Is Farcebook repeating Myspace mistakes?

interesting excerpts:


Myspace
Myspace did everything itself. "We tried to create every feature in the world and said, 'O.K., we can do it, why should we let a third party do it?' " says DeWolfe. "We should have picked 5 to 10 key features that we totally focused on and let other people innovate on everything else."

Some ideas, such as classifieds, represented real business opportunities, DeWolfe says, but didn't get enough manpower. Others, such as karaoke, were niche products that diverted energy from less glamorous, more practical concerns. " ...... Gold says. "We went with a lot of products that were shallow and not the best products in the world."

Farcebook:
“Our mission is to get everyone in the world interacting with Facebook.... Platform is trying to help every site or app a person comes into contact with be more social and personal to a user. We are trying to build Facebook in some way into every single website people visit as most sites are anything but socially enabled,” he explained."

Excerpt sources:
Myspace: http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_27/b4235053917570.htm

Farcebook:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8592132/Inside-Facebook-HQ-future-proofing-the-social-network.html

I don't care about climate change, but I want to cut pollution

Last night I watched Q&A (ABCTV  ) because the Katter Hat was on, and watched with interest his viewpoints on the live animal exports mess.  I’ll post my reaction to his commetns below*. Then the debate moved to climate change AGAIN…..  AGAIN and again the debate centres on whether or not our climate is changing as the government hires expert after expert to prepare reports on it.  But the question should not be ‘Is the climate changing?’ – that’s where the Coalition wants the debate centred. It stalls in phase one, it’s never ever going to progress from there.  The real question is ‘Should we all cut our pollution?’.  This makes the answer obvious – Yes.  It’s a no brainer, regardless of climate change. Following from that is ‘what steps can we take to cut pollution?’ and the carbon tax is one step.  

Why does the Coalition want to question the existence of climate change? Because it stalls any response to climate change.  The Coalition tends to be aligned with those who control society, the dominant incumbents, generally big business.  Dominant incumbents typically don’t want change, because change challenges their control of society, or the spheres of society they control.  Incumbents will typically stall change (using for example, levers such as regulatory lobbying, paying (questionable) ‘experts’ from the other side of the world to do a talk tour of Australia to spread their propaganda) until they figure out how they can maintain control in a changed environment, and THEN, and only then does change occur, while they maintain control. In the meantime, the Coalition stalls the debate.

This is all very basic and obvious. So why does the debate over the existence of climate change continue? I don't get it.

Simply ask ‘do we want to cut pollution?’.  The obvious answer is yes, everyone would say yes, but the dominant incumbents would then say ‘yes but at what cost’ and argue about jobs etc.  Whereas a change to green energy sources would not cut jobs, it just changes jobs. It changes jobs for the better – for example I’d rather work in wind energy than a coal mine.  Society needs to transition to cut pollution quickly, given the increasing negative forecasts on our future.  

To quote from the LogLady of Twin Peaks:

Complications set in--yes, complications.  How many times have we heard: 'it's simple'.  Nothing is simple.  We live in a world where nothing is simple.  Each day, just when we think we have a handle on things, suddenly some new element is introduced and everything is complicated once again. .... What is the secret?  What is the secret to simplicity, to the pure and simple life?  Are our appetites, our desires undermining us?  Is the cart in front of the horse? .... Is life like a game of chess?  Are our present moves important for future success?  I think so.  We paint our future with every present brush stroke.

* I’ve written heaps elsewhere in the last fortnight to support a live animal export ban, of all live animals to all countries.  Long distance transport of live animals intended for slaughter is inhumane, full stop.  Kill locally, quickly.  I won’t regurgitate what I've written here, but a quick response to Katter’s comments on Q&A last night: he said abattoirs can't open in north Australia because the need for them is seasonal - but so is fruit picking. And he contradicted himself in saying abattoirs are expensive but then repeated 'all that's needed is a belt and pulley' or similar. He made a valid point about refrigeration in Indonesia, but I suspect frozen meat goes off a lot slower than fresh.

