Gumption

What Would Your Toaster Say to Your TV?

The recent announcement of the Sprint / Clearwire WiMax venture generated a great deal of excitement in many quarters. In an Advertising Age article,  "WiMax Could Bring Dramatic Changes, Wherever You Are", Abbey Klaussen writes:

WiMax is essentially the network that will deliver data and voice services to phones, but much faster than what consumers are used to using. It would turn the country into a giant hot spot -- in theory, at least. It's often referred to as a fourth-generation wireless service -- or 4G -- as it will be able to deliver quicker mobile-internet service than the 3G services offered by many carriers. (The first two generations of cellular service were analog and digital.) The venture's WiMax service should cover 120 million to 140 million people by 2010, said executives, who initially will concentrate deployment in the top 100 markets.

In a Chicago Tribune article (also distributed by the Seattle Times) earlier this week, "WiMax deal could lead to universal connectivity", Wallin Wong writes:

Sprint's WiMax network is designed to transmit data at speeds comparable to mid- and high-tier cable broadband — far faster than what's available for wireless Web surfing. This means using the Internet on a WiMax-enabled mobile phone, for example, will be just as speedy as home Internet connections.

It's also a big leap over today's Wi-Fi hot spots, which typically provide laptop users with Internet access in a cafe or airport. Because the coverage will stretch across metropolitan areas, a user would be able to listen to Internet radio in a WiMax-equipped car while speeding down the highway.

These all sound like promising new capabilities that will lead to useful applications - or extensions of existing applications - that may enrich our lives. However, these same articles also include some speculation that exhibit a perspective that I would call technology in search of a problem.

The Chicago Tribune article also includes the following:

By year's end, it's expected that the next generation of wireless networks will be launched, blanketing initial service areas with a fast Internet signal — accessible to subscribers from homes, streets and traveling vehicles — and capable of giving mundane home appliances a voice.

In this Jetsonian vision of life, which could take several years to arrive fully, a washing machine embedded with a wireless chip would detect a problem and contact the manufacturer even before the homeowner knew something was wrong with the spin cycle.

And the Advertising Age article has similarly oriented prognostications:

WiMax sounds like something Neo would use to communicate back to Morpheus in "The Matrix." In reality, it could bring a decidedly sci-fi experience to everyday living. And thanks to a group of high-profile backers, the fledgling technology is coming to life again.
...
And here comes the sci-fi-inspired part: the technology, said Mr. Bader [Eric Bader, partner in Brand in Hand], won't necessarily be confined to mobile phone devices, but could infiltrate ordinary household items: "toasters, TVs and car keys. It's the beginning of truly connected appliances. ... It gives us a canvas on which to start to converge."

Sigh.

Leaving aside the question of whether WiMax is the right standard, I'm all for the general idea of universal connectivity, but only from a human-centered design perspective. I believe that the world will be a better place when people can all connect more effectively to the other people, places and things around us (indeed, this is one of the key pillars of the mini-manifesto for Strands Labs, Seattle).

All this talk about giving home appliances a voice, and imbuing toasters with connectivity may strike some people as sci-fi, but to me it smacks of technology-centered design. Maybe I've been blessed with reliable appliances, but I've never once thought "I sure wish my washing machine could call out for parts automatically". And if my toaster was "on the grid", well, what would it want to say to my TV (or any of my other appliances)?

Although at times I feel a certain amount of frustration with this pervasive "technology for the technology's sake" perspective, I do like to have fun with it from time to time. A few years ago, I drafted a proposal for 12 steps for technology-centered designers. And a few years earlier, as my research focus was shifting from Artificial Intelligence to Ubiquitous Computing, Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Cooperative Work Whatever, I first discovered the Internet Toaster.

At first, I thought the Internet Toaster was a hoax, but further research suggests that it was true. Here's what they have to say about this at The Living Internet:

There really was an Internet toaster. Dan Lynch, President of the Interop Internet networking show, told John Romkey at the 1989 show that he would give him star billing the following year if he connected a toaster to the Internet. Who could have resisted a challenge like that?

Working together with his friend Simon Hackett,John Romkey rose to the occasion and connected a Sunbeam Deluxe Automatic Radiant Control Toaster to the Internet, becoming the hit of the 1990 Interop. A pictureof Hackett demonstrating the toaster is shown below.

http://www.internode.on.net/images/toaster2.jpg

The toaster was connected to the Internet with TCP/IP networking, and controlled with a Simple Networking Management Protocol Management Information Base (SNMP MIB). It had one control, to turn the power on, and the darkness of the toast was controlled by how long the power was kept on.

However, a human being still had to insert the bread. At the 1991 Interop a small robotic crane was added to the system, also controlled from the Internet, which picked up a slice of bread and dropped it into the toaster, automating the system from end-to-end.

[I'm including a photo of what I believe is the 1991 version that I found a while back, but cannot remember the source - perhaps it's from the broken "toaster2.jpg" link above.]

I thought this was fascinating, and so I did some more research, discovering an article in The Register on the Internet Weather Toaster, which was a senior project by industrial design student Robin Southgate, at Brune University:

According to a British Council Design Lab description:

How does it work? The innocuous kitchen staple secretly houses some sleek, smart communications technology. A modem inside the toaster dials to a server using a freephone number, which then accesses the Met Office website, where it retrieves the information it needs and translates it into a simple single number ' 1, 2 or 3. Each number corresponds to the weather symbols for cloud, sun and rain.

The symbol is then branded onto the bread in the toaster using a heat-resistant stencil which is interposed between the bread and the heating element for the final 20-odd seconds of toasting ' so you can still have your toast the way you like it.

Joe Klinger took toasters to the next level, technologically speaking, in his creation of ToAsTOr, the Toaster PC:

I wanted to make a small quiet computer for use as an MP3 server, DVD player, surfing, and occasional gaming. I also wanted it to be small enough to fit in a bag so that I could take it to friend's houses or to work. When I set out to build this bread and butter computer ;-) I found the Mini-ITX form factor motherboards. I wanted to build something unique. I thought I would go to the antique stores and find something cool to rebuild as a computer. I wanted something built out of metal for RFI and EMI shielding.

