From the report: This project report documents
an ethnographic assessment completed in collaboration with Quantified Self.
Quantified Self started in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has become a
worldwide community of people that practice “self-tracking” as a way to build
new habits or undergo beneficial change through generating self-knowledge.
Self-tracking projects are wide ranging, and Quantified Self has become the
main venue for self-trackers to share their personal projects in meetings that
follow a show & tell format. From the original group started in the Bay
Area in 2008, there are now more than 50 Quantified Self (QS) groups worldwide.
QS Labs (the central organizing group in the Bay Area) offers support and
guidance to people that want to start a new meetup. To enable leadership at QS
Labs to provide better support to emerging groups, an ethnographic assessment
was designed and conducted. The assessment sampled the experiences from a
variety of QS meetup groups, in order to understand the barriers and obstacles
for organizers, and to identify the points of innovation occurring in different
groups. Findings from the assessment were presented in a report to QS Labs in
March 2012. This project report also provides significant background
information on Quantified Self, self-tracking, and meetups. The client report
combines aspects of basic and applied research, as an applied ethnographic
description. Data collection for the client report followed a praxis approach
to applied anthropology as an orientation for research, from Warry (1992) and
Singer (1994)." Read more
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Nudge, Nudge: Can Software Prod Us Into Being More Civil?
Selinger, Evan. "Nudge, Nudge: Can Software Prod Us Into Being More Civil?" The Atlantic, July 30, 2012.
From the blog: "The closer we get to the presidential election, the more
concern gets raised about how divided the country is and how acrimonious our
discussions are over fundamental issues. Attack ads aren't the only problem.
The comments sections on web pages and blogs are overflowing with bitterness.
The mood expressed there shows such heightened signs of technological
influence, it seems ripped from the pages of the Marshall McLuhan playbook: the
medium of communication is influencing the messages people send and receive.
The best solution, then, might be for magazines, newspapers, and blogs to
address the root problem by hacking the source: re-designing the structure of
the forum to encourage civility. Before considering whether we want to go
there, let's quickly review why the medium matters." Read more
Labels:
point of view,
social media,
trends
Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce
Levin, Jonathan, Liran Einay, Dan Knoepfle and Neel Sundaresan. "Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce." Technology Academics Policy, July 26, 2012.
There are growing demands for this to change. With internet retail in the United States now worth well over $100 billion dollars annually and the majority of transactions occurring across state lines, forgone taxes on those sales could amount to as much as $10 billion a year. Such revenues would be particularly welcome at a time of pressure on state budgets. Taxes on internet commerce would also be popular with store-based retailers struggling to compete with their online rivals." Read more
See also
Einav, Liran, Dan Knoepe, Jonathan Levin and Neel Sundaresan. "Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce ."
The Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems
From the article: "The Internet solves problems for individuals as well as at the societal level. As we seek to address society’s most pressing issues—such as climate change, for instance—we are building increasingly complex infrastructures, including next generation transportation systems and the smart grid. These complex systems rely heavily on digital technologies that connect systems and organize the flow of data between and among them.
Most of the time, this high level of interconnection is purposeful, and in fact helpful. Sometimes, however, we can take this interconnection too far, without thinking through its consequences. Security and privacy risks are the most common problems that flow from unchecked levels of interoperability. Worse still, the most highly interconnected systems, such as the international financial system, can give rise to catastrophic domino effects. Whether the instrument is complex derivatives gone bad or computer malware, harm can flow across highly interconnected systems and cause knock-on effects far from where the initial harm occurred." Read more
Labels:
emerging technology,
point of view,
privacy,
security
Monday, July 30, 2012
The Death of Distance Revisited: Cyberplace, Physical and Relational Proximities.
The Future of Big Data
From the report: "For a millennium, universities have been considered the main societal hub for knowledge and learning. And for a millennium, the basic structures of how universities produce and disseminate knowledge and evaluate students have survived intact through the sweeping societal changes created by technology—the moveable-type printing press, the Industrial Revolution, the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and computers. Today, though, the business of higher education seems to some as susceptible to tech disruption as other information-centric industries such as the news media, magazines and journals, encyclopedias, music, motion pictures, and television. The transmission of knowledge need no longer be tethered to a college campus. The technical affordances of cloud-based computing, digital textbooks, mobile connectivity, high-quality streaming video, and “just-in-time” information gathering have pushed vast amounts of knowledge to the “placeless” Web. This has sparked a robust re-examination of the modern university’s mission and its role within networked society." Read more
Labels:
Big Data,
Education,
reports,
social media
NSA Boss Wants More Control Over the 'Net
From the blog: "The U.S. Internet's infrastructure needs to be redesigned to allow the NSA to know instantly when overseas hackers might be attacking public or private infrastructure and computer networks, the agency's leader, General Keith Alexander, said today.
