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Archive for December 2013

Through a glass, darkly.

December 6, 2013 Uncategorized, Writing Comments Off on Through a glass, darkly.

We have all seen it.  The lensing-effect that the internet has on any given topic.  Part of this is driven by our own natural tendency to seek out the things that interest us; LOLcats or Supermodels or TV actors or bad tattoos.  We don’t go to the internet to broaden our minds, we go to the internet to search for something specific, and in doing so, we FIND that something specific and move on.

But stacking on top of this are the tools of the internet itself.  Tools that are supposed to show up the things that we want.  Cookies get installed in your web-browser that only show ads related to the last commerce site you visited (I’ve been seeing only Eddie Bauer ads for the past three days now), news portals that look at your recent search history (looking at you HuffPo) and make suggestions based on the last few news items you’ve read (try it, go to a news site and look up an article on some superstar.  80% of the suggested articles will lead you to similar articles/information).  So it’s very easy to think that the things you are deliberately searching for are the top layer of the internet, the important things that *everybody* is interested in.

Stack another layer, the comments section/s or any given article or organization’s web-pages, on top of that and you can very quickly find yourself inside of a virtual echo-chamber, thoughts and ideas similar to yours being bounced back at you and reinforcing whatever you came in the metaphorical door with.

The internet-savvy, those who not only have been at this a while, but those who retain the presence of mind to observe this phenomenon as it is happening, are possibly less-affected (or trolls, I mean, they gotta come from somewhere, right).  But I find, more and more, that there is a large swath of the population that is unaware of this effect.  Which is a problem, because the tools in place are supposed to help us find what we are looking for (whether or not someone is making money off selling us what we are looking for is a different question) but instead they are isolating us, segregating us into Reds and Blues and Greens and Purples.

MIT took a look at this problem recently:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/522111/how-to-burst-the-filter-bubble-that-protects-us-from-opposing-views/

But the solution isn’t such an easy thing to find.  Most people aren’t going to actively search out opposing opinions online (unless they are in the mood to start a fight, I suppose) and most companies are not going to direct you to content you might not want.  So this “bubble” as MIT refers to it, or “lens”, to take a page from Schell, is not going to go away on it’s own.

I feel that this is  one of those growing pains that comes with a new technology.  Like only getting the NYT delivered to your house would color your opinions based on the news delivered, this is a far tighter focus because those who post content are able to work within a tiny niche and still make money doing so.  For every topic or specialty out there, there is a website (usually multiple sites) that serves it.  So unless we find a way to make balancing viewpoints a profitable enterprise (both financially and intellectually) for those who use the web, this lensing effect can only get worse over time.

Don’t be a #Glasshole

December 2, 2013 Glasstastic Comments Off on Don’t be a #Glasshole

Glass is just the first and maybe the most publicly obvious of the heads up display devices that are in development right now. Heads up display is have been in varying forms of development for close to 20 years (possibly more, but you know, Skunkworks stuff). Previously the development seems to be in the realm of military hardware, but most recently mobile development firms have jumped in on the act.

In the news we have recently seen a number of articles; the first woman to ever get a moving violation for wearing Glass while driving.  In the northern part of the US, there is a technologically savvy patron who is trying to get a manager fired because she insisted that he remove his Google glass headset while dining in the restaurant.

We’re not looking at a Tony Stark situation here. People are not looking through glass and seeing the world overlaid with advertisements and maps and wireframe models and a floating computer screens. There are options like that in the works for similar devices right now but what Glass really is is a series of post it notes that pop up with something “important” happens.  It is the visual equivalent of the pings and rings your phone gives off when an email or text comes in.

Thing is, they are already *remarkably* polarizing.  I’ve already had friends and business partners declare they will *never* hold a conversation with someone while they are wearing a Glass headset.  I’ve known one woman to go so far as to state that she would simply walk out of the room without a word.  Without ever seeing the technology in the wild.

Being here in the middle of high-tech central, I see people wearing Glass on a fairly regular basis.  I have some idea of what it feels like to be the person on both ends of the conversation, both the tech-savvy #Glasshole (or as I prefer to say #Glasstastic) and the non-tech person trying to hold a conversation with someone who may or may not be paying attention to the conversation at all.

So in the interests of exploring what is going to be a new social moire, I’m starting a weekly (if all goes well) post about social situations involving Glass.  We get to define this moving forward, the tech-savvy and the socially relevant.  I’d like to see us hammer out how to integrate a device as disruptive as Glass, rather than having both sides of the table ragequit the conversation and return to their respective circles.

Unlike most of my posts, I’ll be leaving the comments open (and moderating them, TYVM) so interaction will be encouraged.  I’m interested in hearing opinions on topic, and suggestions about situations to deconstruct as welcome.

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