David McGavock's List: Tools

• Seabrook
• Republic of Technology
• efforts to clarify the social and cultural resources of the collection of devices and connections known collectively as "the Internet" are still in the exploratory phase.
• The goal
• identify the cultural origins and social functions of this concept by placing it in socio-historical perspective and by revealing how it deals with the modern tension between individualism and communitarianism.
• hopes surrounding virtual community ideals derive their force and shape from
• social and cultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s known as "the counterculture.
• "virtual community"
• limited to discussing only one of its facets: the way in which it deals with the relationship between individuals and community.
• analyzing the discourse about virtual communities found in the postings and literature generated by the members of the paradigmatic virtual community, the WELL
• Seabrook
• most extensive and detailed analysis of the phenomenon to date,
• for understanding the countercultural roots of the virtual community phenomenon.
• the WELL had to deal with a number of ideological tensions: between self-expression and true community involvement, between ascribed and achieved identities, between intentional sociability and actional efficiency, and between strong and weak social ties.
• conclusion of this study
• virtual community is a discursive and social subspecies of the counterculture that reflects the fundamental modern tension between individualism and communitarianism.
• virtual community is not necessarily the solution to the social challenges of late modern American society, but rather one of its symptoms
• As Calhoun aptly put it, "the Internet mainly makes it easier for us to do some things we were already doing and allows those with the resources to do some things that they already wanted to do"
• Technology, rejected or even hated in the classical anarchist movement, was embraced by many countercultural communities as a means for liberation, although, as it will be emphasized below, not by all of them. The logic behind this new approach was that technology becomes an instrument of evil only when under the control of governmental or business bureaucracies. If properly controlled, through personalization and individual manufacture, technology can be made into a "convivial" (friendly, "humane") instrument of personal and group liberation
• techno-counterculture
• it will be shown how the "open communication" ideal, a uniquely countercultural value, participates in creating the ideological tension between individualism and communitarianism
• One of the revolutionary aims of the techno-counterculture was to change the social order by "personalizing" a number of technologies, especially those related to communication.
• "convivial technologies" could be more authentic and liberating
• opposed its corporate and governmental uses.
• powerful technologies are incorporated into "primitive" lifestyles.
• the San Francisco Bay Area countercultural environment was essential for nurturing the circles of innovation responsible for the emergence of personal and networked computing
• The two earliest luminaries of commercial personal computing, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the entire ethos of the Apple computing culture, are a direct product of the techno-counterculture
• new Jeffersonian democracy based, not upon equal distribution of land, but upon equal access to information"
• "consciousness reformation"
• "expressive revolution"
• to solve the ills of modernity (i.e., anonymity, massification, alienation), "revolutionizing the self" comes before revolutionizing society.
• ountercultural movement found the best tool for opening up the self and society at large in "open communication."
• personal and group identities can be merged through a process of communication that transcends conventions and is reduced to exchanging expressive "vibes" between individuals
• This is a social ideal that focuses on the need for "communicating"—i.e., expressing one's self spontaneously and immediately—as a terminal value
• no exchange participant is privileged over another and communication is freed as much as possible from the fetters of valuation and judgment.
• effect of this mystic egalitarianism is that little common ground is available upon which individuals can base the ties that would bind them together in a community. Instead of tradition and a shared belief system, they must make do with tolerance and respect for each other's individuality.
• reed from the social masks of class, gender, and race which model face-to-face interaction, people are more likely to express their authentic emotions and concerns.
• not only to consume but also to produce information, which eliminates the middlemen in social, political, and cultural life, flattens social hierarchies, and enlarges social freedom and equality.
• "People do NOT want to be subjected to centralized information. They DO want to be able to explore the social space of their surroundings and to ask the question: 'Who's out there?'
• in order to be emancipatory, social communication should be as unmediated as possible.
• WELL's motto "you own your words"
• number of programmatic postings to the "virtual community" conference (WELL, 1985-2003c) dedicated to the issue: "Is the WELL a community? How so? Or, why not?" the countercultural ideal of self-actualization and self-expression is clearly stated, although in a conflicted relationship with the other goal of the WELL, community and conviviality.
• she does not believe that the WELL meets even her relaxed definition of community, the WELL being, in her view, too cliquish and conflict-ridden to be a "real" community.
• if you think you are in a community you probably are, and if you don't, you aren't.
• Ultimately, all communities are a set of agreements among the people and in any community (and especially these days when many neighbors hardly know each other), one can always have strong or weak involvement with the group.
• The main role of self-respecting virtual communities is to cater to their members' need to remain themselves. Rules and norms are the end of any community:
• Go into any conference at random, and you'll see the same names time and time again, mercilessly and monotonously trumpeting their views.
• The WELL seems to be all about self-expression, not communication. Expression is a solitary activity - like shouting in the forest,
• Seabrook notes that the WELL is a collection of single-issue conferences, each dominated by an exclusive clique and each requiring from its members a continuous effort to prove their originality and "authenticity" of feeling and ideas.
• Rheingold acknowledges the existence of these hazing rituals (although he never mentions it in his own book) when, as a WELL member, he gives Seabrook this piece of advice: "It's an initiation ritual, John Seabrook. Stick around and help us dump it on the next guy. ;-)"
• Membership in online groups is, concludes Seabrook (1997), not for supporting others but for drawing attention to oneself.
• The main difference between the two editions is the addition in 2001 of a long final chapter, in which Rheingold meditates on the evolution of the ideas he first proposed at the beginning of the 1990s, both in the larger societal discussion and in his own work. In 2001 he is much more skeptical, at times even critical, of the virtual community project, retracting some of the claims he made in 1993 about the fundamental mechanisms and socio-ethical implications of online social interactions.
• Rheingold's
• model of online social interaction is strongly influenced by social exchange theory
• Rheingold (1993) simplifies the discussion about communities to a strictly utilitarian perspective, reducing a complex phenomenon to one of its aspects.
• Reducing communication to self-interested "information exchange" also answers the call for a more egalitarian, non-judgmental social order, which is the core value that innerved the social life of the WELL
• He now believes that online conferencing can equally boost unhealthy attention-seeking behavior and attitudinal negativism, suggesting, although not openly, that on-line interaction can generate a form of destructive individualism.
• democracy—the rule of the many—and ohlocracy—the rule of too many, Rheingold notes that when deliberation becomes an end in itself, not a means toward an end, a representative, versus a direct, method of decision making might be preferable.
• he most important amendment Rheingold makes to his initial model is his abandonment of the idea that mixing self-interest with technology automatically produces community.
• role of pre-existing social networks in reinforcing and extending computer-mediated networks
• capacity for maintaining the ties between those who are already connected through values, social similarity, or personal ties, regardless of their geographic location. 
  