Hastening a global reboot

CAVEAT: below is muddled thoughts as I think them, will edit as I go over time.

The tweets over the weekend by Umair Haque (@umairh ) seemed designed to create panic.  Today Umair lays the foundation for what appears to be a series of simple explanations behind his panic. His first post has made me think and I will definitely be reading this series: http://umairhaque.blogspot.com/2011/05/opulence-bubble-simplicity-mix.html  .

My thoughts over the weekend re his posts were couched in readings on the effect of mass panic on stock markets that knock on to economies.  To assuage fear and panic, I hope Haque later suggests positively what consumers can do. Yes consumer debt is way too high and needs to be reduced aka no more buying $3000 handbags during lavish global holiday extravaganzas on credit and such foolish silliness.  Secondly consumers need a greater motivation to be debt free (although fear and panic works).  But the answer cannot be 'stop buying' but perhaps buy better.  A sudden global reboot (as suggested by any message to 'stop buying') would be more painful than it need be.

Creative destruction takes time, and Haque's actions appear to be designed to hasten change rapidly (or promote a new book?).  It's risky. Alternately, one could ponder that the shift has already started and is a lot further developed than can be estimated because it isn't measurable or it falls outside of traditional measurement, it subverts the dominant paradigm.  For example, is anyone recording the $/volume of sales of 2nd hand goods?

Rather than panic and fear, is there an easy to follow, explicit guide/list of intelligent, sustainable, reuse, humane businesses/practices consumers should use to hasten the "titanic global reconfiguration" adjustment?  Has the global parallel economy been identified and described explicitly in a way consumers can grasp? (aka not in HBR talk).

Can influencers promote a list of businesses/practices? or is that already happening but the message isn't getting through to consumers because dominant incumbents are protecting their power base?  The underground/parallel economy needs to be made explicit?  How will individual governments react - with incumbents or change agents?  History isn't kind to that, but recent history is definitely kinder.

It will be good to read responses from economists and people I respect to Haque's manifesto.

!!!!ELVIS!!!!

Eric Alper (@thatericalper) adoringly put this awesome gem on his twitter feed.

ThatEricAlper Eric Alper

Elvis out of his mind and at the peak of his powers at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, 1970. http://dld.bz/YrBj

1 May

It was !!!!ELVIS!!!! so obviously I watched it. It’s noteworthy for just how tight and good the band sound (the bass guitar! whoooarh!!) and digging the crowd digging him.   Aren’t we lucky to have ‘free’ easy access to this material?  While watching I felt conflicted.  Namely:

1. His voice is superb, his body lithe, his crowd adoring, as Alper noted he’s at the top of his game.  Yet also, Alper notes, off his face.  His nonchalance verges on boredom and perhaps complacency, cruise control.  He’s too comfortable, too confident, it’s too easy.  Musicians need to be challenged, perhaps need an occasional failure to keep them striving, need the occasional reality check sans minders, perhaps need to wing it a little and digress from the setlist or jam? Maybe we all do in our lives and work.  The audience is all too adoring, but well.....  he was the KING and is his voice IS one of the best.  Maybe over-adoration led to complacency, maybe someone should have heckled.    Or maybe this is an encore and he’s already done the hard yards warming up the audience – although looking at it I can’t see too much sweat going on (yes I’m looking that closely).

2. I'm old enough to remember this song and the !!!!ELVIS!!!! Las Vegas era (as a kiddie whose Mum is a massive !!!!ELVIS!!!! fan)– it was 7 years before punk and this might be said to represent the era of excess and ‘comfort music’?  I recall at around the mid-70s living in New Zealand and being disgusted at the music on the radio there – even as a young kid I knew something was wrong, it was bland and irrelevant. But !!!!ELVIS!!!! was always KING.  Anyway I’m digressing…  I’ve lately have been listening and enjoying a fair bit of Las Vegas !!!!ELVIS!!!! (including this song) - perhaps it means the industry is at the end of it’s cycle and needing another disruption?  Yes it needs one, but will it happen?  I've been buying more old music lately than new music and that's a bad sign that I'm hoping is just cyclical - we all go through phases of disinterest and I'm hoping to get excited about something new soon.