I thought that a toaster would be cool and have the DVD/CDRW open out of the toast slot. The problem is that all of the toasters were too small to use a full size hard drive, video card, LCD, etc... Then I found a large toaster (1960 General Electric) with a sizeable crumb tray/warmer. This monster toaster used 1200 watts! So, I had to open a business account to buy the EPIA motherboard at the only place in Atlanta that has them. I then took it to the antique store to determine if it would fit. It would fit but only if the mobo was about an inch off the crumb tray. When I went to purchase the toaster the salesman mentioned something about whether or not it worked. I told him that it did not matter I was going to toss the inner workings and make something crazy. I pulled out the motherboard and he said, "You are going to make it into a robot?" I snickered and said, "no, only a computer!" I have skills, but damn - a robot? :-) I never tried it to see if it still worked as a toaster.

These connected toasters are, indeed, interesting curiosities. Maybe WiMax will encourage more development - and perhaps even adoption - of appliances that can talk to each other. I hope, though, that increasing connectivity - provided by WiMax and/or other standards - will offer more substantial capabilities to enrich our lives in more meaningful ways.

We'll certainly be doing our part to contribute to that effort.

Religion, Politics, Racism and Invisibility: Obama and Wright vs. McCain and Hagee

Robb's comment on my post about the Capitol Steps show in Seattle got me thinking - and writing - [again] about some of the religious and racial issues in the U.S. presidential race. I started to write a comment in response to Robb's comment, but as it grew longer and longer, I decided to move it into a separate blog post.

Robb is a good friend from college who grew up in the U.S. but has spent many years living in New Zealand, where he has been increasingly appreciating the natural beauty of the land (especially the mountains), the indigenous people - Maori - and their culture ... and writing inspiring prose and poetry about his experiences and growing appreciation in his Musings from Aotearoa blog. In his comment on my post, Robb, raised a number of provocative issues:

I find this issue of 0bama "throwing" Wright "under the bus" to reveal the real dark side of this issue, old fashioned racism. I still fail to see what he, Wright, has actually said that can be construed as being either inflammatory or has anything to do with 0bama directly. What are people so afraid of here, or should I write, perhaps inflammatorily, what is conservative, entrenched, white America so afraid of here? I am trying to track where I read it down, but I recall reading somewhere John McCain's religous mentor saying the New orleans devastation was the "wrath of God on those people". Where is that in the news media? 0r what things are spoken from the pulpit of many white churches on any given Sunday in the land where Emmett Till was murdered? Where is the balance?

Good questions! I want to spend a bit of time reviewing some of Wright's recent remarks before exploring McCain's religious connections.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the current Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, has made a few appearances lately. I enjoyed watching Bill Moyers interview Wright on PBS a week ago, a venue in which Wright came across as a relatively reasonable - and clearly passionate - man. I did not watch Wright's more recent National Press Club speech and Q&A last week, but it was carried on C-SPAN (and there are segments posted on YouTube), and Fox News has posted a transcript; I had seen and heard snippets of commentary during the week, but it was not until Robb's comment that I decided to sit down and listen the entire speech and read the transcript.

As with my earlier experience in reviewing the larger contexts of Wright's sermons from which short snippets have been repeatedly rebroadcast in the mass media, and which have been reportedly perceived as so inflammatory by so many, I found myself agreeing with nearly all of the views expressed by Wright in his National Press Club talk on "The African American Religious Experience; Theology & Practice". And, in an effort to help provide a larger - or at least different - context than has been offered in most accounts of this talk, I wanted to share some of the excerpts that I found most inspiring.

Wright starts off describing the relative invisibility of the black church and black religious tradition, beginning with its roots during slavery, and continuing through the present day, referencing The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison - implicitly and explicitly - throughout his remarks, and I think this invisibility characterizes - or cloaks - many of the issues that are arising throughout this controversy. As he progresses through the talk, his presentation become more inclusive, promoting liberation for all peoples, urging acceptance of differences without presuming deficiencies, and closing with an invitation to reconciliation, through which greater unity can be achieved ... and I can't help but note that the theme of unity is one of the key messages of Wright's [former?] church member, Barack Obama.

Robb's reference to "throwing Wright under a bus" highlights the unfortunate, but understandable (given the mass media focus on the most controversial aspects of Wright's views), tone of Obama's response to Wright's most recent remarks, in which he condemns the "outrageous" and "destructive" nature of some of those remarks. I find Obama's assertion that Wright is "giving comfort to those who prey on hate" to be particularly interesting. Wright's refusal to recede into the background - to become invisible - may be giving ammunition to those who prey on hate, but I don't see how it offers any comfort to anybody. The explosive charge of that ammunition is more the result of media coverage of Wright's comments than the comments themselves, which, in my interpretation, represent more of a challenge to those who promote and prey on hate rather than a comfort to them.

Anyhow, before offering further interpretations and judgments, here are some extended exerpts of the actual words spoken by Wright during his National Press Club speech: 

The black religious experience is a tradition that, at one point in American history, was actually called the “invisible institution,” as it was forced underground by the Black Codes.

The Black Codes prohibited the gathering of more than two black people without a white person being present to monitor the conversation, the content, and the mood of any discourse between persons of African descent in this country.

Africans did not stop worshipping because of the Black Codes. Africans did not stop gathering for inspiration and information and for encouragement and for hope in the midst of discouraging and seemingly hopeless circumstances.  They just gathered out of the eyesight and the earshot of those who defined them as less than human.

They became, in other words, invisible in and invisible to the eyes of the dominant culture.  They gathered to worship in brush arbors, sometimes called hush arbors, where the slaveholders, slave patrols, and Uncle Toms couldn’t hear nobody pray.

...

The prophetic tradition of the black church has its roots in Isaiah, the 61st chapter, where God says the prophet is to preach the gospel to the poor and to set at liberty those who are held captive. Liberating the captives also liberates who are holding them captive.

It frees the captives and it frees the captors.  It frees the oppressed and it frees the oppressors.

The prophetic theology of the black church, during the days of chattel slavery, was a theology of liberation.  It was preached to set free those who were held in bondage spiritually, psychologically, and sometimes physically.  And it was practiced to set the slaveholders free from the notion that they could define other human beings or confine a soul set free by the power of the gospel.