• responses to the central dilemma of modernity:
• How can individual autonomy be reconciled with the highly socialized nature of the new human order?
• arious social formations it generated, including the virtual community movement, are still struggling to strike the right balance between commitment and individualism
• irtual or countercultural communities, despite their penchant for individualism, should not be seen as either/or social formations, but as contradictory groups
• Their mission, according to Wuthnow (1994), is to offer their members an occasion "to focus on themselves in the presence of others"
• ethos
• "Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone's opinion. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied"
• Like many small groups, virtual communities are based on weak ties and voluntary participation, emotional support, open communication, and non-judgmental interaction among members.
• This communication helps the members focus on the process and on their journey into unknown futures in the presence of others.
• characterized by a high level of individualism, yet not entirely devoid of community spirit.
• This vision proposes a new type of social bond, one that is weaker than traditional arrangements but still capable of nurturing social interaction

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• Twitter? - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• out with tradition, in with tolerance and respect as guiding values. - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• Avatars and online presentation as a lubricant - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• The Write side of ReadWriteWeb - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• Too Cliquish - It's not a community if you feel you're on the outside. - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• Dark side of online groups. It shouldn't be any surpise that there will be examples of pathology - destructive and overly competetive tendencies in any organization. - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• Is this where our "representative" gov't is now, with the rule of too many. - David McGavock on 2011-01-18
• Witness Facebook - David McGavock on 2011-01-18

• I think there are ways in which we're constantly communicating and yet not making enough good connections, in a way that's to our detriment, to the detriment of our families and to our business organizations
• We're not necessarily putting our investment in the ties that bind; we're putting our investment in the ties that preoccupy.
• t's just something we need to learn to use when most appropriate, powerful, and in our best interest.
• if you don't learn how to be alone, you'll always be lonely, that loneliness is failed solitude.
• capacity for generative solitude is very important for the creative process,
• I think it's that place for hope and change and the new, and what can be different, and how things can be what they're not now. And I think we all want that.

