will be under the new system of digital and open scholarship.
Currently, Digital Scholarship is not valued or accepted on par with traditional methods of academic valuation. By that I mean: journal articles, monographs published by academic presses, and books. This creates a system that could potentially handicap the brightest and the best, young scholars aiming for tenure track positions. As digital scholarship is not valued, they will likely hold on to their work until they are able to secure a traditional avenue for the release of their work.
This is an okay model in that those bright students will be able to secure themselves tenure track positions in higher education which is their goal; however, as information and the release of knowledge is no longer controlled by higher education and academic presses, anyone could release a significant body of research for free on their website. The cost of publishing a book on your own is prohibitive; the cost of publishing a book on the internet is zero in many cases.
Walking through that door
If the best, brightest, or those holding out for tenure are withholding their work, who will then take the opportunity to publish their work for free? I believe it will be those with little to lose: Scholars outside of tenure track positions and experts outside of academia. If a student has invested many years in research and still is unable to find a tenure track position, it seems that there would be much more to gain by just releasing it for free. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick demonstrated quantitatively during her presentation at the Digital University Conference, she achieved a wider reach with her website than would have the average release at an academic press.
It seems that the opportunity is ripe for young scholars to publish their work and seek recognition outside of academia. Perhaps success won’t be measured in terms of books, sabbaticals and grants but instead in speaking engagements and recognition. Chris Anderson again mentions this in his book Free that there are other forms of currency once can use in the marketplace of ideas. Among these currencies are Reputation and Attention. Could young scholars holding back their ideas awaiting validation from the current institution be costing themselves valuable time in accumulating recognition?
I’m simply speculating at this point, I don’t know what might come out of the current state. What I do know is that I speak with a great deal of young scholars and there is a disillusionment about the value of digital scholarship, a frustration about the lack of jobs in the marketplace, and a strong sense of idealism and opportunity. The direction of digital scholarship might not rest in the hands of Academia, but instead it might rest in the hands of young scholars who now have an alternative means to express their ideas.
Peak Oil in higher education
Posted on | April 22, 2010 | No Comments
I believe it was Chris Anderson’s Free that made the claim that much Science Fiction writing could be summarized as such: Take one thing that is currently scarce and make it abundant and see what happens to the people and institutions that rely and maintain that thing.
This is the hope of much of the innovation in energy. A discovery of something like “cold fusion” or other clean and perpetually abundant energy source would render all current energy companies obsolete and cause them to scramble. How would they stay relevant? What could they offer in a world where energy no longer requires stewardship? How could they turn a profit?
This day has not come for energy companies but it has come for higher education, who in some ways are the “Oil Companies” or information and knowledge. Higher education is no longer the gateway to all of the world’s knowledge. It is all out there and nearly all of it is free.
Yesterday I attended the Digital University conference at the CUNY Graduate Center and many of the panelists and attendees were questioning how can the role of expertise and higher education remain relevant in a world where peer reviewed journals and academic presses are no longer the only means to express scholarly research. Less mentioned was the business model of academic presses and fundraising that are in serious jeopardy as a result of the shift to digital scholarship; however, left undiscussed was the total economic model. If information is free, what is the role of the scholar in society as a whole?
Survival in a world of abundance.
I have a bias towards looking to music for answers because of the work I’ve done with record labels, band promotion and being a bit of a musician myself. Music is not about selling the art anymore; the digital revolution has made the music abundant. Musicians have adapted to a new model where the money is made by touring, by selling value adds like hand-crafted CDs, t-shirts. What can higher education learn from this?
Perhaps a shift back to the emphasis what a scholar brings to the information. No longer is there a focus on “the book” as a measure of success and worth, but instead speaking engagements and even teaching can be a more effective primary goal. The role of the scholar is shifting from a model of the learned hermit to an active, engaging and accessible personality that can share her knowledge with the world. So although academic presses are struggling and information is ultimately unable to be controlled anymore, the one way scholars (and higher education) can continue to exert their expertise is by performing. And in the world of information, that performance is called teaching.
