Rage Against The Machine are signed to Epic Records, which is part of Sony BMG, the same label as McElderry.
"Increasingly, government agencies and other organizations are seeking to apply more participatory approaches to environmental decision-making as part of a wider institutional change towards more inclusive decision-maing. For example, in the UK, policy consultations now often involve stakeholder workshops, and these increasingly take place in the regions rather than just in the capital city. However, there is a danger of growing disillusionment among policy-makers and practitioners who have been involved in such processes that participatory processes are used to reinforce decisions already made, and so fail to realize many of the benefits that have been claimed for particiption. Our study illustrates that there are benefits to genuine participatory processes, and informs the development of best practices for engaging stakeholders in effectively designed participatory processes. In this light, institutionalizing participatory governance takes some power away from central decision-makers and gives it back to stakeholders. Though this may be perceived as risky, it has the potential to give rise to more effective as well as more inclusive decision-making." (1)[Translation: "at the moment 'consultation' is a rubber-stamp exercise, where you can tick a box that says "I agree" or "I agree even more", but it doesn't have to be like that."]
"In the deskilling logic, equipment design is left to the technical experts. There is little to be gained by involving technically untrained users in the design process, and such involvement risks politicizing the process. This is the more traditional approach. Salzman (1992) reviewed over 100 U.S. books on equipment design and 100 textbooks used in U.S. engineering design courses and found not one discussion of the possible advantages of user involvement in designing systems. If, however, the rationale underlying design is usability, the design process will be managed very differently."[translation: just like above; "we're the experts and you'll take what you're given."][emphasis added] (2)
Both sides trying to make the other guy the bad guy, obviously enough.“I don’t think anyone is going to be happy about this, but there’s general understanding that we all need to work under terms that are reasonable for our businesses and we’re hoping we’ll come to a quick resolution,” Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships in Europe, told the Financial Times.
In a blog note, Mr Walker said the costs would be prohibitive, with YouTube losing significant amounts of money on every playback under the proposed PRS terms.
He said there was also a lack of transparency – PRS was unwilling to tell YouTube what songs were included in the licence so it could identify works on the service.
PRS for Music is a collecting agency that issues “mechanical” and performing licences for music to be used online, or performed or broadcast.
Steve Porter, chief executive of PRS for Music, said the organisation was “shocked and disappointed” at the last-minute notice of YouTube’s “drastic action”. “We believe [this] only punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent.”
Take the unhappy heroin addict: he gives himself an injection because he desires the drug, but he also has a desire to be rid of this desire. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt has given such "second-order" desires a central role in his analysis of free will: we act freely, he submits, when we act on a desire that we actually desire to have, one that we endorse as our own. Beings that do not reflect on the desirability of their desires- like animals and, perhaps, our short-run selves - are what Frankfurt calls "wantons."Holt, Jim (2007) The nannyish state, Prospect March 07
The collapse of the US newspaper industry has left politicians free to pursue their unethical schemes unscrutinised. "The internet does froth and commentary very well, but you don't meet many internet reporters down at the courthouse," he says. "Oh to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model. To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city as a local politician! It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."
"CW: I think it’s a real danger of taking a superficial approach to diversity. We’ve heard about – in diversity terms – the whole thing about ‘snow capping’ which is the way they describe having a very diverse workforce but a completely white management board. Now we just don’t want to be that way. That’s not getting the best out of the resources you have. What we’ve set ourselves as a target is that the total representation of minority groups be absolutely equal and equivalent across all of our grading structure. Only then can we say that all of our policies and processes are fair."
"Some thought his returns might have been based on front-running- using the information from his brokering business to benefit his asset management clients. Sophisticated confidence tricksters have used a similar tactic for thousands of years. The fraudster hints at impropriety, but implies that the target will be the beneficiary rather than the victim. The suggestion... has two advantages. It provides a possible explanation of the source of the promised gains. And it encourages the victims to keep quiet until- perhaps even after- the deception is exposed."How the “Madoff twist” entices the financially astute John Kay, FT March 18th
FACT Over 50% of reported rapes occur in the home. 80% of sexual assaults reported by college age women and adult women were perpetrated by close friends or family members. There is no common profile of a rapist. Rapes are committed by people from all economic levels, all races, all occupations. A rapist can be your doctor, your boss, your clergyman, your superintendent, your partner, your lover, your friend or your date.