The prophetic theology of the black church during the days of segregation, Jim Crow, lynching, and the separate-but-equal fantasy was a theology of liberation.

It was preached to set African-Americans free from the notion of second-class citizenship, which was the law of the land.  And it was practiced to set free misguided and miseducated Americans from the notion that they were actually superior to other Americans based on the color of their skin.

The prophetic theology of the black church in our day is preached to set African-Americans and all other Americans free from the misconceived notion that different means deficient.

...

This principle of “different does not mean deficient” is at the heart of the prophetic theology of the black church.  It is a theology of liberation.

The prophetic theology of the black church is not only a theology of liberation; it is also a theology of transformation, which is also rooted in Isaiah 61, the text from which Jesus preached in his inaugural message, as recorded by Luke.

When you read the entire passage from either Isaiah 61 or Luke 4 and do not try to understand the passage or the content of the passage in the context of a sound bite, what you see is God’s desire for a radical change in a social order that has gone sour.

God’s desire is for positive, meaningful and permanent change. God does not want one people seeing themselves as superior to other people.  God does not want the powerless masses, the poor, the widows, the marginalized, and those underserved by the powerful few to stay locked into sick systems which treat some in the society as being more equal than others in that same society.

...

God does not desire for us, as children of God, to be at war with each other, to see each other as superior or inferior, to hate each other, abuse each other, misuse each other, define each other, or put each other down.

God wants us reconciled, one to another.  And that third principle in the prophetic theology of the black church is also and has always been at the heart of the black church experience in North America.

...

To say “I am a Christian” is not enough.  Why?  Because the Christianity of the slaveholder is not the Christianity of the slave. The God to whom the slaveholders pray as they ride on the decks of the slave ship is not the God to whom the enslaved are praying as they ride beneath the decks on that slave ship.

How we are seeing God, our theology, is not the same.  And what we both mean when we say “I am a Christian” is not the same thing. The prophetic theology of the black church has always seen and still sees all of God’s children as sisters and brothers, equals who need reconciliation, who need to be reconciled as equals in order for us to walk together into the future which God has prepared for us.

Reconciliation does not mean that blacks become whites or whites become blacks and Hispanics become Asian or that Asians become Europeans.

Reconciliation means we embrace our individual rich histories, all of them.  We retain who we are as persons of different cultures, while acknowledging that those of other cultures are not superior or inferior to us.  They are just different from us.

We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred, or prejudice.

And we recognize for the first time in modern history in the West that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles, and different dance moves, that other is one of God’s children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness, just as we are.

Only then will liberation, transformation, and reconciliation become realities and cease being ever elusive ideals.

During the Q&A following his speech, Wright was asked about about his recent remarks about the political nature of Obama's recent remarks renouncing some of Wright's earlier remarks.

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls.  Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors.  They have a different person to whom they’re accountable.
...
He didn’t distance himself.  He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.  He said I didn’t offer any words of hope. How would he know?  He never heard the rest of the sermon.  You never heard it.

Wright was also asked about his earlier assertion that "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color" - still, for me, the most disturbing of his statements during the increasingly infamous sermon snippets. He referenced the books Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola : Nature, Accident or Intentional?, by Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, and Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington, and went on to say:

I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven’t read things, then you can’t — based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.

I share Wright's distrust of our government, though I still do not believe his earlier assertion. However, given the larger scope of all he has said (at the National Press Club, during Bill Moyer's interview, and in his sermons I have watched on YouTube), I am not willing to dismiss all of Wright's views based solely on this one questionable dimension ... and I can think of many, far more destructive, examples of questionable assertions by political and religious leaders.

Speaking of which, getting back to Robb's comments, and his reference to a hateful "wrath of God" condemnation of the victims of Hurricane Katrina by a religious figure associated with U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, I tracked down an article on "McCain’s faith: Pastor describes senator as devout, but low-key" in the Associated Baptist Press. McCain's pastor, Dan Yeary, notes some controversial religious connections for McCain:

The candidate endured some criticism in February after San Antonio pastor and Christian Zionist leader John Hagee endorsed him. Catholic and Jewish leaders denounced Hagee for statements he has made in the past that could be interpreted as anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic.

Hagee claimed the critics had misunderstood and de-contextualized his comments. Nonetheless, McCain’s campaign issued a statement in which he distanced himself from the preacher’s more controversial remarks without rejecting or repudiating the endorsement.

The senator has received less media scrutiny for a separate endorsement of his candidacy by Ohio pastor Rod Parsley. Parsley, who leads a charismatic multi-media empire, has been criticized for statements insisting Islam must be “destroyed” and for denigrating gays, the separation of church and state and secularists.

This led me to another article, "McCain, Hagee and the Politics of God's Wrath", in The Nation blog, which provides references to John Hagee - not McCain's pastor, but an endorser (and we know Obama has been criticized for people who have endorsed him) - and his "wrath of God" condemnation(s):

Hagee, whose views about a host of social issues give new meaning to the term "hateful," is not McCain's pastor. They have no personal or spiritual relationship. Rather, Hagee is a close political ally of McCain and an ardent supporter of the Arizona senator's presidential bid.

McCain sought Hagee's endorsement and continued to defend and embrace the pastor – saying he was "glad to have the minister's endorsement – even after Hagee said that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans because of the city's "sinful" acceptance of homosexuality.

"What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God…" Hagee explained after the city experienced a national disaster that cost at least 1,836 lives – making it the deadliest hurricane in American history – and permanently dislocated tens of thousands of Americans from not just their homes but the communities of their birth and upbringing.

I hadn't heard about this rather hateful comment that Robb mentioned - it was, one might say, invisible ... leading me to wonder about the relative visibility and invisibility of religious and political connections as they apply to white presidential candidates and black presidential candidates - but it reminded me of the many hateful pronouncements by Christian Coalition of America founder, former minister and erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson (who has endorsed many other Republican candidates over the years). [BTW, I was surprised to discover there is a Christian Coalition in New Zealand.] One example of hateful speech by this self-described "Christian" was uttered in response to Gay Days at Disney World:

"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate; this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor."  

I'm further reminded of some of the hateful speech associated with other conservative commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, but do not want to digress further. I'll simply note that while Hagee is not McCain's current or former pastor, his unsolicited endorsement of McCain seems to be far less visible in the mass media than some of the unsolicited endorsements by controversial figures that Obama has received.

