From the report: "This study examines the roles of the gratifications sought
and of narcissism in content generation in social media and explores the
generational differences in motivations and in narcissistic personalities when
predicting the usage of Facebook, blogs, and forums. Data were gathered from a
probability sample of 596 social media users through a telephone survey in
2010. Factor analysis results showed that content generation using social media
was satisfying five socio-psychological needs: showing affection, venting
negative feelings, gaining recognition, getting entertainment, and fulfilling
cognitive needs. In particular, people who used social media to meet their
social needs and their need for affection tended to use Facebook and blogs. In
contrast, when users wanted to air out discontent, they often turned to forums.
Results also showed that exhibitionists seemed to use social media to show
affection, express their negative feelings, and achieve recognition. The study
found no generational differences in using Facebook and blogs as a means to
satisfy social needs or the need for affection. However, differences in
patterns of social media usage were found among Baby Boomers with different
narcissistic personalities. The paper includes a discussion of the study’s
limitations and suggestions for future research." Read more
Thursday, February 7, 2013
What the Intelligence Community Is Doing With Big Data
From the article: "It’s trying. Armed with billions of tweets, Google (GOOG)
searches, Facebook (FB)
posts, and other publicly available social-media and online data, the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence is sponsoring research projects involving
14 universities in the United States, Europe, and Israel with the goal of
using advanced analytics to predict significant societal events." Read more
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
How the Internet Reinforces Inequality in the Real World
This old idea of paper maps as power brokers offers a good analogy for how we might think today about the increasingly complex maps of digital information on the physical world that exist in the "geoweb." This is where Wikipedia pages and online restaurant reviews and geocoded tweets live, all theoretically floating atop the actual cities and neighborhoods they describe." Read more
The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It
Gelernter, David. "The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It." Wired, February 1, 2013.
From the article: "People ask what the next web will be like, but there won’t be a
next web.
The space-based web we currently have will gradually be replaced by a
time-based worldstream. It’s already happening, and it all began with the lifestream,
a phenomenon that I (with Eric Freeman) predicted in the 1990s and shared in the pages of Wired
almost exactly 16 years ago.
This lifestream — a heterogeneous, content-searchable, real-time messaging stream — arrived in the form of blog posts and RSS feeds, Twitter and other chatstreams, and Facebook walls and timelines. Its structure represented a shift beyond the “flatland known as the desktop” (where our interfaces ignored the temporal dimension) towards streams, which flow and can therefore serve as a concrete representation of time.
It’s a bit like moving from a desktop to a magic diary: Picture a diary whose pages turn automatically, tracking your life moment to moment … Until you touch it, and then, the page-turning stops. The diary becomes a sort of reference book: a complete and searchable guide to your life. Put it down, and the pages start turning again." Read more
A National Action Plan To Support Consumer Engagement Via E-Health
From the article: "Patient-centered care is considered one pillar of a
high-performing, high-quality health care system. It is a key component of many
efforts to transform care and achieve better population health. Expansion of
health information technology and consumer e-health tools—electronic tools and
services such as secure e-mail messaging between patients and providers, or
mobile health apps—have created new opportunities for individuals to
participate actively in monitoring and directing their health and health care.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the
Department of Health and Human Services leads the strategy to increase
electronic access to health information, support the development of tools that
enable people to take action with that information, and shift attitudes related
to the traditional roles of patients and providers. In this article we review recent
evidence in support of consumer e-health and present the federal strategy to
promote advances in consumer e-health to increase patient engagement, improve
individual health, and achieve broader health care system improvements." Read more
Your Social Networking Credit Score
From the article: "The buzzword tsunami that is “big data"—a handy way of
describing our vastly improved ability to collect and analyze humongous data
sets—has dwarfed “frictionless sharing” and “cloud computing” combined. As
befits Silicon Valley, “big data” is mostly big hype, but there is one
possibility with genuine potential: that it might one day bring loans—and
credit histories—to millions of people who currently lack access to them. But
what price, in terms of privacy and free will (not to mention the exorbitant
interest rates), will these new borrowers have to pay?" Read more
Eric Schmidt, in New Book: China Could Contribute to Fracturing the Internet into Pieces
Schmidt and Cohen write that China is the world’s “most sophisticated and prolific” hacker, according to Gara. Their book reads, ”It’s fair to say we’re already living in an age of state-led cyber war, even if most of us aren’t aware of it.” But their predictions for where that might lead the Internet, according to the Journal’s report, include the dark possibility that it could split apart entirely." Read more
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The Philosophy of Data
From the article: "Over the next year, I’m hoping to get a better grip on some
of the questions raised by the data revolution: In what situations should we
rely on intuitive pattern recognition and in which situations should we ignore
intuition and follow the data? What kinds of events are predictable using
statistical analysis and what sorts of events are not?....