Alexander spoke at the annual Def Con computer hacking conference in Las Vegas. It was a symbolic appearance that he said was motivated by a need to interest the hacker community in helping to make the Internet more secure.
Alexander, who is also commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, described the Internet as "at great risk from exploitation, disruption, and destruction." Read more
See also
Alexander spoke at the annual Def Con computer hacking conference in Las Vegas. It was a symbolic appearance that he said was motivated by a need to interest the hacker community in helping to make the Internet more secure.
Alexander, who is also commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, described the Internet as "at great risk from exploitation, disruption, and destruction." Read more
See also
Cowley, Stacy. "NSA wants to Hire Hackers." CNN, July 29, 2012.
Labels:
Broadband,
information sharing,
point of view
Social Networks and Web 3.0: Their Impact on the Management and Marketing Of Organizations
From the abstract: "Innovations, coupled with the advancement of
new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the evolution of the
Internet, have had a profound impact on the structure of firms and have altered
the decision-making process. In the new economic and social environment, the
understanding of the developments and transformations undergone by ICTs with
the advancement of social networks and Web 3.0 technology is vital because of
the influence of recent innovations in the competitiveness of organizations.
The aim of this paper is to achieve an in-depth understanding of the new
environment that has emerged with these developments." Read more
Labels:
emerging technology,
reports,
social media
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The Great American Smartphone Migration: Nearly Half of Feature Phone Subscribers Who Acquired a New Device in April Switched to a Smartphone
From the release: "The study found that nearly half of feature phone
subscribers who acquired a device during April 2012 switched to a smartphone,
an increase of 9.5 percentage points from the previous year, as smartphone
adoption continues its upward climb in the U.S. Among this audience, 61.5
percent of consumers acquired devices running the Google Android platform, with
25.2 percent choosing Apple devices and 7.1 percent opting for Microsoft
smartphones." Read more
Labels:
emerging technology,
information economy,
stats
Community Health Map: A Geospatial And Multivariate Data Visualization Tool For Public Health Datasets
From the abstract: "Trillions of dollars are spent each year on health care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services keeps track of a variety of health care indicators across the country, resulting in a large geospatially multivariate data set. Current visualization tools for such data sets make it difficult to make multivariate comparisons and show the geographic distribution of the selected variables at the same time.
Community Health Map is a web application that enables users to visualize health care data in multivariate space as well as geospatially. It is designed to aid exploration of this huge data repository and deliver deep insights for policy makers, journalists, consumer groups, and academic researchers. Users can visualize the geospatial distribution of a given variable on an interactive map, and compare two or more variables using charts and tables. By employing dynamic query filters, visualizations can be narrowed down to specific ranges and regions. Our presentation to policy makers and pilot usability evaluation suggest that the Community Health Map provides a comprehensible and powerful interface for policy makers to visualize health care quality, public health outcomes, and access to care in an effort to help them to make informed decisions about improving health care." Read more
Community Health Map is a web application that enables users to visualize health care data in multivariate space as well as geospatially. It is designed to aid exploration of this huge data repository and deliver deep insights for policy makers, journalists, consumer groups, and academic researchers. Users can visualize the geospatial distribution of a given variable on an interactive map, and compare two or more variables using charts and tables. By employing dynamic query filters, visualizations can be narrowed down to specific ranges and regions. Our presentation to policy makers and pilot usability evaluation suggest that the Community Health Map provides a comprehensible and powerful interface for policy makers to visualize health care quality, public health outcomes, and access to care in an effort to help them to make informed decisions about improving health care." Read more
Labels:
Big Data,
emerging technology,
Health care,
reports
The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies
Chui, Michael, et al. "The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies." McKinsey Global Institute, July 22, 2012.
From the report: "In a few short years, social technologies have given social interactions the speed and scale of the Internet. ... Companies use them to reach consumers in new ways too; by tapping into these conversations, organizations can generate richer insights and create precisely targeted messages and offers. While 72 percent of companies use social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit.
In fact, the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped. Companies will go on developing ways to reach consumers through social technologies and gathering insights for product development, marketing, and customer service. Yet the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds that twice as much potential value lies in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. MGI’s estimates suggest that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals—by 20 to 25 percent." Read more