Speaking of media, further on in his comment, Robb notes:

I am not at all acquainted with American television these days, hardly with New Zealand television for that matter, but I must say when I do watch television here I find the best, and most informative, and most balanced programs on Maori Televison. And even as "enlightened" as white New Zealand claims to be, I readily recall the battle in the late 90's it was to get that up and running. Privileged people are always afraid of change it would seem.

The reference to Maori Television was prompted, in part, by my reference to 1995 testimony in which Senator McCain claimed that cable networks are less biased than PBS and "superior in some cases". Robb's observation that "privileged people are always afraid of change" really strikes a chord, and reminds me of an unfinished post I started months ago - after finishing Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks, and after hearing an interview on NPR with Tony Blair, in which he shared his father's perspective that "if you became successful then you became Conservative" - and may just prompt me to finish (and post) my rumination on the issue of incumbency, and the encumbrances that incumbents sometimes erect to maintain their unfair advantage(s) ... which, in my mind, relates to issues of religion, politics, racism and invisibility.

Political Song and Dance - and Humor - with The Capitol Steps

Amy and I enjoyed a hilarious political revue by The Capitol Steps comedy song and dance troupe ("We put the 'mock' in Democracy'") at The Paramount Theatre in Seattle last night with our friends Dave and Lisa. Among the entertaining songs - and insightful (and inciteful) prologues - included in last night's show were:

• Ebony and Ivory [Ebony and Ivory (Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney)], envisioning a Democratic "dream team" of Senators and U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton
• Superdelegates [Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Mary Poppins)], a satirical look at the Democratic superdelegates (and the party's more ordinary delegates)
• Leader like Barack [Leader of the Pack (The Shangri-Las)], a glowing affirmation - one even might say "devotional" - sung by an [impersonated] Obama fan ... not entirely unlike my own affirmation of inspiration from Obama's speech on transracialism
• When I'm 84 [sung to the tune of When I'm 64 (The Beatles)], a riff on Senator and presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain's age
  
• Relying on 9/11 [Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)], a retrospective revue - accompanied by a "generic rock star" - of the single issue platform of former mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani
• Huckabee [Let it Be (The Beatles)], a religiously righteous tongue-in-cheek proposal for the Republican vice presidential nomination of former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
• Tap Three Times [Knock Three Times (Tony Orlando and Dawn)], about Senator Larry Craig's indiscretion in the men's room at the Minneapolis - St. Paul International airport (BTW, Keith Olbermann - one of my heroes - revealed a humorous streak I had not seen before in a Dragnet-style re-enactment of Senator Craig's bathroom scene)
• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea? [How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? (Sound of Music)], a funny look of some of the not-so-funny issues revolving around Korean President Kim Il-Sung and his country's recent emergence as a nuclear power
• Keep Us Alive [Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees)], a humorous reminder of the ages of the four remaining liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court (Stephens, 88, Souter, 68, Ginsberg, 75, and Breyer, 69) ... and of an important, though rarely discussed, issue at stake in the current presidential election

There is a Capitol Steps YouTube channel where videos of some of their performances can be watched as well as listened to. They even have a MySpace page with some additional songs. And, of course, one can buy Capitol Steps CDs.

One of the actors did a fabulous parody of U.S. President George W. Bush; my favorite quote was the president's purported motto: "uncertain times call for uncertain leadership". I laughed the hardest and longest during the "Lirty Dies":

Lirty Dies are what you get when you mix your basic national scandal with word-initialization-rejuxtaposition closely following the underlying precepts of harmony, alliteration and innuendo.

Lirty Dies follows a great political tradition: We're not quite sure what we're saying; you're not quite sure what you're hearing.

Some might say they are merely spoonerisms taken to ludicrous heights.

We think this is sad. Something comes over people when they learn

Whip their Flurds..or.. Spew up their Screech....

These are people who can:

Flo with the Go...with Mealthy Hinds and Lappy Hives...

People who....umm....

Follow their Hearts
(We'll let you do that one)

The lirty dies targets in last night's show included Haris Pilton, Gush vs. Bore and Cloger Remens.

Another segment I enjoyed was during Juan Nation, a satirical piece on U.S.-Mexico immigration and border issues that initially made me uncomfortable. An actor impersonating Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke of how he would do as U.S. president, "As you know, I would do twice the work for half the pay; the downside is that I'd have 19 of my cousins living in the Oval Office, but on the upside, the rose garden would look immaculate". My discomfort yielded to loud laughter when another actor, playing a redneck, came out on stage with one of my favorite lines: "I'm with the insane border patrol group better known as The Minutemen, and my dirt-poor ancestors did not flee Europe so we could let in a bunch of immigrants!"

I think I was uncomfortable because when I looked around the theater just before the show started, I saw only one African-American - and no Mexican-Americans - in the audience of several hundred. I was reminded of the discomfort I felt when I noticed that all but one family of 3 among the 700 people attending a Christopher Paolini talk on his Eragon book tour on Mercer Island in September 2005 were white (though the age demographics was very different than the audience at The Capitol Steps' performance). All but one of the 39 members of The Capitol Steps - and all of the 5 members (3 men, 2 women) who performed in Seattle last night - are white. Although they did seem to focus more of their satire on Hilary Clinton than Barack Obama, they were willing to raise the race issue in the lyrics for Leader like Barack (sung to the tune of the Shangri-Las' Leader of the Pack), with a lead singer and two background singers (whose lyrics are in italics below).

I'm glad I've found someone to embrace (brace, brace)
My friends say he cannot win the race (I can't believe your friends would talk about his race)
Is Barack black? Not very. He's not like Whoopi Goldberg, more like Halle Berry.
I hope some day, it's President Barack.

In any case, I suppose it should not come as a surprise that there is a racial divide in media (books, music, comedy). I know that the few times I've channel surfed to television stations geared towards people of other races (e.g., Black Entertainment Television), I don't find it very entertaining. But, of course, I don't find the vast majority of mass media - especially on television - very entertaining or engaging.