This movie is an atrocity.
With the partial exception of a couple of good lines of dialogue e.g. “You should relax.”“I feel more comfortable when I'm tense”, this movie has NO redeeming qualities. Not even the much vaunted shoot-out at the Guggenheim is any good. It's trying to mimic the 'public place meets the brutal realities of international espionage' that Greengrass pulled off for Alexanderplatz in the Bourne Supremacy and Waterloo Station in Ultimatum. But it fails fails fails. It's too long, too comic book, just plain irritating.
It's not that Owen is bad, it's just that he's given nothing proper to work with. It's not that Watts is bad, it's just that her character wasn't needed in this film.
There are big fat didactic wodges of shoe-horned 'dialogue'- I thought Mike Meyers had killed this off with the Basil Exposition character in the Austin Powers films.
And that's the key. If you care about the characters you'll overlook violence to geography (e.g. Istanbul here) and you'll forgive some plot holes for the Bourne films, a short list would include; why didn't Landy figure Bourne was heading for Berlin after the Munich explosion, why didn't Noah Vosen disable Nicky Parsons computer after Madrid, what happened to the Tangier cops who were chasing Bourne, and how did he and Nicky so easily escape detection after killing Desh, what happened to Pam Landy's sidekick when he dropped her at 415/71).
But this, this... you DON'T CARE about the characters and also the plot holes are gargantuan; why does the Italian politician meet some low level flunkies and spill his guts? Where are the New York cops in the ten minutes or so once shots are fired at a major tourist attraction, why do other New York cops let Watts have Owen, how does Owen get to Italy, to Istanbul etc etc etc. I could go on. But neither you nor I want me to.
Do Not See This Film. Do not see any other film by the writer (Eric Singer) or the director (Tom Twyker)- they are on my Ron Howard list of film-makers to avoid.
Hi everyone/bothWe are all often in meetings or discussion groups where one member tries to dominate the discussion and effectively wrecks any possibility of an open conversation or the full participation by all the members of the group. Typically, some members sit in silence waiting for the session to end while others get into a heated argument with the protagonist. But there is a third way. Here is the law:
Sometimes it happens that overly zealous participants feel that their ideas are so important or powerful that everybody in a particular group (or even in the whole conference) should pay attention and listen. This one has to be nipped in the bud -- carefully. The way out is not to directly challenge the person, but rather to remind the assembled group of the Law of Two Feet. If everybody truly wants to listen, they should do that. But if that is not their desire, they have two feet which they should use. There is no need to argue and shout, just thank the group and leave. Egomaniacs quickly get the picture when everybody leaves.
"When I joined the Australian Commonwealth Public Service in the 1970s, those in the senior positions (invariably male) had often started their working life during the Great Depression before serving in the second world war. Upon demobilisation they had patiently worked in a seniority-based promotion system for a modest salary in return for security of tenure and a superannuation scheme. By the time I left the service in the mid 1980s they were to be replaced by an increasingly university-educated mobile meritocracy on short and long-term contracts willing and able to transfer in and out of private enterprise. Since then many of the traditional areas of government service delivery (in Australia at least) appear to be constituted by web pages advertising mission statements and core values supported by call centres. Service is no longer a personal virtue but a commodity to be delivered."&Paul Stockley, Jan 31
"Pre-1974 there was an overall 17 percent quota limit on female medical students across the UK. The male-dominated profession was led by men who had been the backbone of military medicine during the second world war. We, their trainees accepted and enjoyed the challenge of long hours and the camaraderie of hospital mess life. Central to the "can do" philosophy was the continuity of care for every patient by a designated consultant team from admission to discharge. Society rewarded and respected this arduous work rate....
"What do we now face? The consequences are clear. Whereas my generation achieved consultant status after approximately 30,000 hours of broad and intensive training, the plan from April 2009 indicates that 6,000 hours is acceptable. imagine the outcry if airlines cut pilot training to 20 per cent of what was previously considered acceptable."David Skidmore, Jan 5
"The writer I find most illuminating on all this is the maverick American psychologist James Hillman. Hillman draws attention not just to the individual human soul, the locus of salvation or damnation for Christians, but to the world soul, anima mundi. According to Hillman, psychotherapies will never work unless they "take into account the sickness of the world... you have to see that buildings are anorexic, that language is schizogenic, that normalcy is manic and medicine and business is manic".Possibly related to:
John Keats said that the world was the vale of soul-making. Now we need to reverse that saying. To restore our own souls we need to stop destroying the world's soul, which includes the habitats, eco-systems and species under the kind of threat that neither Keats nor Freud ever envisaged."