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• how we can leverage the potential of social networks in order to learn, facilitate innovation and solve problems.
• • What is Twitter?
  
   
  • How do you use it strategically?
• I started to analyze where the 'best' information was coming from, who the people were tweeting it, and who their connections were.
• Once you know what you're looking for, you start to notice that certain people keep popping up in relation to certain information; you start to notice the networks of people they talk to, and you realize that there are thousands of loose, informal communities that are existing within this larger ecology of information.
• 2. How do you use it strategically?
• The key seems to be a combination of figuring out who to follow and how to engage with the people following you.
• • Who am I and what information am I trying to get?
  
   
  • What information am I bringing to the table?
• Well, now that I see Twitter differently, it's shaping my user habits. I'm trying to fill each tweet with context and value. If I'm replying to a specific person, and don't have more to say than "thanks" or "lol" or something short like that, I send it via DM. I try to think about how each public tweet appears to others, and how to structure it as an opportunity for a conversation to start.
  

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• What if you allowed people to leave audio comments rather than text comments? What if you stopped thinking of ways to shift your design towards an attractive norm and started thinking of ways that could radically improve it?

• Everyone is directly connected, as in the tribe, but in unknowably vast numbers, as in the city.
• there are roughly 5.4 billion directly addressable individuals on the planet, individuals who can be reached with the correct series of numbers.
• 5,400,000,000 / 6,900,000,000 or 0.7826
• deeper into the 21^st century, this figure will approach 1.0:
• This type of connectivity is not simply unprecedented, nor just a unique feature in human history, this is the kind of qualitative change that leads to a fundamental reorganization in human culture. 
• can be termed hyperconnectivity, because it represents the absolute amplification of all the pre-extant characteristics in human communication, extending them to ubiquity and speed-of-light instantaneity.

• II: Hyperdistribution

   

  What happens after we are all connected?
• Language is a distribution medium, a mechanism to replicate the experience of one person throughout a community.
• any culture which develops effective new mechanisms for knowledge sharing will have greater selection fitness than others that do not, forcing those relatively less fit cultures to either adopt the innovation, in order to preserve themselves, or find themselves pushed to the extreme margins of human existence.
• Where humans are hyperconnected via mobile, a recapitulation of primate ‘grooming behaviors’ appears almost immediately. 
• The human instinct is to share that which piques our interest with those to whom we are connected, to reinforce our relations, and to increase our credibility within our networks of relations, both recapitulations of the dual nature of the original human behaviors of sharing.
• III: Hyperintelligence
• Those who possess knowledge also hold power.  The desire to conserve that power led the guilds to become increasingly zealous in the defense of their knowledge domains, their ‘secrets of the craft’.
• The advent of Gutenberg’s moveable-type printing press made it effectively impossible to keep secrets in perpetuity.
• he professions of medicine, law, engineering, architecture, etc., emerged from this transition from the guilds into modernity.  These professional associations exist for one reason: they assign place, either within the boundaries of the organization, or outside of it.  An unlicensed doctor, a lawyer who has not ‘passed the bar’, an uncredentialed architect all represent modern instances of violations of ritual structures that have been with us for at least fifty thousand years.
• Hyperconnectivity does not acknowledge the presence of these ritual structures;
• There is neither inside nor outside.  The entire space of human connection collapses to a point, as everyone connects directly to everyone else, without mediation.
• Both Kenyan farmers and Kerala fishermen⁹ quickly became irrevocable devotees of the mobile handset that provided them accurate and timely information about competing market prices for their goods.
• Once hyperdistribution acquires a focal point, and becomes synonymous with a knowledge domain, it crosses over into hyperintelligence: the dedicated, hyperconnected hyperdistribution of domain-specific knowledge.

• IV: Hyperempowerment

   

  A group of hyperconnected individuals choosing to hyperdistribute their knowledge around an identified domain can engender hyperintelligence. 

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• As we engage with the web, we leave behind breadcrumbs of attention. 
• But reading alone isn't enough to fulfill our innate desire to remix our media, consumption is active for consumers turned users.
• Del.icio.us taps both personal and social incentives for participation through the low threshold activity of tagging.
• Commenting requires such identity for sake of spam these days and is an under-developed area.
• Subscribing requires a commitement of sustained attention which greatly surpasses reading alone.
• Sharing is the principal activity in these communities, but much of it occurs out of band (email still lives). 
• We Network not only to connect, but leverage the social network as a filter to fend off information overload. 
• Some of us Write, as in blog, and some of us even have conversations.
• To Refactor, Collaborate, Moderate and Lead requires a different level of engagement -- which makes up the core of a community.