I did, however, find The Capitol Steps very entertaining - I don't think I've laughed so hard since the last time I saw them, 8 years ago, at The Northshore Center for the Performing Arts (in Skokie, Illinois), with our friends Andy and Rebecca. That was during another U.S. presidential election - one in which the outcome proved to be disastrous - so it was nice to inject some much-needed humor into the process ... and I hope I won't need quite so much comedy salve to compensate for the outcome of the current election. Recent stories about a misguided "gas tax holiday" proposal (and its reflection of a "global warming holiday" for erstwhile environmentalists) and an older story from 1995 about Senator McCain claiming that cable networks are less biased than PBS and "superior in some cases" (!) have heightened my concerns that the ongoing and increasingly bitter fight between the two Democratic presidential candidates will lead to a situation in which much humor will be required during the next four years.

A More Perfect Union: Obama and Transracialism

Barack Obama's speech last week was the most inspiring speech I've seen by a U.S. president - or a major U.S. presidential candidate - in my adult life. I've seen video footage of inspiring speeches by Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy, and a number of other inspiring speeches by earlier presidents profiled on the PBS American Experience series, but this is the first time since I've been of voting age that I feel truly inspired by someone with presidential prospects.

I'd read and heard excerpts of the speech during the week, but it wasn't until yesterday that I finally set aside the time to watch Obama's 37-minute speech [transcript] in its entirety ... and I'm glad I did. I admire the way that Obama was able - and willing - to articulate issues involving race that are typically considered undiscussibles, at least in national political discussions (e.g., anger that "may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends ... but does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table"). He embraced his multiracial heritage and shed light on some of the shadows that often permeate our thoughts, feelings and judgments about other races ... and I found myself wondering how many critics of Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have never harbored or uttered a racially motivated criticism.

Obama offered a vision for what I might call a transracial union, based on my recent rumination on building a multidisciplinary team, which was greatly enhanced by Anne's comment introducing me to the concept of transdisciplinarity. I believe that Obama is, in effect, applying one definition of transdisciplinarity in scientific research to the far more politically charged topic of race. Riffing slightly on a Wikipedia definition of transdisciplinarity:

A transdisciplinary style of research [or politics] can only arise if the participating experts interact in an open discussion and dialogue, accepting each perspective as of equal importance and relating the different perspectives to each other. Working together in a transdisciplinary way is difficult because participating scientists [or politicians] are often overwhelmed by the amount of information in everyday’s practice and because of incommensurability of specialized languages in each of the fields of expertise. Therefore people with the competence of moderation, mediation, association and transfer are needed to initiate and promote a critical and still constructive dialogue. For these individuals it is crucial to have [their] own in-depth knowledge and know-how of the disciplines [or races] involved.

I don't want to say too much about the speech, in part because I feel too many people (including myself) are participating in what seems to be a snack culture (an evocative label I first heard from my colleague, Rick Hangartner Peyman Faratin) - or what Sherry Turkle calls talk culture - subsisting on snippets of information rather than sitting down to a full meal from original sources, and I want to encourage people to see and hear the speech in its entirety.

I will say that Obama discuss racial issues from a variety of perspectives, noting that one of the core issues is that in a time of scarcity, opportunity is seen as a zero-sum game, with anger and fear operating as powerful motivators, for all races. Unfortunately, however, this anger and fear can motivate us to focus on distractions rather than the problems that transcend racism (or other isms). As he notes in describing his motivation for composing and delivering this speech:

... Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

In this brief respite from snack culture, I decided to dig around a little for a fuller meal of what Reverend Wright, the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, whose motto is "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian", really said. I found a blog, Truth about Trinity, and a YouTube channel for Trinity Chicago, that provided more context beyond the snippets that have been broadcast and rebroadcast in the major media.

Indeed, as the snippets show, Wright has been critical of the U.S. in some of his sermons, but I seem to remember Jesus reportedly being critical of the ruling political, economic and social powers of his time, and that securing the freedom of speech - especially critical speech - was one of the goals of the founding fathers of this country.

In the snippets being aired on many television stations, Wright is quoted as saying

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye...and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

In a fuller snippet of his sermon, these criticisms are accompanied by an advocacy of a "God of love and justice".

Wright's sermon starts out with a reference to Psalm 137,

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
       happy is he who repays you
       for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
       and dashes them against the rocks.

He notes how this psalm represents "a move from paying tithes to payback ... from worship to war" culminating in "the cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred". Although I would not have chosen the incendiary language he uses, the only fact I would dispute is his claim that "we never batted an eye": there are - and have been - many Americans, of all races, religions and nationalities, who have objected strongly to the excesses and extremes of the American government.

In another now infamous sermon, Wright is quoted as saying

"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color" and "[t]he government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme".

Slate has recently provided a helpful AIDS Conspiracy Handbook, which leaves me very skeptical about Wright's claim regarding the government inventing HIV for genocide, but I firmly agree with his claims that our government has supported illegal drug smuggling in the past, currently "boasts" the highest incarceration rate in the world, and many states have passed "three strikes laws" ... which were advocated by former president Bill Clinton (leading me to wonder how former first lady Hillary Clinton feels - or felt - about this issue).

I want to close by revisiting - and reapplying - some of the thoughts and feelings I wrote about in reaction to Hurricane Katrina, One World: Disasters and Responses:

I'm also reminded of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's ideas about "us and them" in response to the 9/11 attacks in the US, and how it applies more generally to suffering and our responses to it.

I ask, "How can I BE the peace I want to see in the world, today?" Not, how can I CREATE the peace- but how can I BE it- because it becomes clearer and clearer to me that violence and war are not just "out there" but also inside me.

She goes on to suggest that we can either try to identify and empathize with others, or seek to differentiate others from ourselves; essentially choosing to view others as "us" or "them".  She gives examples about substituting "some of us" for "them" or "they" as we think about what others have done (and I would extend this to what others are going through).  In her audiobook "Your Heart's Prayer", she further extends this from "some of us" to "sometimes I".