3. Just as the song picks up speed the camera zooms in and out. It’s cute, novel, but distracting.  The distraction is an example of how technologists and their technology so often get in the way of the message when left unchecked.

4. Towards the end reminded me of that theory about how a persons’ dance style reflects their ‘bedroom style’.  Hoo wee.

5. It is so easy to watch this in hindsight with an armchair critics perspective, so I’ll stop now.

Cloud computing infographic

this makes it clearer and cleaner   but waiting on the Apple cloud

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT sort of

hilarious!  This song reminds me of my youth (but despite the laughs I prefer the original):

Guide to Gig Etiquette

Motivated by frustration with people who attend shows only to (a) take photos of themselves at the show to upload to faecebook (b) hold their phone up for as long as possible filming the band and obscuring the vision of those behind them - taking ca.30 minutes so far I've started a

Guide to GiG Etiquette.

Below are some key points:

(1) the smell of people who sweat after eating hash cookies is rancid and rank. If you have been eating hash cookies do not sweat please;

(2) if you are sardined up the front, male, and need to urinate, LEAVE and use the toilet - even if it's during the band, regardless of how much you want to catch the whole show. i'm sure people will understand and let you back in. Do not maintain your spot, whip it out and miss the floor and instead urinate on the lady in front of you's new leather skirt that hasn't yet been waterproofed.

(3) don't try and stand without moving in a moshpit - moving with the crowd is safer and sensible.

(4) to crowdsurf or not to crowdsurf? Depends heavily upon your attire.

(5) being drunk is no excuse for bad behavior. Pretending to be drunk is unforgivable and laughable

(6) don't sit on the floor at gigs apparently

(7) don't wear a band t-shirt to their gig, unless they are the support act and noone is really there to see the support act. Apparently

(8) if you are a musician, don't get shitty if the crowd looks bored. it may be that they are dancing on the inside. Apparently

(9) if you vomit into your beverage glass, do NOT keep drinking, do NOT put the glass down and walk away. place you hand over the rim of the glass to seal it (and perhaps a hand over your mouth) and walk discreetly to the toilet. tip the contents of the glass into the dunny and flush. rinse out the glass. take it to the bar where other glasses are waiting to be washed, or stack it with other glasses ready to be washed.

(10) if you are in a venue and Eva Rinaldi enters ... i offer no advice on what you should do, but you're clearly in the wrong place

(11) if you are bullied in the venue assess (a) the size (b) degree of inebriation of the bully, and (c) how many friends they have. if they are inebriated laugh it off, if they are big or have a lot of friends walk away, if they are small and yappy and you can also take their seconds, grab them by their collar and take them outside quickly and assertively and leave them there. bullying may take the form of shirt fronting, inappropriate jostling*, name calling, putting items on your seat before you sit down etc.        *do not confuse this with courtship moves.

(12) if you are a female in a venue - and there are men there wearing jackets that say: Rebels / Gypsy Jokers / Coffin Cheaters / Bandidos / Black Uhlans / or Finks - and you drop coinage, think twice before bending over to pick it up

(13) if you are female and a drunk falls into your lap, put your arms around him and pretend it was meant to happen. Yes his breath stinks and he reeks, but you are salvaging his dignity. If he has a girlfriend there ... run.

(15) No lighter waving if you are not in a heavy metal gig.

(16) if you are a violent or interpretive dancer, please confine yourself to the moshpit only. this is so that you don't annoy others by whacking their drinks from their hands, but also so that nondancers behind you may enjoy your moves too. Please note however that the moshpit may grow to take in the entire venue, in which case join in.

(17) if you are female and a man approaches you for sex and you are so inclined, leave the venue. The wall of reek from the splashiness that occurs in men’s loos will stop any consideration of this location if you have any sense of smell. Do NOT take him into the ladies loos. For starters it’s cheap, tawdry and unclean, but some of you enjoy that, so more alarmingly, if he is tall his head will be taller than the cubicle partition and he may see into the next cubicle and vice versa. The lady in the adjoining cubicle may not appreciate it. Also it’s selfish if there is a lineup of people wanting to use the loo for what loos are intended for, and if there is a lineup it becomes an error of exhibitionism when you depart the cubicle.