The Food Revolution is going to be televised?
Posted on | April 14, 2010 | No Comments
I’m not a huge student of reality TV; however, you can understand how a student writing his thesis on Community Supported Agriculture as a Tool for Food Justice would be interested in Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Now I’ve already briefly talked about why I think the show has failed to address the underlying issues in our food system, but I wanted to take a look at the show from another angle: the portrayal of the planner and advocate.
Jamie Oliver came to Huntington, WV from England with his full cadre of ideas. Often times he says “this worked well over there, why doesn’t it work here,” and his language is full of the word “my.” My Plan, My ideas. My revolution. I need to get people on board with my plan.
The modern planner isn’t out there pushing his or her ideas or telling people how to live. I see a strong Jane Jacobs critique of the show that finds similarities between urban renewal and top down planning and less in common with the community based, people oriented planning that is generally practiced. Would Jamie have encountered less resistance if he sat down with the community and found out what they wanted and took their ideas into account? He claims that the people of Huntington need to open their mind to his ideas; I think the opposite is true. Jamie needs to listen to the people of Huntington to find out what they want.
I also see this thread of the top-down planner in other reality shows such as Extreme Home Makeover. Scale and values aren’t coming from the individual families or individual communities; it seems to be more about imposing a normative set of middle class values on struggling families and neighborhoods.
Its not that entertainment has to be true or even fair. Its TV, I do not deny its an escapist fantasy for millions of Americans every evening; however, I think its important for us planners who have very vested interests in issues such as housing, food and community planning to take note about how our profession is being misrepresented by people taking the language of “revolution,” “change,” and “plans” to impose their own values on people. Do those who watch these shows think differently about planners because of this? I don’t know for sure. It would be a compelling topic to research, as in many communities where planners are working behind the scenes Jamie Oliver and Ty Pennington might be the most visible representations of people who are influencing housing and food policy in our communities.
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Food Revolution by Aaron Knoll is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License;Based on a work at aaronknoll.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://aaronknoll.com/?p=85.
Spam from Beyond
Posted on | March 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
This morning I received an e-mail from an acquaintance who passed on a little over a year ago. Apparently she has come back from the afterworld to sell me and all of her e-mail contacts about various wonderdrugs and assorted pharmaceuticals (and at discount prices).
The online accounts of the dead have been in the news as of late because of a well chronicled debate at Facebook. Bit-rot, or the decay of storage media, is astonishingly absent in the news (and I suspect it will be a hot topic very soon, how many of you have tried to gain access to those backups you burned in 1999 lately?). The issue with clearly abandoned blogs/twitters is also a prevalent concern.
These are the paths that information can take after death on the web. Some will rot, some will be ignored, and others can be memorialized. But what happens to data on systems where they are routinely maintained (not left to rot), but also maintain the illusion of activity for a longer period of time; e.g. e-mail accounts; where administrators might not be so quick to pull the trigger on deletion. Where savvy spammers may be able to take a Infinite Monkeys Theorem approach to hacking a specific account.
I suppose there are two advantages currently:
One, spam for the most part is harmless. Though your friend may be deceased, you’ll likely know something is up and not open the e-mail. But what if you’re not aware- or were merely an acquaintance, but a there’s a real signature and a familiar name this message carries with it a certain imbued trust. Would you be more inclined to download that software, buy that drug- could using email addresses which have already built up a certain currency of reputation help spammers improve on their 1 in 12.5 million success rate?
Two, there aren’t a lot of actually deceased people’s accounts floating around the web. Perhaps this is a generalization based on the ages of internet users; however, as the internet and e-mail seems here to say, its not hard to imagine a day perhaps fifty years in the future where millions of internet users are dying every day and not taking their accounts with them. Will that old professor of mine I hadn’t kept in touch with be able to persuade me to click on a malicious link?