Although I would not choose the same vocabulary as Reverend Wright, if I substitute "I am angry at America" for "God damn America", and accept Oriah's invitation, I am willing to admit that "Sometimes I am angry at America for killing innocent people... sometimes I am angry at America for treating our citizens as less than human. Sometimes I am angry at America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Continuing on withs my earlier rumination:

I believe that most people, placed in similar circumstances, will tend to have similar responses, with respect to their feelings, thoughts, actions and reactions.  I also believe that people can learn new, possibly "unnatural", ways of feeling, thinking and acting (Scott Peck, in "The Road Less Traveled", points out that it is natural to defecate in one's pants, but most of us learn new behaviors in this dimension of life). Oriah Mountain Dreamer, in her poem, "The Invitation", says:

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I can empathize with the suffering and the responses to that suffering in the wake of hurricanes, tsunamis, military invasions and diseases. I hope that these events will create openings and opportunities for people to rise to meet their challenges in a loving and compassionate way.

Returning to Obama, and noting another connection with transdisciplinarity, in the face of mounting challenges, I will finish with this excerpt from his speech, which exemplifies an audacity of hope about working together to form a more perfect union to meet these challenges:

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

Amen.

The Onion on Voting, Puppetry and Illusions

A week ago, The Onion produced a hilarious - not to be confused with Hillaryous - satirical look at the upcoming "election", from the shadowy perspective of reports of Diebold voting machine hacks in Florida a month ago ... or perhaps demonstrations of Diebold voting machine hackability a year ago ... or perhaps questionable results from the last two presidential "elections" ... or perhaps the last 14, if their reference to "the group of military and corporate leaders that has chosen every American president since Eisenhower" is not entirely fictional. 

The headline: "A minor software glitch at the Diebold corporation today caused thousands of electronic voting machines to accidentally release the results of the 2008 presidential election, months ahead of schedule."

[link]

[Update: favorite quotes removed, so as not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the video.]

[Update, 2008-03-15: the United States, which received generally high scores in the recently released 2007 Global Integrity Index, ranked only 10th in the integrity of its elections.]

I'm grateful for the link to this video sent to me by Ellen Riloff, my long-time friend and former co-conspirator and lab-mate at the NLP Group at UMass, where she so ably executed the duties of Humor Director, and continues to help me lighten up from time to time, even while on sabbatical in California ... her notes from which reveal another obsession we share - whale watching.

Content-centered Conversations: The Pew Internet Report on Teens and Social Media

I finally read the recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report on Teens and Social Media. Among the most interesting findings, for me, were the correlation between the creation of content (online stories, photos, videos) and conversations about that content, and the connections between connecting online and connecting offline. As I'd noted with another recent Pew report I blogged about last month (on Digital Footprints), there were [also] a number of surprises in the magnitude of some of the numbers.

The concept of object-centered sociality - social practices (such as conversation and other acts of communication and connection) that are inspired by objects of interest within some kind of community - is something that I (and others, notably, and more eruditely, Karin Knorr Cetina and Jyri Engestrom) have written about before. Object-centered sociality is one of the central concepts behind our proactive display applications, which use large displays to show online media associated with people whenever they are detected nearby; our goal has been to spark conversations in the physical world based on objects typically only shared in the digital world.

What is interesting about the Pew study is that it offers some numbers to characterize the socializing that transpires around the social media created and shared [online] by teens (ages 12-17):

• Photos: 89% of teens who post photos online receive comments on those photos (52% "sometimes", 37% "most of the time")
• Videos: 72% of teens who post videos online receive comments on those videos (48% "sometimes", 24% "most of the time")
• Blogs: 76% of teens who use social networking services (SNS) post comments on blog posts written by others.

I've noted before that commenting is a form of "filling buckets" (saying or doing things to increase others' positive emotions) online, and have often wondered about what factors influence readers' decisions about whether or not to post comments. The Pew numbers are interesting, but I'm still interested in knowing more. For example, the first two figures are about receiving comments - on photos and videos - and the last figure is about giving comments - on blogs (and only by SNS users). I would be interested to know the full set of numbers for giving and receiving for blogs, photos and videos, as well as the correlation between people who create content (post blogs, photos and/or videos) and people who comment on content created by others. I suspect the correlation is very high, and indeed, if one subscribes to Ross Mayfield's conceptualization of the Power Law of Participation, content and comments are simply different points along a continuum. And, speaking of the power law of participation, I'd also be interested in other social media practices by teens, e.g., favoriting, tagging, subscribing, etc. (an earlier Pew study on tagging reported that 28% of online users have tagged content, and 7% do so on a daily basis, but that study did not include the under 18 population).

I imagine the level of commenting - and other forms of participation - is affected by the scope of people who have access to the content, but I wonder if content that has restricted access (e.g., to family and/or friends) is more or less likely to promote participation - I'm wondering whether a variation of the bystander effect, wherein a smaller group may be more likely to take action (e.g., comment) than a larger group, might apply in this context. Anyhow, the report does offer some numbers on access restrictions as well:

• Photos: 39% of teens who post photos online restrict access to their photos "most of the time", 38% restrict access "only sometimes", and 21% "never" restrict access.
• Videos: 19% of teens who post videos online restrict access to their videos "most of the time", 35% restrict access "only sometimes", and 46% "never" restrict access.
• Blogs: Unfortunately, no numbers are provided for how many teens who post blogs restrict access :-(. I, for one, would be very interested in these numbers.

The Pew report notes that that 64% of online teens (and 93% of teens are online) are content creators - "online teens who have created or worked on a blog or webpage, shared original creative content, or remixed ontent they found online into a new creation". I can't find a reference now, but I seem to recall an earlier Pew study sometime in the past year or two that reported the number of adult online content creators - er, I mean the number of online adults who create content - was 19%. This number has probably grown, as well, but probably not to anywhere near 64%.

The report also includes a breakdown of some specific online creation activities:

• Photos: 47% of online teens post photos (vs. 36% of online adults); girl photo posters outnumber boy photo posters by 54% to 40%.
• Videos: 14% of online teens post videos (vs. 8% of online adults); boy video posters outnumber girl video posters by 19% to 10%.
• Blogs: 28% of online teens are bloggers (vs. 8% of online adults); girl bloggers outnumber boy bloggers by 35% to 20%, and the gender gap is growing larger over time.
• Remixes: 26% of online teens have remixed content (vs. 17% of online adults), with no significant gender differences in this activity.

