Tag Archives: google

The Political Power of Social Media

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The excerpts below are from an essay by Clay Shirky, Professor of New Media at NYU and author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. The essay was published in 2011 but remains as relevant as today’s headlines (okay, more relevant than that).

One complaint about the idea of new media as a political force is that most people simply use these tools for commerce, social life, or self-distraction, but this is common to all forms of media.

The more promising way to think about social media is as long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere.

In a famous study of political opinion after the 1948 U.S. presidential election, the sociologists Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld discovered that mass media alone do not change people’s minds; instead, there is a two-step process. Opinions are first transmitted by the media, and then they get echoed by friends, family members, and colleagues. It is in this second, social step that political opinions are formed. This is the step in which the Internet in general, and social media in particular, can make a difference. As with the printing press, the Internet spreads not just media consumption but media production as well — it allows people to privately and publicly articulate and debate a welter of conflicting views.

Little political change happens without the dissemination and adoption of ideas and opinions in the public sphere. Access to information is far less important, politically, than access to conversation. Moreover, a public sphere is more likely to emerge in a society as a result of people’s dissatisfaction with matters of economics or day-to-day governance than from their embrace of abstract political ideals.

“The conservative dilemma” — The dilemma is created by new media that increase public access to speech or assembly; with the spread of such media, whether photocopiers or Web browsers, a state accustomed to having a monopoly on public speech finds itself called to account for anomalies between its view of events and the public’s. The two responses to the conservative dilemma are censorship and propaganda.

“The cute cat theory of digital activism” — Tools specifically designed for dissident use are politically easy for the state to shut down, whereas tools in broad use become much harder to censor without risking politicizing the larger group of otherwise apolitical actors.

There are, broadly speaking, two arguments against the idea that social media will make a difference in national politics. The first is that the tools are themselves ineffective, and the second is that they produce as much harm to democratization as good, because repressive governments are becoming better at using these tools to suppress dissent.

Rank websites according to their truthfulness

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“A Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. “A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy,” says the team. The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score.”

“The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.”

“Knowledge Vault has pulled in 1.6 billion facts to date. Of these, 271 million are rated as “confident facts”, to which Google’s model ascribes a more than 90 per cent chance of being true. It does this by cross-referencing new facts with what it already knows.”

This seems too good to be true so I’ll start by assuming it is not. But NewScientest is, in my opinion, a reliable source. And I want this to be a real thing. Imagine how disruptive something like this would be. Would you keep going back to a site with a really low Knowledge-Based Trust score? Sure, there’d be lots of kicking and screaming but I could see this working. At lots of levels.

15 years of Day-Timers

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I burned fifteen years worth of Day-Timers today, the culmination of a months long project. I went through each day from 1984 to 1999, creating a corresponding entry in my Google Calendar. By ’99 I had started keeping notes in Act! (now on a rusting hard drive in some landfill).

I considered shredding these but the wire binder made that impractical. So I put them in a wash tub, soaked them in gasoline and burned them.

In addition to being a long, tedious (and pointless?) task, I found it a bit stressful. The pages were filled with more unpleasant memories than I would have imagined. Don’t get me wrong. I worked for a great company, with some really wonderful people. But, in retrospect, I wasn’t having as much fun as I always though I had. Does that many any sense at all?

Flipping through those old pages brought back some physical sensations. A little stomach clinch over some bad news… tightness in the neck muscles as some unpleasantness unfolded. I was glad to get through the final month. And the burning ritual seemed therapeutic.

Why Twitter and Facebook users don’t get Google+

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In this Computerworld article, Mike Elgan explains why Twitter and Facebook users don’t get Google+.

In general, Twitter is dominated by news, celebrities, pundits, professionals and narcissists. Facebook is mostly about family and friends. And narcissists. And each social network draws people who are seeking the type of engagement a particular network specializes in. That’s why Twitter and Facebook people don’t get Google+.

They’ve tried it. The Twitter people come to Google+ looking for Twitter type engagement, but they don’t find it. Likewise, the Facebook people come looking for Facebook-like engagement (family and friends) and don’t find it.

It’s like a Chinese tourist going to France looking for Chinese food and concluding that the food in France is terrible. Or a Hawaiian surfer bringing her surfboard to New York City and, finding no waves, concluding that there’s nothing to do in Manhattan.

I’m an active Twitter user but I don’t expect (or need) any engagement there. It’s a source for news. Don’t do Facebook because I don’t have much in common with “friends and family” other than they are friends and family. Most of my online time is now spent on Google+. I post here mostly for archival reasons.