"He was seven when he first encountered Mad, a monthly satirical magazine, and was immediately captivated by the drawings: "It literally changed my life." Unhappy at the thought of wasting money on comics, Vladek Spiegelman took to brinign home second-hand comic anthologies instead, inadvertaently introducing his son to titles banned from newsstands for their violent content."
"Reed grew up in a middle-class Jewish household in suburban Long Island and attended Syracuse University. He identifies a short story by one of his tutors, the poet Delmore Schwartz, as a turning-point in his own development as a writeer. "'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities'", Reed says, "changed my life entirely and shaped the way I write, and everything along with it." It taught him the virtue of simplicity. "I don't think there's a single polysyllabic word there. The world shook for me when I read it."
"But this new energy is being channelled by organisers into boring meetings which reproduce the hierarchy of mass society. After a while, critical thinking is eroded and people lose their curiosity. Meetings become a routine like everything else in life.
A lot of problems which collectives will have can be traced to the work habits acquired in the (mass) movement. People perpetuate the passive roles they have become accustomed to in large meetings. The emphasis on mass participation means that all you have to do is show up. Rarely, do people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to. Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of group achievement.
Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as subjects, political activity is defined as an event outside them and in the future. No one sees themselves making the revolution and, therefore, they don't understand how it will be accomplished."
From "Anti-Mass Methods of organisation for collectives"
"So, how do knowledge workers learn? At best, they find things out for themselves, learn from each other and share acquired knowledge with their colleagues. All this underpins a major shift of the past decade: the emphasis has moved from training to learning. Training can be defined as "an instructor-led content-based intervention leading to desired changes in behaviour " and learning as "a self-directed work-based process, leading to increased adaptive capacity". Training and learning are related but conceptually different activities. Only learners can sit in the training room or in front of a screen but they cannot be made to learn. Therefore an effective strategy to promote learning must consider management, motivation and preparedness."
"We old-fashioned types expect industrialists to understand how their machines work; we expect chief constables to know what it's like to arrest a miscreant on the street; we believe journalists are enormously improved by knowing the hell that breaks loose when you mis-spell the name of the winner of the dahlia class at the flower show."
| Three blind mice | Three white men |
| Three blind mice, three blind mice, | Three white men, three white men |
| See how they run, see how they run, | See how they drone, see how they drone |
| They all ran after the farmer's wife, | They all ran over the given time |
| Who cut off their tails with a carving knife, | And cut off our verve with a lengthy whine |
| Did you ever see such a thing in your life, | Did you ever see such a pointless crime? |
| As three blind mice? | As three white men? |
Ephraim Kam, of the Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, is fairly typical in arguing that a combination of Israeli and US nuclear deterrence would mean that "Iran will not use nuclear weapons, not against us and not against any other country."Quite. Whatever happened to deterrence? Do we really think the Iranians are suicidal?
An Iran with nuclear weapons could destabilise the region in numerous ways. It could back radical Islamist movements such as Hizbollah and Hamas with more energy and less fear of reprisals. It could threaten and intimdate the oil states of the Gulf. It could frighten more of the educated and mobile Israeli middle class into emigrating. And it could precipitate a destabilising arms race across the region- as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf States and Turkey all rushed to go nuclear.Yes, that would be the same tactic of politicide that the Israeli's have used to such great effect in the Occupied Territories: make life so unbearable that anyone who can, leaves. That'd be the well-educated, the middle-classes who would lead social movements and other forms of viable resistance. A jail with three walls... The late Baruch Kimmerling even wrote a book about it... Sigh.
Would a military attack work- or would Iran be able to rebuild swiftly? Would Iranian retaliation lead to a broader military conflict across the Gulf region- the home of US military bases and much of the world's oil? Would Israel attack if Washington held back?Well, that's the nub of the issue, isn't it? The Israelis have expended a lot of energy on having their very own nuclear deterrent. You can kind of see their point. Given what the UK and US have allowed to happen in the past, would you, in their shoes, with your back really really the wall, trust the Gentiles not to sell you out? Not if you were sane.