Finally used condoms do not disintegrate in sanitary bins and venue cleaners aren’t paid danger money to handle them in any other bin. If you are female and a female makes the same proposition, it’s less alarming to use loos but still selfish. Take it outside.

and ... if you are in the loos where this is happening, DO NOT whip out your mobile and take photos of the activity going on and upload them to faecebook. Doing so is unforgivable, encourages narcissistic exhibitionism and if you are later beaten to a pulp for doing so you deserve it. put your mobile phones away in venues, what happens in the venue must stay in the venue.

(18) do not wear backpacks into venues and move around a lot. Doing so will knock drinks from people's hands.

(19) Don't talk during quiet songs

(20) now that venues are smoke free, farting appears to be the new ‘blowing smoke in someone’s face’ offence. try to avoid it please, the band won't thank you for clearing the room.

(21) if police arrive at a venue you ''only arrived 5 minutes ago, have seen nothing, heard nothing, said nothing, done nothing and I’m going straight home very soon'.” No amount of reward offered compensates for the stress of witness protection.

(22) If you pay a premium fee for seats at a concert, that is what you pay for, premium seats.  If people rush to stand at the front and may obscure your view when the main band comes on, you have not paid for the right to manhandle them out of the way or tell them where to go.  You paid extra for a seat, you got a seat – that is where the contract ends.  If the band are OK with people standing in front of them then so should you be.

(23) If you are gig security and someone gets up on stage to kiss or dance with a band member do not treat them roughly as you remove them (if you remove them – some bands are fine with people onstage). The person has got up on that stage out of respect and adoration for the band, and gentle guidance is all that’s needed.  If they are carrying a knife or act in a threatening way then perhaps a different approach is warranted.
(24) It's fine to move around in venues, move through the crowd. If you trip over someone it's good to turn and apologise quickly and gently, often just mouthing it will suffice (if the noise levels are high don't turn and shout SORRY in their ear).  If however you are drunk and trip over someone just keep moving towards where you are aiming for.  Do not try to turn around and apologise because in doing so you will most probably lose your balance and create an even bigger disturbance. Just be aware that whoever you tripped over (or whose foot you stood on) hates you, and is following your path with hatred.  If you are a violent dancer and leap into the air and land on someone's foot, it's good to apologise, but do keep dancing. To stop would make the person whose foot you landed on feel bad, on top of being in pain.

(25) It's OK to sing along, but please follow this general rule: if others can hear your voice over the music you are singing too loudly. Try to sing only key bits, not every lyric to every song, other attendees don't need to know you know every word. But if you're really keen, perhaps just mouth/mime evry word. They paid to hear the band, not you.
(26) If you are short don't expect special treatment, don't expect people to help you, they mght let you take a better spot closer in, but don't EXPECT it, don't take your height issues out on them. They can't help you, they are not responsible.

I’ve had a lot of feedback on this, 98% positive and one person said “your experience only comes from pub shows not stadiums”, which I’ll have to agree with.  Most - not all - of this comes from personal experience of attending gigs as a fan who paid for her ticket. That must mean I'm getting old, am I turning into June Dally Watkins or Ita Buttrose in my old age?

EVERYONE agrees that mobile phone use during band performances is irritating – why don’t venues do something about it?  