Many will hope that by the time this becomes such a large problem, internet users themselves will be savvy, er skeptical, enough to not click on any link sent in an e-mail or buy something just because they had an e-mail selling it. Perhaps we’ll be all aware of the hallmarks of spam, but I am not so confident as I can think of many close friends and family members that I have to repeatedly caution against download that awesome free antivirus package.
Who knows, maybe one day when we say “zombie network” it might take on a completely different meeting.
The Perils of Long Term Planning
Posted on | February 16, 2010 | No Comments
Its a wonder at some level that the express stops along the IRT were so well planned from the outset and most were located at critical junctures before development could even take place. Second Avenue Sagas mused the other day about how Columbus Circle managed to not be an express stop whereas 72nd street did? Though 59th street seems like a logical express stop now, It was not when the subways were built.
What can we learn from the IRT construction 100 years ago and apply to the new 7 line construction today? Or the decision to not build express tracks on the 2nd Avenue subway? Originally, the plans were for a stop to be constructed at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, but that stop has since been cancelled. Is the MTA missing an opportunity that they will regret in 100 years? Or are putting the chicken before the egg and ignoring the examples of Columbus Circle and the 7 Line to Flushing where the subways helped fuel development rather than serve existing development?
Subways and other mass transit options have been shown to be powerful tools that the city can use to influence development patterns long out into the future. Perhaps subways and express stops can be used to alter development patterns. Whereas express stops have been shown to increase rental values when compared to local subway stops, an express line on Second avenue could evenly distribute higher end residential areas with more affordable real estate in between; rather than simply reducing the price of real estate linearly as you move up Second Avenue away from midtown and downtown? Perhaps New York City is missing an opportunity to define the next century of development along two of its corridors by not attempting to match the vision August Belmont…
“Mr. N.Y. Times, tear down this wall”
Posted on | January 21, 2010 | No Comments
I sympathize with the New York Times. They’re a venerable institution with a long history of being a respected source for news, but I think they’re making a big mistake by moving behind a “paywall” in 2011.
This is a case of an old media company not having the guts to stick to a new model. I have read that the drop off of “advertising revenue” was one such justification for the change. But that seems hollow: everyone lost money this year. There was a recession.
So though on the surface this seems like the justifiable and obvious answer; but is the answer really worth sacrificing the advantage in visitors the New York Times gains by being a respected voice? The New York times brand is strengthened and its reputation is strengthened due to its free nature. Chris Anderson has explored how “reputation” is another kind of currency in his book Free.
Reputation can be used to bring about a new business model: news as a service, rather than news as a commodity. The News is public and is out there- and unless the New York Times paywall comes with a compelling argument for why their news is better than the news I’ll find for free on Cnn.com the traffic will not follow.
The Times is not the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal is more niche and does take a different approach by covering something very specific in depth and providing it in way people want to see it. The Times is a jack of all trades with opinions, world news, a little bit local- but does nothing that no one else doesn’t do (for free!) .
So News as a Service?
This proposal may sound a bit extreme, but here me out. The New York Times should be a service provider for its news, and it should start by subsidizing E-readers. I’m not kidding. How about offering an incredible deal (or free) Kindle or Nook if you buy a 2 year subscription to have the times downloaded onto your E-reader. Subsidize a new means of reading the news and create a demand for your product. This worked so well for Gilette, why not the New York Times?
The reason why the Times should remain free online is because it will build a demand for the premium product and maintain the reputation as a world leader in all around news, but by providing a value add- something more than just news which will make the Times a leader in the new wave of media.
*I don’t work for the Times, and I know this is completely unsolicited advice for a major Newspaper. But, I think this plan would work.
Augmented Reality as another re-envisioning of the future that never happened
Posted on | January 15, 2010 | No Comments
As children, many people were brought up on the science-fiction of the 1970’s and 1980’s. There seemed to be a bounty of promise in this vision of a 3D virtualized, “everything at your fingers” holographic world. ”Augmented Reality” seems to be another attempt to reconstruct the idyllic science-fiction fantasies of many adult’s childhood and less an attempt to address any real problem.