"Reich divides American jobs into three broad categories for assessing their contribution to new the global economy. These are "symbolic- analytic" services, routine production services, and "in-person" services. The first of these is carried out by what Reich calls "symbolic analysts" engineers, attorneys, scientists, professors, executives, journalists, consultants and other "mind workers" who engage in processing information and symbols for a living. These individuals, which make up roughly twenty percent of the labor force, occupy a privileged position in that they can sell their services in the global economy. They are well-educated and will occupy an even more advantageous position in society in the future."
"If people enjoy using these games then they should continue to do so- that's really a no-brainer. But if people are under the illusion that these devices are scientifically proven to keep their minds in shape, they should think again."Quite.
"Our study showed that after training for five weeks subjects didn't just improve at the trained tasks, but they also improved on tests of memory and attention that were not part of the training."I know who I trust to do rigorous and reliable and valid research. Which? do you trust?
Jim Hacker: "Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:
- The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
- The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
- The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
- The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
- The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
- The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
- And the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is."Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, what about the people who read the Sun?"
Bernard Woolley: "Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."
Well, I used to read the Indie, but in between 18 and 25 either it changed or I did or we both did, so I then spent a wasted decade reading the Grauniad. For too long.
"It is such a shame we cannot use the brains that evolution has given us. We may not be fiddling while Rome burns but rather frantically shopping until the planet is destroyed. 'Me now and feck thefuture' is the scream of a culture that is barely out of nappies. It is ugly and pathetic and will be viciously removed by nature- a rather unpleasant prospect for our children.""How Green became a Screen" by Keith Farnish
"Greenpeace, WWF, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and every other mainstream environmental organisation believe that you can "fix" the problems inherent inthe system, to make this planet a better place; that you can appeal to the goodness of politicians and industrialists to make them curb their destructive behaviour; that you can bring about a sustainable society by urging people to change their light bulbs, shower instead of bath, travel a bit less, offset their emissions and recycle."True, but doesn't address the institutional reasons for this, making it not just an issue of ideology, but practicalities (maintaining the flow of direct debits, relations with ministers, the need for regular victories etc etc). And the Thatcherite call- "what's the alternative?" is, to me, unanswered, here at least.
"The motive power of the global economic system seems to have collapsed, and the prints, both tablids and broadsheets, appear to share a common ground of utter incomprehension, manifest contradiction and a capacity for limitless self-delusion."
FWR, 96 Gayton House, Knapp Road, London E3 4BY
Ok ok, the title is a little disingenuous.
But on the stepper at t'gym, I encountered in the space of 10 minutes (or 200 calories), two snippets of interest to armchair beardies (ABs) like me.
In the FT Magazine for Feb 14/15 Anna Brooke does an interview with a Parisian sewer cleaner called Jose Lahaye. He talks about the vicissitudes of the job, and closes out with “Being a sewer man may be dangerous and dirty, but you receive a lot of praise and respect from both the public and the government, and that makes it all worthwhile.”
Which is what the ABs have argued in response to the puerile “well, if there was anarchy, nobody would do the unpleasant jobs” line. As if people who do unpleasant jobs are only motivated by money, or the threat of a bullet.
Later on in the same issue, the brilliant Matthew Engel (his piece on banking in Liechtenstein was fab) visits Summerhill, the (in)famous school Where the Kids Make the Rules..
“It is an illusion that Summerhill has no rules: Neill made a firm distinction between allowing children their own freedom and allowing them to interfere with anyone else's There probably isn't a school in the country with a thicker rule book.... It'sa also an illusion that kids dislike rules. They actually love applying them. They just resent the imposition of them by adults.”
Engel is not starry-eyed of course.
“It would be nice to believe that the absence of pressure to achieve perversely instils a thirst for knowledge and learning, but I saw no evidence of that.... Neil said: 'I would rather Summerhill produced a happy street sweeper than a neurotic prime minister.' But doesn't happiness come from fulfilment? Wouldn't a street sweeper who might have been PM be really neurotic.”