Coming up: sections on appropriate attire, manners in exchanges with venue staff,  manners for security staff and roadies, the pool table and/or juke box - what to do and what not to do, leaving the venue with dignity, etc etc.  Book offers from Publishers welcome!

feel like stopping in your tracks?

to watch this (from ozvault1 on YouTube) from the 2nd Melbourne show.  Three shows were not enough:

and from the beautiful Brisbane show, the audio recording on this one is wonky but it sounded great on the night and the clip gives a feel for the moody lighting and gorgeous suit and beautiful night outdoors, from wildhoney2204 via YouTube:

Car love, Motorhead love and my fickleness

Last night I hopped in the car to quickly pop up to Thornbury to a friends place to give her my ticket to MOTORHEAD and borrow a DVD (Gods Little Acre) from her massive collection.  In the last couple of days I’d noticed my car was idling slowly and put it down to my newly serviced generator and made a mental note to check it out.  On Queens Parade at Clifton Hill I got all green lights and was zooming when just before McDonalds my car seized into high revs like it was screaming at me. I was on the inside of 3 lanes.  Immediately I turned the ignition off and glided across two lanes (and traffic, and note my car hasn’t got hazard lights, but people tend to know it’s there) to the side of the road, and then into a car park, starting to smell that awful burning odour of metal friction without oil.  Sadly my car glided to a stop right out the front of one of the largest McDonalds in Australia.  It’s in a particular art deco building that I adore and was irritated when it was converted into a McDonalds.  I hate McDonalds and have boycotted them all my life. I refuse to go near one not even to use their toilets.   So I found myself parked immediately out the front of one.  Once I had adapted to that horror I returned my thoughts to the car.  I congratulated myself for defensive driving and successfully getting it off the road – that could have been nasty, especially as my steering wheel tends to lock when the motor is off.  

Rang my motor club and then opened the bonnet to investigate while waiting for help to arrive.  I could immediately see the problem.  The metal casing for the stud that holds one of my air filters in place has had a tiny nick of metal removed – no idea how or when it happened but it’s something on my list of things to fix – take off the metal casing and solder a little chunk of metal onto it.  I keep putting it off as it’s the sort of thing I could do myself at the farm with a soldering iron, and fortuitously I’m going to the farm this weekend.  But meanwhile, the stud that holds one of my air filters on the carburettor in place had worked it’s way off.  It must have happened quickly as last weekend I gave my motor a check and saw nothing wrong.  It was 8pm and light was fading but I retrieved the air filter, lid and nut from various places under the bonnet. Couldn’t believe I found the nut. But I couldn’t see the stud and, given the high revs I knew where it was but hoped not.  Instead I walked back to the road to see if any other engine debris was there but saw nothing and returned to sit in the car.  After an hour outside McDonalds my motor club man arrived. My motor club men (they are never female) are always quite affable and chatty, maybe because they like my car.  With him as moral support (and torch) I opened the air valve and ….. JOY!! The stud was sitting just inside it. Phew, it hadn’t gone into the engine.  BIG sigh of relief, we may be able to fix it.  Hopes rose, we both grinned. So the motor man got long thin pliers and I held the air valve open and shone the torch while he tried to remove it.  It was fidgety and slipped a little further into the manifold. We took deep breaths and I remained calm. It was like heart surgery, one false move and all would be lost.  He went to his toolkit and got out a magnet thingie and pushed it down into the manifold. But the stud wasn’t taking it.  It slid further away. We could still see it but there was no way to reach it.

“It’s a tow truck job now,” I sighed.  The motor club man stopped trying and agreed.  So he booked one, said it will be “20-40 minutes” and left and I waited outside McDonalds, breathing in that strange smell emitting from the place, looking at the "Angus Beef' poster and thinking of the pretty faces and funny characters of my parents Angus cattle. I scoffed and thought 'our Angus cattle would never go to McDonalds', but then I remembered one of our animals, a massive bull, that survived the drought and we kept hand feeding every day so he'd survive. One doesn't hand rear a 2-ish tonne bull without some love on both sides, he was a gentle giant with a sweet character yet also the leader of the pack.  But by the time we sold him at the end of the drought, only McDonalds would buy him.  I still remember Dad's disappointment and sadness.  RIP 'Bull' you're not forgotten, and we are very very sad that you became McDonald's burger, but you had the best life we could give you in a difficult drought.  But back to last night, I looked at people as they’d go in and out, only because there was nothing else for me to do - my phone battery had flatlined.  McDonalds is definitely not a place I want to loiter outside.