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• skeptics questioning whether even advanced technology could let users search through millions of books in a national digital-library system.
• "Google, in digitizing large numbers of books and making many of them available online, has demonstrated its feasibility. True, Google is a commercial operation, which puts corporate profit ahead of the public good, but it is also a success story with a lesson to be learned: We can mobilize the technology and master the logistics that are necessary to digitize the holdings of our research libraries on an enormous scale."
• President Obama did not use the word "library" in his State of the Union Address, but wittingly or not, he helped the cause by citing digital textbooks as one justification for American business to expand high-speed broadband coverage.
• The National Library of Norway is digitizing its entire collection. The National Library of the Netherlands has started an ambitious digitizing project.
• will the United States actually construct a genuinely public and democratic national digital-library system to help us, in the president's words, "out-innovate, out-educate, and outbuild the rest of the world?"
• Should the system exist mainly to promote literature and culture in general?
• should the library care equally about the promulgation of scientific, technological, mathematical, and medical knowledge
• What are the ways to justify the cost of building a national digital-library system?
• Could the same tablet computers optimized for reading also be used for filing forms electronically and in other ways reduce the costs of paperwork?
• How can we resolve legal issues surrounding the dread topic, copyright?
• Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society is sponsoring the March workshop to kick off its research and planning initiative for a "Digital Public Library of America." With funds from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project will bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to define the scope, architecture, costs, and administration of such a library.
• a well-stocked online national public-library system would help make American students more competitive with their counterparts in other countries. It could also help correct the many deficiencies of library e-books today,
• Washington lags, despite Obama's reference to e-textbooks. Years ago, Al Gore vaguely talked about digitizing books at the Library of Congress for schoolchildren, but the reality today is a long way from the old rhetoric.
• my own vision. I see going beyond simply digitizing what is in our libraries to create a broader system—broader in content, metadata, accessibility, services, and communities to be served.

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• There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume
• There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume
• but most of that information is uninteresting, out of date, inaccurate, or not relevant for you.
• There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume
• There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume
• The key to reducing information overload is to more efficiently find the data you want among the information that you don’t care about.
• at about the blogs where one in five or one in 10 posts are relevant for you?
• the real magic is in filtering.
• My favorite filtering tool is Yahoo Pipes
• which lets me filter an RSS feed using various criteria: URL, author, date, content and more. 
• and my some blogs filtered for just the best posts using PostRank.
• The best thing about PostRank is that you can get an RSS feed of just the best posts from a particular publisher, and that feed then includes the PostRank score,
• you can do even more hacking on the PostRank RSS feed using Yahoo Pipes.
• Another technique that helps me to consume information more efficiently is to modify the format of many of my RSS feeds
• By bringing more details into the title, I can avoid spending time clicking to get more information.
• The final trick is to use Web APIs to gather additional data
• isten to the audio from my session

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• a British industry magnate by the name of Henry Kremer wondered: Could an airplane fly powered only by the pilot's body?

   

  Like Da Vinci, Kremer believed it was possible and decided to try to turn his dream into reality. He offered the staggering sum of £50,000 for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could fly a figure eight around two markers set a half-mile apart.
• A decade went by. Dozens of teams tried and failed to build an airplane that could meet the requirements. It looked impossible.
• MacCready’s insight was that everyone who was working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without a base of knowledge based on empirical tests. Triumphantly, they would complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes later, a year's worth of work would smash into the ground.
• The problem was the problem. MacCready realized that what needed to be solved was not, in fact, human-powered flight. That was a red herring. The problem was the process itself.
• He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? And he did.
• MacCready’s Gossamer Condor flew 2,172 meters to win the prize. A little more than a year after that, the Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel.
• So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.

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• Security companies and IT people constantly tells us that we should use complex and difficult passwords. This is bad advice, because you can actually make usable, easy to remember and highly secure passwords. In fact, usable passwords are often far better than complex ones.

  So let's dive into the world of passwords, and look at what makes a password secure in practical terms.