I've long noted that the Life and Arts section of the weekend FT takes artists/writers/film-makers etc who are anarchists and communists seriously, and manages to mention their political beliefs and actions without the standard sneer/smear/patronising chuckle of the Guardian etc. It's (yet another) reason to read the FT, as if all the others weren't enough.
"Japanese roboticist Mashiro Mori, whose study of engineering is heavily influenced by the teachings of Buddhism, posits the theory of the Uncanny Valley. This theory explains how humans react to robots and other non-human beings. The Uncanny Valley theory states that social acceptance of a robot by humans increases as the robot becomes more human-like in quality. Emotional response is increasingly positive as the robot gains more human-like qualities like movement and appearance. However, at a point where an automaton is almost nearly human-like, acceptance of the robot suddenly drops off (MacDorman, 2005), and the emotional response is one of repulsion. This is the point at which a robot is nearly human. Plotted on a graph with reaction and acceptance on the X axis and human-like quality on the Y axis, this dip in the acceptance curve is the 'Uncanny Valley'- a point at which observers find viewing or interacting with the robot disquieting or disturbing (MacDorman, 2005). As the appearance, motion and behaviour of the robot continue to be more indistinguishable than those of a human, emotional response once again rises and approaches human-to-human empathy levels."
from "Robots and Nursing: Concepts, Relationships and Practice"
Aric Campling, Tetsuya Tanioka and Rozzano Locsin
in Technology and Nursing: Practice, Concepts and Issues eds Alan Barnard and Rozzano Locsin Palgrave 2007
Pots and kettles.
It's been a day of being talked at.
I'm in the middle of an extremely interesting and useful course for my work. A lot of effort has gone into putting it together- the speakers are excellent, and I am seriously grateful to the organisers and also to my employer for giving me the time, and paying the costs.
And with that, you just know there is going to be a big but. There so often is with me.
And the but is this: We've had four days almost solid of the same format- 50 or 60 minutes of talking at, with a brief opportunity for questions. (We've also had a smattering of practical demonstrations, with other people giving up their time to make this possible; and again, I'm grateful to them.)
I just wish
a) we'd had some different formats- problem-solving and info-sharing sessions, where we could ask each other for experiences, share ideas and innovations, and also draw on the phenomenal experience of the lecturers.
[I suppose it's the whole open space/unconference thing...]
b) I had the social standing and guts to put this across to the organisers thereof, in a tactful enough manner that it didn't come across as a whine.
During the lunch break I walked past a group of protestors with their trestle table. They're doing good work, patently, on Gaza, but I do wish the 20ish year old student hadn't just spewed long lists of what they were doing/wanted to do, but instead had asked where I was coming from/what I thought. Not because I have any particular expertise/advice worth sharing, but because if he keeps at that, he's going to alienate a lot of people. And Gaza (and by extension Israel) needs all the friends it can get.
Things to (re)-read: that "Time to Listen" book
Pots and kettles.
[I suppose a responsible blogger would share his Profound Thoughts about Erdogan v. Peres, but I'm not, I've not got, and I can't be arsed...]
Davos gadgets
This year's Davos gadget was a little blue pedometer. Each delegate was issued with one and invited to “walk the global village”.
“Be fit, get there quicker and count your steps on the way. Enjoy breathing healthy mountain air. Reduce traffic congestion and contribute to a 'Green Davos'. Be recognised as Walker of the Year 2009”
Anyone who walks more than 20,000 steps is entered in a prize draw. With packed snow on the pavements and waist height drifts on the roadside, there will be more broken bones than on the slopes.
FT 28 Jan 2009 page 18
In downbeat Davos, the happy capitalist is hard to find.
Jeremy Warner
Independent 29 Jan 2009 page 43
“In all the years I've been coming to these annual gatherings of the global business elite, I've never known the mood to be more downbeat, or confidence so deflated. Global capitalism was meant to have all the solutions.
This year, business leaders and bankers are left forlornly wondering what more governments can do to bail them out.”
Problems shaping post-crisis party's guest list
I am now in Davos and preparing to play my part in “shaping the post-crisis world”, which is the official title of this year's forum. I must say this strikes me as over-optimistic. The words “shaping” and “post-crisis” seem misplaced. (I will grudgingly accept “world”.)