Second Life and Augmented Reality.
Anecdotally, when I was first getting involved with people interested in delivering innovative media to students I was shocked at how often the word Second Life came up. There was talk of using this as an interactive space to “go where the young people are,” and legions of librarians and self-described “media innovators” went to conferences to see how to use Second Life in their classrooms to engage with students on a digital level. The problem that was overlooked by many enthralled with the promise of this 3D world was that it wasn’t where the young people were.
Young people who grew up in the digital age have always had technology in their lives did not grow up dreaming about Tron-like 3D worlds or fantasize about the day that their security GUI would look like something from Jurassic Park. I’m positing that the reason why young people were not in Second Life was because they didn’t see the utility in it for enabling them to communicate more quickly and efficiently. The Milennials want functionality, not style.
Where Augmented Reality Comes into Play
Among these library types and older media innovators, the Second Life enthusiasm seems to have fizzled and has been replaced by another attempt to re-creating the science fiction dreams of the 1980s. Augmented Reality applications and writing today is awash with literature about how digital overlays will transform significantly the way that we interact with one another within the next decade (Recall similar language used to describe the use of 3D worlds?).
A look at the trends that have caught on have been decidedly low-tech ideas. Twitter is a hot tool among the Milennial generation as well as other young people. Quick loading, low overhead instant gratification. Facebook is a primarily all-text platform which appealed to young college students in the Mid-2000s while MySpace with all of its technological razzle-dazzle is hemorrhaging users. I don’t think this is a coincidence: for a generation who has always lived in the age of the Internet, instant gratification and speed is what the winning tools have had in common and what many failures have not. Fifteen years into web page design, we know well how users use webpages:
People are impatient on the Internet. Instantly gratify them, or they’re out. - Jakob Nielsen
I think it’s naivety to believe that users of phones will be willing to give more time to find information while interacting in the real world than while passively sitting in front of a computer. Fifteen years into web use, what evidence do we have that a slower loading and more difficult to use version of something that exists in a simpler format will be preferred?
For people who’ve lived with Search Engines their entire lives, what could be easier than just typing in a word, or an address, and combining that with GPS be able to pull up what is around you? How is that easier (or faster) than holding up your phone and waiting for an image to register and map things in 3-dimensional space? It seems that Augmented Reality is delivering on a vision promised to an older generation that promised computers acting as a direct intermediary in real space; whereas, the younger generation is more attuned to a representational and symbolic world- where information is delivered quickly and efficiently. If so then I ask, what is Augmented Reality the solution to?
Many things are “cool” but only those that are “useful” are adopted. I know that technologists should ignore a new technology only to their own peril; that is not what I am proposing here. I am suggesting only that before AR moves forward in any meaningful way we need to identify who AR is attempting to serve?; how it improves upon what is currently out there?; and additionally, how can AR add value to everyday life while making sense within the normal face to face interactive process?
The MTA; another way out?
Posted on | January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment
These images are taken from Benajmin over at Second Avenue Sagas, and I’m borrowing them as a great historical image about the power of transit construction, to summarize the point he very elegantly makes, but the story of New York’s development pattern is highly 
related to subway construction. Flushing is shown in the top image when the 7 was just built, and the bottom image shows the same site only 20 years later.
But despite the economic benefits of subway construction which include increased property values near Rail Stations (see Dr. Hess’s work in Buffalo, NY, or more a New York City oriented answer, check Craigslist and look at the rentals section). Additionally, subway transit is not elastic to cost, as many riders do not have another option for getting to work, but transit is elastic to frequency of service. So here’s an idea on how to make more money for the MTA.
Increase service. Develop additional light rail. It sounds radical, but perhaps its time for a new way of looking at the MTA fiscal crisis?
keep looking »