The largest arenas for online social media use are social networking sites, e.g., MySpace and Facebook. 55% of online teens have SNS profiles, and those teens are among the most active content creators in all the categories mentioned above, and often by huge margins (e.g., 73% of online teens with SNS profiles post photos, whereas only 16% of online teens without SNS profiles post photos). Of course, given the fact that many SNS platforms include tools for posting or embedding photos, videos and blogs, the wide discrepancies are not terribly surprising.

What may be surprising - especially to many critics of teen online media use - is another finding: "in many cases, those who are the most active online with social media applications like blogging and social networking also tend to be the most involved with offline activities like sports, music or part-time employment." And, teens who use social networking sites are nearly one third more likely to spend time with friends in person on a daily basis than average teens (38% vs. 31%).

One area that I found initially surprising is the observation that "95% of teenage girls participate several times a week in at least one communication activity, compared with 84% of boys" ... meaning that 5% of girls and 16% of boys are, well, rather uncommunicative. Upon further reflection, though, I realize that I have known some people who might fit this description (my wife might claim that I often fit this description). It's [also] interesting to note the significant gender difference here - boys are nearly 3 times more likely than girls to be uncommunicative.

This - and other elements of the Pew report showing that teen girls tend to be more communicative than teen boys (e.g., 35% of teen girls blog whereas only 20% of teen boys blog) - is consistent with some statistics I recently read about in The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine: e.g., women's brains have 11% more neurons in the centers of the brain used for language and hearing. Another interesting statistic in the book was that men's brains have 2.5 times more neurons in the areas associated with sexual drive than women do. She puts these together in some interesting observations relating to teens:

We know that girls' estrogen levels climb at puberty and flip the switches in their brains to talk more, interact with peers more, think about boys more, worry about appearance more, stress out more, and emote more. They are driven by a desire for connection with other girls - and with boys. Their dopamine and oxytocin rush from talking and connecting keeps them motivated to seek out these intimate connections. What they don't know is that this is their own special girl reality. Most boys don't share this intense desire for verbal connection, so attempts at verbal intimacy with their male contemporaries can be met with disappointing results.

...

Why do previously communicative boys become so taciturn and monsyllabic that they verge on autistic when they hit their teens? The testicular surges of testosterone marinate the boys' brains. Testosterone has been shown to decrease talking as well as interest in socializing - except when it involves sports or sexual pursuit. In fact, sexual pursuit and body parts become pretty much an obsession ... Young teen boys are often totally, single-mindedly consumed with sexual fantasies, girls' body parts, and the need to masturbate.

I plan to blog more extensively about Louann's book in the near future, but for now, I'll just note that there is a whole area of social media use by teens that is not covered by the study, which is prompted in part by the book, and in part by my having recently watched the movie Superbad. If, as some claim, the Internet is for porn, and teens are the most active users of online media, I suspect there is a use case that is significant to at least half of the teen population that is not covered by the study. I won't hold my breath about this usage model being included in some future study by Pew - and I'm not sure whether it really qualifies as social media - but I wonder if the pervasive loneliness, shame and fear of being "found out" that teen boys suffer can be ameliorated through some kind of content-centered conversation in this shadow dimension of online life ... perhaps it already is.

Unconcerned About Privacy: The Pew Internet Report on Digital Footprints

The recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project on "Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency" presents some interesting statistics and analysis regarding people's awareness and use of digital information about themselves and others on the Internet (their "digital footprints"). The most interesting result, to me, was the revelation that "60% of Internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online."

The Pew study groups U.S. adult Internet users (which I will refer to as "Internet users" from this point on, to simplify exposition and reduce redundancy) into four categories, with respect to their privacy perceptions and actions:

• Confident Creatives are the smallest of the four groups, comprising 17% of online adults. They say they do not worry about the availability of their online data, and actively upload content, but still take steps to limit their personal information. Young adults are most likely to fall into this group.
• The Concerned and Careful fret about the personal information available about them online and take steps to proactively limit their own online data. One in five online adults (21%) fall into this category.
• Despite being anxious about how much information is available about them, members of the Worried by the Wayside group do not actively limit their online information. This group contains 18% of online adults.
• The Unfazed and Inactive group is the largest of the four groups—43% of online adults fall into this category. They neither worry about their personal information nor take steps to limit the amount of information that can be found out about them online.

This large number of people being unconcerned (not worrying) about privacy - the 60% of Internet users who are "confident creatives" or "unfazed and inactive" - contrasts sharply with previous reports on privacy concerns. One of the things that is interesting about the Pew survey is that it distinguishes between perceptions and actions - who is worried about privacy, and who is actually doing  something about it. It's also interesting to note that 54% of the people who say they are worried about how much information is available about them have not taken any steps to limit the amount of information available about them ... reminding me of people who complain about politicians but don't vote in elections (which I estimate to be at least 36%, based on recent U.S. census figures about voting).

These differences between perceptions and actions with respect to privacy been conflated in earlier studies. For example, a 2003 Harris poll conducted by Dr. Alan Westin used a different three-tier categorization, and was based on sampling all Americans, not just Internet users, and asked about privacy in general, not just online privacy (though both distinctions are eroding over time, e.g., Pew estimates that 71% of the U.S. adult population is now online, i.e., use the Internet, and I suspect most people who are concerned about privacy are most concerned about online, vs. offline, information ... though today's recent Wall Street Journal report on IRS employees "browsing" through tax returns raises some privacy concerns for me):

• Privacy Fundamentalists: Some people feel very strongly about privacy matters. They tend to feel that they have lost a lot of their privacy and are strongly resistant to any further erosion of it (26% of the American public)
• Privacy Unconcerned: At the other extreme there are people who have no real concerns about privacy and who have far less anxiety about how other people and organizations are using information about them (10% of the American public)
• Privacy Pragmatists: who have strong feelings about privacy and are very concerned to protect themselves from the abuse or misuse of their personal information by companies or government agencies (64% of the American public)

There are a number of issues that have been raised about the methodology, labels and conclusions of this poll - Ponnurangam Kumaraguru and Lorrie Faith Cranor provide an in-depth survey of privacy polls conducted for Harris by Dr. Alan Westin - who, interestingly, does not appear to have a homepage - over the past 30 years, including this one (which appears to be the most recent) - but it does suggest very different perceptions (if not actions) with respect to privacy.