Over an hour later the tow truck arrived.  During this time I’d phoned my friend to apologise that I’m a no-show. When I mentioned ‘tow truck driver’ I sensed a sharp intake of breath from her.  But I’m not one to judge and kept an open mind about the impending doom.  He arrived in a shiny new tow truck and parked across the exit. Remained in the truck cab eating a falafel looking at me with a blank expression.  I remained standing next to the car, but eventually walked over to the truck.  He got out and said “sorry love I have been on the run working all day”. No you haven’t, I thought, you are sitting in a cab eating a falafel and you’re very late.  I smiled and replied ‘no worries’. He was short, stocky and had a black curly mullet, and gold chain necklace under his overalls.  He was also either grimy or sweaty or maybe both, with an odor of armpit and falafel.  But I too had engine grease smears so wasn’t one to judge.  I was wearing a red cardi with two embroidered rifles on the chest.  When he spoke to me he looked at them with an unaverting gaze, even when I replied to him.  “You need to tell me about your car,  what’s wrong with it? is it front wheel drive?” began the rapid fire questions and I answered them and he seemed offended that I knew the basics of my car and got a bit weird.  He started saying he’d been working all day and to tow it he’d have to push the car backwards (easily done as it was flat there and my car is easy to push, I've done it many times) and he was tired and 30 kms is a long way to tow a car……  I got his gist.  I was going nowhere with him. I then decided I didn’t want him to tow my car, I wouldn’t let my precious car anywhere near his carelessness.  So I pointed out where in the manifold the stud was and said if the car is towed from the front at an angle the stud might fall further back into the engine (=catastrophe) and did he agree it would be safer if it was lifted backwards onto a flat top tow truck.  He seemed relieved and went back to his cosy truck cab (and maybe desert) and radioed for a flat top tow truck.  Came back and said I’m a high priority so it shouldn’t be long.  Etc etc then gave me and my rifles a final narrow-eyed glare and drove off. 

I got back into my car and over the next hour started to need a toilet, looked into the windows of McDonalds thinking they allegedly have clean toilets but remaining resolute.  I will not enter under the golden arches.  Over an hour later a bigger tow truck arrived.   This time I was delighted in that the driver was polite, efficient, moved quickly, asked questions and didn’t flinch when I answered and in 10 minutes my darling car was secured atop the flatbed.  I felt a pang of heartstrings looking at it there.  It’s been towed before once about 12 years ago and I felt a similar pang.  I gave the driver the address and instructions of my mechanic.  He wanted me to come with him but I felt OK with him handling my car and really wasn’t in the mood for the badlands of the Moorabin industrial area after dark. So he left me there and I started the several kilometre walk home at 10.45 pm, carrying the contents of my car.  I felt like a Cormac McCarthy character, dirtied, sullied, bereft, and with a mobile phone with a flat battery.  But grateful to the second tow trucker.  

Walking home I thought long and hard about my car.  I've been with my car longer than any of my relationships, I love my car, we’ve had great road tips together, seen and done many things, I look at him and I smile.  I felt a real pang.  I’ve recently been thinking of selling him for a 1960's EK station wagon, now that I’m getting older and more sensible.  Perhaps the stud in the manifold was my cars’ way of telling me not to. Perhaps breaking down was his way of telling me I really should  hold onto the Motorhead ticket and go to Motorhead this weekend and not up to the farm/ Chris Isaak show.   I’m heartbroken that I can’t go to Motorhead, truly, I am a huge fan not only of their music but of the ethos of Lemmy.  I've even made a book about Lemmy. But family comes first, and there’s family issues and farmwork to do up north and I have to be there (and by the by I have 2nd row middle seats to Chris Isaak in Brisbane....). And I'm going to try and get to the Gold Coast Motorhead show.   I kept walking and pondering.   I haven’t been driving him as often as I should, he got dirty last weekend and I haven’t washed him.  Yes I had new carpet put in recently but then my Miss Melody Mae cat got in and clawed a little section and I didn’t chasten her, just removed her and swept it over…..  I’ve been fickle, negligent recently, inattentive, distracted from my car.  I've not given him the care and attention he deserves.  I live in a converted garage and my car sits behind a glass wall. As I move around my home I glance over and ..... he's not there.