In sum, the data revolution is giving us wonderful ways to
understand the present and the past. Will it transform our ability to predict
and make decisions about the future? We’ll see." Read more
New Technology Helps Doctors Link a Patient’s Location to Illness and Treatment
Othergeomedicine technologies under development include Health Begins, a social networking platform that seeks to make clinicians more aware of socioeconomic factors that can affect health. The site, now in the testing phase, allows doctors, patients and family members to update entries, such as where to apply for affordable housing or how to contact a legal clinic for reporting unhealthy working conditions. The site also has a section that shows the latest research assessing links between social, economic and environmental factors and health." Read more
Privacy Versus Security
From the report: "Legal
scholarship tends to conflate privacy and security. However, security and
privacy can, and should, be treated as distinct concerns. Privacy discourse
involves difficult normative decisions about competing claims to legitimate
access to, use of, and alteration of information. It is about selecting among
different philosophies, and choosing how various rights and entitlements ought
to be ordered. Security implements those choices – it intermediates between
information and privacy selections. This Article argues separating privacy from
security has important practical consequences. Security failings should be
penalized more readily, and more heavily, than privacy ones, because there are
no competing moral claims to resolve, and because security flaws make all
parties worse off. Currently, security flaws are penalized too rarely, and
privacy ones too readily. The Article closes with a set of policy questions
highlighted by the privacy versus security distinction that deserve further
research." Read more
Monday, February 4, 2013
Data Protection Laws, an Ocean Apart
On this side of the Atlantic, Congress has enacted a patchwork quilt of privacy laws that separately limit the use of Americans’ medical records, credit reports, video rental records and so on. On the other side, the European Union has instituted more of a blanket regulatory system; it has a common directive that gives its citizens certain fundamental rights — like the right to obtain copies of records held about them by companies and institutions — that Americans now lack." Read more
Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties
From the article: "A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and
like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are
building one of the most vibrant civil liberties movements we’ve ever seen. It
is a culture committed to freeing information, insisting on privacy, and
fighting censorship, which in turn propels wide-ranging political activity. In
the last year alone, hackers have been behind some of the most powerful
political currents out there." Read more
Thursday, January 31, 2013
UNCTAD Technology and Innovation Report 2012: Innovation, Technology and South-South Collaboration
From the report: "Fast-growing South–South trade and investment is an
opportunity to ramp up developing countries’ abilities to master market-useful
technologies and to bolster their abilities to innovate new products and
services, an UNCTAD
report says. The Technology and
Innovation Report 2012, subtitled Innovation, Technology and
South–South Collaboration, was released today. South–South economic cooperation
is one of the major global economic developments of the past two decades.
Exchanges between developing countries accounted for 55 per cent of global
trade in 2010, as compared to 41 per cent in 1995, and this trend is already
leading to useful diffusions of technology and innovative capacity, the Report
says. Increased South–South exchange can lead to greater technological sharing,
in a variety of ways. A first important channel is the import of goods, the
Report says, which are used by importing countries to improve their production
processes through copying and reverse engineering. Global production networks
and foreign direct investment (FDI) are other factors that could promote
transfers of technology and technological development in countries." Read more
Mapping Creates Jobs and Drives Global Economic Growth
In summary, the global geo services industry is valued at up to $270 billion per year and pays out $90 billion in wages. In the U.S., it employs more than 500,000 people and is worth $73 billion. The infographic below illustrates some examples of the many benefits of maps, whether it’s improving agriculture irrigation systems or helping emergency response teams save lives." Read more
Power and the Internet
From the article: "All disruptive technologies upset traditional power
balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it
empowers the powerless, but that's only half the story. The Internet empowers
everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power,
but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and
corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet,
they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating
the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that
world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures
and not society in general." Read more
U.S. Kids Need Computer-Science Education
By 2018, there will be nearly three times as many job openings requiring computer science knowledge than qualified applicants. This goes well beyond just becoming a professional programmer -- learning computer science can teach problem solving skills, new ways of breaking down complex scenarios, and a means to build something tangible in our software-driven age." Read more
Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months
….The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for
a Times investigation,
published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune
worth several billion dollars through business dealings." Read more
Consumers Now Trust Microsoft More than Apple with Their Privacy
Samson, Ted. "Consumers Now Trust Microsoft More than Apple with Their Privacy." InfoWorld, January 29, 2013.