I'm not sure how much of the appearance of fewer concerns about privacy reflects actual changes in perceptions or changes in sampling methodologies (or analysis), but it suggests to me that many concerns about privacy concerns have been overstated. And personally, I feel a little less like an outlier now that I've moved from a tiny minority (one of the 10% of privacy unconcerned) to a slightly larger minority (one of the 17% of creative confidents).

In addition to labeling four quadrants of privacy perceptions and actions, the report also distinguishes between an active and passive digital footprints:

• a passive digital footprint is personal data made accessible online with no deliberate intervention from an individual
• an active digital footprint is personal data made accessible online through deliberate posting or sharing of information by the user

There are, of course, some grey areas, e.g., data made available through unanticipated effects of privacy policy changes in online social networking services, but I think this distinction offers useful handles for categorizing participation on the web.

There were a number of other interesting findings in the report:

• 47% of Internet users have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago.
  This may be a significant increase, but I'm still surprised at such a low number, which may be primarily (or entirely) a symptom of my standard assumption that most people are like me in most respects. [FWIW, googling Joe McCarthy turns up this blog (Gumption) in the #9 spot ... with 8 of the other 9 entries on page 1 being references to my much more famous (IRL) namesakes, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin whose un-American activities on the ironically named House Committee on Un-American Activities (taking authoritarian actions in the name of anti-communism) gave us the term "McCarthyism", and the other page 1 "hit" a link to the former Hall of Fame baseball player and manager.]
• 11% of Internet users have a job that requires them to self-promote or market their name online.
  Now, I'm not sure how "requires" means, especially in the age of The Brand You (first articulated over 10 years ago!), but this, too, seems like a surprisingly low number. FWIW, the report also defines public personae as "adult Internet users who have jobs that require self-presentation or self-marketing online" ... a label that strikes me as considerably more arbitrary than the others (e.g., would someone who has a prominent public digital representation of self that is not strictly required by one's job be excluded from this class? I would consider myself in this class, since a large number of my colleagues at Nokia Research Center have no personal or professional web pages (that I'm aware of). Am I a "public personae"?).
• 68% of public personae have searched for information about themselves online.
  Some quick math suggests that 32% of public personae are therefore not being accountable for some portion of their job descriptions.
• 25% of public personae have created an SNS profile.
  What?! This may be yet another symptom of the small sample (and/or large assumption) issue noted above, but it much more often the case that I find a LinkedIn profile for someone I can find no other information about than I find other information about someone who does not have a LinkedIn profile. I would consider LinkedIn to be the training wheels for public personae (though increasingly, as I noted with respect to a straw poll conducted at the most recent Nokia Mobile Mashup, Facebook seems to be the new business networking weapon of choice)
• 35% of Internet users believe their home address is available online.
  So 65% of Internet users are either not aware of WhitePages.com, Anywho reverse lookup, and similar services, or have taken steps to ensure their home address is not available online. I would be inclined the former category is larger than the latter category.
• 73% of Internet users say their company or employer maintains a web site.
  So 27% of Internet users are either unemployed or work for a company that does not have a web site. It would have been helpful to know what proportion of this group are employed. The most recently updated Pew chart of Internet Demographics shows 32% of U.S. adults age 65+ (retirement and post-retirement age) use the Internet, but it's not clear what proportion of Internet users are in this demographic. I imagine that nearly every employer in the U.S. has a web site by this time.
• 33% of Internet users have posted some kind of creative content online; 22% have shared something online that they personally created.
  So this means that 11% have only posted creative content that others have created? I know YouTube has a large number of videos that represent potential copyright violations, but it seems unlikely that this use case could account for that proportion of users. I know there are professionals who create online content for others, but I would think that most of them have also created their own content (and posted it online).

One of the most interesting and surprising results was who people look for online - or, more precisely, who people don't look for online. A table on page 24 of the study summarizes who looks for who:

There are several figures in this table that strike me as astoundingly low:

• 19% of all Internet users search for co-workers, professional colleagues or business competitors; 11% of all Internet users search for someone they are thinking about hiring or working with.
  Wow! I always search for information about any person I plan to call, contact by email or meet face-to-face with for the first time, and I conduct very thorough searches for anyone I'm thinking about hiring or working with. It's hard to imagine that the vast majority of people have never done this.
• 12% of all Internet users search for someone they just met or someone they were about to meet for the first time; 9% of all Internet users search for someone they are dating or in a relationship with.
  First of all, I'm a little confused about meeting someone vs. thinking about hiring or working with someone ... if the former subsumes the latter, then only 1% of Internet users search for someone they are thinking about meeting for personal (vs. professional) reasons. Given the immense popularity of online dating services - most of which include search functionality - I find this number to be the most surprising in the entire survey. Even if 12% of the population of adult Internet users is searching for information about prospective dates, this still seems low, given that 60% of U.S. males and 57% of U.S. women are married. Obviously, there are many people in relationships who are not married, but I would still expect that at least 24% of the adult population is "open" to new relationships (and perhaps a considerably higher percentage, if we include adulterers) ... which means at most half of them are searching online for information about potential partners. In any case, it's been a long time since I was not in a primary committed relationship - I've been happily married for almost 20 years (I'm not sure what proportion of that time my wife would claim to be happily married) - but if I were to become part of the singles scene today (flying spaghetti monster forbid), I would be even more committed to searching for information about anyone I was going to meet for personal reasons than for professional reasons.

I received yet another email announcement from Pew yesterday notifying me that a new study - an update on Teens and Social Media - has just been released. I wrote about the last Pew study on Teens, Privacy and Online Social Media when I was ranting blogging about the overestimation of risk in teens' use of MySpace. I look forward to reading - and blogging  - about the new study, but will save that for a separate post.

Blessed Unrest: Environmental and Social Justice for All … or Bust!

In his latest book (and video), environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author Paul Hawken achieves a remarkable balance between breadth and depth in arguing that in order to restore environmental and social balance on this earth, we must strive for both, or we will achieve neither. Noting that "we are nature", and thus however we treat the earth affects its people and however we treat one another affects the earth, Hawken presents a systems approach in which recognizing our interrelatedness, taking advantage of our interconnectedness,