I resolved my desire to keep life simple.  Buy the best once only and keep it for life.  And I'm so bonded with my P1800 that to me it is the best.

Today is another day.  Rang my lovely mechanic this morning who said yes my P1800 was there but the tow truck driver had left it across the driveway and he couldn’t get past it (I’d left a big note on the dash: “DON’T TURN THE ENGINE ON”, so they had to push it out of the way - but my mechanic is fine about pushing cars).  As always he was affable and happy to fix it today and I’m to call him tonight about the surgery outcome.  He also mentioned that he’d like me to put it in a car show at Flemington next Sunday April 3 (some European historical car show thing?) to commemorate 50 year birthday of P1800s.  Sheesh is my car really that old????  Mine is probably the oldest one in Australia -1963, 48 years old.  My poor little 48 year old car had the life thrashed out of him last night.  Yes dear old car, you WILL go to the show Sunday fortnight!  (will need to get new rubbers around the windows beforehand…..  ) . And then hopefully I can fly back up to Queensland and MOTORHEAD!!!!!!!

Narcissism

6Apr11 update: ANOTHER study has found a correlation between Faecebook and narcissism.   Flagler College psychology professor Meghan M. Saculla and Western Kentucky University psychology professor W. Pitt Derryberry set out to discover whether there was a correlation between moral judgment development, narcissism, and technology use.  The study population was students - probably because they are captive.  Saculla and Derryberry found that students who use technology for self-promotion tend to be more narcissistic than those who simply use technology to connect to others.  The researchers focused on narcissistic and self-promoting behavior, as well as moral development based on the research of Lawrence Kohlberg.  


The researchers' main finding confirmed their previous suspicions: students who used technology and social media tools specifically to promote themselves and attempt to gain popularity tended to come off as narcissistic. Those students also tended to self-report as narcissistic, showing a correlation between perception and self-reporting. Importantly, Saculla and Pitt Derryberry note narcissistic people may find that technologies help amplify their already existing behavior, especially if those devices are used "as a replacement for face-to-face peer interactions or other venues that are beneficial for moral judgment growth." If students are able to use technology to accompany their normal interactions instead of replacing them, they don't have much of a problem. 

A new study has found that users of Facebook had higher self esteem after 3 minutes compared with participants who sat in front of a blank or mirrored computer screen.  The study titled 'Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall: Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Esteem' was by Cornell University researchers Amy Gonzales and Jeffrey Hancock.


Fair enough.  


A possible explanation for the rise in self esteem may be narcissism.  Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said a study she conducted of 16,000 university students across the US showed 30 per cent were narcissistic in psychological tests.  


In a keynote address to the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders Congress in Melbourne, Professor Twenge will say that celebrity culture and the internet are among the causes of the emerging narcissism epidemic.  


Narcissists had an inflated sense of self, lacked empathy, were vain and materialistic and had an overblown sense of entitlement. Some resulting social trends were a greater interest in fame and wealth, more plastic surgery, and an increase in attention-seeking crimes.  


Professor Twenge was concerned about a culture ''that seems to not just accept narcissism but finds it laudatory … But the problem is that narcissism doesn't help you compete. It blows up in your face eventually.''

something to get excited about

I've been watching slowly getting excited about the futurist idea of 'diy manufacture', or 'personal fabrication on demand', 'atom based manufacture' and 'micro factories'.  What I'm thinking of is that in some futurist utopia (think Jetsons), if a consumer wants an item they just download a design, adjust it if they wish to personalise it or modify it to their taste, then put it into a 1mx1m box that will then manufacture it.

While in the early days designs will be restricted to available materials, in the future surely with nanotech and dna and stuff the opportunities are limitless? Think of the impact that will have on the global order of supply and demand. Supply will become limitless so there potentially would be no 'unmet demand' for material products.  Instead, in the utopia, people may begin to value more highly non-materials such as experiences, ethics and values.  Utopia indeed.