Google Glass in Sports

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A two-minute clip from Noble Ackerson, just shooting around by himself in a mostly empty gym, but the perspective Glass gives while still letting Ackerson move around freely is pretty cool. And for you hockey fans, this six-minute upload from Joseph Lallouz playing some pick-up hockey. The clip gives us views both from the bench and as he’s skating around in the thick of the action.

Watching these, I have to believe it won’t be long before we see what an NFL QB or wide receiver sees.

Thanks to Mashable for pointing to these.

Scott Adams: Knowledge is Health

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Scott Adams tells us 50% of second opinions from doctors contradict first opinions? And that 80% of the findings in medical literature are wrong.

“A new company called Metamed offers to be your personal medical researcher. For a fee of $200 per researcher per hour, with a $5K minimum, you can make sure the full force of science is on your side. Metamed analyzes the medical literature and tells you which study results about your condition are reliable and which are not. They assess the value of various diagnostic tests, and create a map of all possible medical correlations. It’s the sort of thing your doctor would love to do for you if he had the resources.”

And those Google glasses everyone’s making fun of?

“I can also imagine a time in which Google Glasses will observe all of your food choices during the day and keep a running record of your nutrition. When you stray from a healthy diet, your glasses might start suggesting a salad. When you don’t exercise all day, the glasses might suggest using the stairs instead of the elevator. For all practical purposes, a human with Google Glasses and a smartphone is already a cyborg. And your future cyborg half will do a better job of keeping your organic parts functioning than you are doing on your own.”

UPDATE: Metamed went out of business in 2015

Medical scenarios for Google Glass

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  • An emergency responder arriving at a motor vehicle accident is able to live stream to the emergency department the status of the patients and the associated trauma suffered to a patient. The ER is then able to assemble and prepare for a patient’s emergency treatment.
  • A surgeon live streams to residents and students a live surgery–so that they can see what work goes into a medical procedure first hand.
  • A visiting nurse seeing a patient in their own home video records and captures images of the patient’s wound, for which they are caring for, and sends them back to the physician.
  • A resident’s physical exam of a patient is streamed back to an attending physician, who can critique their work and make recommendations on questions to ask in real time.  This could especially be useful when a resident consultant evaluates a patient while their attending is at home overnight.
  • A cardiologist in a cath lab overlays the fluoroscopy as they perform a femoral catheterization for a patient with a recent myocardial infarct.
  • A nurse scans the medication they are about to give the patient and confirms the correct drug and right patient by overlaying their patient profile with the person in front of them–possibly stopping a medical error.
  • A student brings up their notes and lab reports as they present their patient case to their attending, with data available in real time.
  • An oncologist can overlay the MRI scan over a patient, and show them and the family where the cancer exists.
  • The electronic health record at the hospital is available to caregivers, able to be updated on major changes in the patients they oversee. For instance, the recent cultures from a septic patients wound comes back positive for MRSA and the physician changes their broad spectrum antibiotics to appropriate therapy based upon sensitivities.
  • A pharmacist is able to scan medications and verify the proper drugs after comparing the drug with images available in the database, ensuring the right drug is dispensed.
  • A physical therapist can see past sessions with a patient from previous recordings, overlaying their current range of motion, identifying changes as well as progression.
  • Any healthcare professional could walk up to a patient’s bed and instantly see all their vitals such as pulse, BP, O2 Sats, etc.

Technology Talent Gap

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Among employees who work for Google, Mr. Obama received about $720,000 in itemized contributions this year, compared with only $25,000 for Mr. Romney. That means that Mr. Obama collected almost 97 percent of the money between the two major candidates. Apple employees gave 91 percent of their dollars to Mr. Obama. At eBay, Mr. Obama received 89 percent of the money from employees. Democrats had the support of 80 percent or 90 percent of the best and brightest minds in the information technology field.
FiveThirtyEight Blog

“Google+ is a bank”

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Dave Winer believes Google+ wants to “move money around the same way Amazon does. They need your real name because it’s a business.”

“Google-Plus is their integrated communication system. Over time, it’s going to be at the core of everything they do, from auctions, to paying for things with Android phones, to their groupon and yelp clones. They’re going everywhere, and this is the system that will tie it all together. So, at the outset, of course they need real identities. That Google-Plus account you’re playing with today is going to be your bank account next year.”