From the article: "Big-name tech companies including Hewlett-Packard, Amazon,
IBM, eBay, Intuit, Microsoft, and Mozilla are among the 20 most-trusted
organizations among American consumers, according to Ponemon Institute's "2012 Most Trusted Companiesfor Privacy." Meanwhile, companies who've made the list
in years past -- such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Dell -- didn't
make the cut this time around." Read more
Smartphone Users' Privacy Betrayed By Their Gadget Sensors, Says Study
From the article: "Research into smartphone security has revealed that your
phone's sensors could help criminals unlock your stolen gadget.
And, given that these elements all come as standard on most smartphonemodels, and are not subject to the same controls as other phone functions, they
are a bigger security risk. The study was carried out by a visiting professor
at Swarthmore College,
who analyzed data captured from a smartphone's accelerometer--that's
the gadget that analyzes the direction your phone is tilting or moving and
turns the screen accordingly, and used for games like Doodle Jump--and
found it could be used to work out where someone tapped the screen." Read more
Who Owns, Controls Social Media Activity?
From the article: "Now that the use
of social media is part of the TV newsroom norm, the industry is wrestling with
the next wave of issues associated with the medium — hashing out matters ranging
from who owns on-air personalities’ Facebook accounts to delineating between
professional and personal tweets.
Individuals on
all sides of the equation, from station group owners to newsroom staffers, are
pushing to add more structure to the use of social media both on and off the
job, primarily so the practice doesn’t come back to bite them, industry
watchers say.
The lack of
industry wide standards regulating social media practices also is starting to
create unexpected problems, particularly for anchors and reporters who, to some
degree, are winging it." Read more
EU Data Supervisor Wants Greater Powers
From the article: "The European
Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, has unveiled a two-year
strategy aiming to promote a “data protection culture,” increase oversight of
EU institutions, and cut red tape.
Speaking at an
event in Brussels alongside EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding and EU home
affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Hustinx on Tuesday (22 January) said
the strategy is designed to make the EDPS more efficient and effective." Read more
Open Data Economy: Eight Business Models for Open Data and Insight from Deloitte UK
From the article: "The first response concerned Deloitte’s ongoing research into open data in the United Kingdom [PDF], conducted in
collaboration with the Open Data Institute.
Harvey Lewis, one of the primary investigators for the research project,
recently wrote about some of Deloitte’s preliminary findings at the Open
Government Partnership’s blog in a post on “open growth.” To date,
Deloitte has not found the quantitative evidence the team needs to definitely
demonstrate the economic value of open data. That said, the team found much of
interest in the space." Read more
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Gartner: Social Business Efforts Largely Unsuccessful So Far
From the article: "Many large companies are embracing internal social networks, but for the
most part, they're not getting much from them, according to analyst firm
Gartner.
By 2016, some 50% of enterprises "will have internal Facebook-like
social networks," and 30% of these will be considered to be as crucial as
email and telephones, a Gartner study announced on Tuesday states.
However, through 2015, 80% "of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology," according to the report." Read more
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Protecting Online Freedom as the Internet Turns 30
It’s during anniversaries like these that we have a chance to take stock of this remarkable network and the people who make it what it is.
As the Internet enters its middle years, we users can no longer take it for granted. It’s more than a cloud. It’s people, technology and physical infrastructure. As with any infrastructure, the Internet needs protection and maintenance to survive; otherwise the wires and signals that send digital communications will cease to function. The online community also needs protections — to prevent our ideas from being blocked, our identities from being hijacked and our wallets from being picked." Read more
Twitter Gives Up User Data to Feds 69% of the Time
The total number of information requests increased to 1,009 during the second half of 2012, up from 849 during the first half of the year, according to Twitter's transparency report. Government requests for content removal also increased to 42 from just six." Read more