These articles allude to it:

Kurzweil says:
A lot of pioneering work was done in this area by Eric Drexler in the 1980s and 1990s.  His work included designs for many of the essential nanotech building blocks – including machines which can pick and place single atoms as part of the building process (picture a device which looks like a crane with a single arm which can ‘pick up’ a single atom using a chemical process).
Since then various nano-scale devices have been built in the lab, including a molecular sized motor created out of fifty eight atoms by Ben Feringa at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
As I mentioned in the first post of this series the key feature size of technology is shrinking at an exponential rate.  At the current rate of approximately a factor of four per linear dimension per decade the feature sizes for most electronic and many mechanical technologies will be in the nanotech range (under one hundred nanometers) by the 2020s.  The picture above shows a nano-robot at work in the bloodstream – something Kurzweil believes we will see in 10-20 years from now.

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how a new manufacturing technology will change the world

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 “How cool would it be if, in the near future, we all had machines that would manufacture any products we need? Already, there are inklings of that possibility” 

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In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits, and volunteer community design

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personal fabrication on demand

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open source hardware

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Give the NBN a chance

Artists tend to flock to big cities where their art can be bought and appreciated, but economic hard times are sending artists fleeing towards cheaper rents on homes and studio space.

''Where can artists find arms welcoming enough to provide a chance to sustain their careers? Well, as it happens, perhaps sensing an opportunity in the leveled fields of the current economy several of America’s bleakest, and most economically depressed, cities—Detroit, Baltimore, and Cleveland, among others—have begun making their case to become the next American artistic epicenter. All of these places have begun offering incentives like housing allowances (or otherwise cheap housing options), grants and other competitive awards, and other support to artists, even as they promise at least some of the cultural amenities—museums, arts events, and the like—that one can find in the Big Cities.''

US Midwest is making a comeback - get the NBN up and running in Australia and the same resilience  may happen in the Australian outback

Queensland: all systems red

BORING

I am utterly BORED with the news out of MIDEM, the European music industry conference.  In fact I'm BORED with all the music industry news I'm reading at the moment.  It's more of the same stuff we've been hearing for years, and being broadcast as if it's a new finding.


It appears the industry has reached a stalemate, and it's STALE, mate.  There's lots of innovative digital startups, but they are frozen by major label licensing tactics and neanderthal legislation.  The law cannot keep up with technology, and the major labels have been using that to their advantage for years to shore up their falling revenue streams.  


WHAT CAN BREAK THIS STALEMATE? The failure of EMI? I don't think so. The rise and replacement of the majors by new majors (Live Nation etc.)? I don't think so.  Apple tried. Consumers? I don't think so, although this has promise but will stall for years in court.  I need to think on this more, but so far the only thing I can see changing this scenario is musicians leaving the majors?  Or everyone leaving the industry out of BOREDOM or frustration.  And what will happen then? The market for music still exists.... need to ponder more.  


The global copyright database project is interesting but can't see it contributing to innovation because it will,no doubt, use a sample technique when the technology exists to be all inclusive. Apart from that I just can't see anything ahead that can break this stalemate and effect sustainable change for the better.

Queensland floods

My family are now all safe and have food etc.  Some precious items lost and fences to rebuild but all livestock and pets accounted for.  But on the other side of the mountain is the Lockyer Valley......

I've had the Dirty Three / Chan Marshall song 'Great Waves' in my head today:

Last boat, stand in a river;

Muddy river, how I love her

Hawk flying is fooling his folly

Gas hurricanes spray over Heaven

Weeping willow is bawling the light

On fire.

Humans running for cover,

Wishing for life, gripping the light

House lift up, trees lift up

Cars intersect in the middle of the sky.

O time before, no pull, no gravity on the ground

Givin' up--it's over

The world's weight is over

The limit

Our bodies are exploding

As the sky spills through our mouths.

All the blue blood is flowing

The cities, its contents have been ripped out.

The world is gone.

Did you know it would last this long?

You made it to the dark, now you're gone.

You are gone.

Great waves

Frozen in a secret space

A great big place,

Dark-spilling universe.