But what would be a better title for this year's Davos? “Sinking in quicksand” is closer to the spirit of the times; “Buried under an avalanche of debt” acknowledges our Alpine surroundings; “Up shit creek without a paddle” has an appealing directness and shares more or less the same length and meter as “Shaping the post-crisis”- so that is my favourite for the moment. But I am open to suggestions.
Gideon Rachman
FT 29 Jan 2009
Nobody has a fucking clue, as per William Goldman.
[The World Social Forum, happening simultaneously, seems to have been disappeared.]
The FT has done what it usually does in these circumstances- sent a hefty delegation of reporters, got some guest bloggers etc. And for us time-poor proles, it has published a tabloid sized “Guide to Davos”, entitled “The Magic Mountain.” It's 16 pages. Four of those pages are full-page adverts for wind turbine maker Vestas. I think they hope to make some of the green stuff from green energy...
Anyway a letter in today's FT pointed out, merely name-checking the novel of the same name, written by Thomas Mann, is not really adequate.
Mann wrote a humungous novel (800 pages or so) about a bunch of sick people utterly divorced from th
SPOILER ALERT
he is caught up in a violent global cataclysm and it is not at all sure he lives.
A few years ago American journalist Laurie Garrett was at Davos, and an email she sent to friends leaked, to amusement of most and annoyance of others. It was a minor internet sensation in 2003 (yes, you young folk, we had the internet all the way back in 2003. Steam-driven, with clacker-attacks, it's true, but tinterweb nonetheless):
"The world isn't run by a clever cabal. It's run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. A few have both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive -- especially about science and technology. All of them are financially wise, though their ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock investing. They pay close heed to politics, though most would be happy if the global political system behaved far more rationally -- better for the bottom line. They work very hard, attending sessions from dawn to nearly midnight, but expect the standards of intelligence and analysis to be the best available in the entire world. They are impatient. They have a hard time reconciling long term issues (global warming, AIDS pandemic, resource scarcity) with their daily bottomline foci. They are comfortable working across languages, cultures and gender, though white caucasian males still outnumber all other categories. They adore hi-tech gadgets and are glued to their cell phones."
[emphasis added]
Compare with this, from the FT supplement's roundtable discussion.
Gideon Rachman: “...but what you saw all the time at Davos was a huge faith in technology. But I wonder whether that technological optimism is, along with the market optimism, going to be diminished.”
The discussion is worth a read- it covered the usual: Economic Crisis, Banking/Global Economy, China/emerging markets, the end of Davos?, Barack Obama and the US, Climate Change, predictions for 2009.
Apparently you can listen to the whole thing at www.ft.com/roundtable
And finally, no discussion about the entirely sane and rational and peace-loving lotus-eaters who attend Omnicorp summits like this is ever complete without a compare and contrast with Davros, genteel scientist...
Facebook and Twitter (“FaT”) are not just methods of communication and exchange. [Just as a car not just a box with wheels that converts dead pressed ferns into kinetic energy and carbon emissions.]
They are- like cars- vehicles of display; we display ourselves and seek affirmation and validation through these technologies.
In FaT you accumulate popularity points. “Friends” and “followers.” Friends are easier to come by- asking someone to follow you seems a bit more like wheedling and neediness. Maybe this will change if Twitter starts a “push” technology of suggesting followers of followers (the maths would perhaps be tricky, but there are smart people out there who'll try to monetize this).
And inevitably there are “bandwidth bandits”- namely those users who break the “untyped” rules of etiquette, and over-send. These are either de-friended or unfollowed (“fallowed”, perhaps?)
In both there is a semi-visible gardener tending the “weeds”. Facebook has a spam filter that over-reacts on occasion and threatens to bar users for sending similar messagers out. Twitter disables accounts that seem suspicious- weird names that are strings of letters probably generated by robots/spiders/whatever-Wired-is-calling-this-stuff-these-days.
Twitter, I think, will be more useful for finding out new things, and making links that could get you a new job, a new way of seeing the world or whatever. And this is perhaps an example of the famous “Strength of Weak Ties”- most of the people you know (Friends) are exposed to the same info as you, on the same wavelength or whatever. But your “followers” tend to be random people you never met. And they tend to have little snippets and titbits and jobleads and all the rest of it.
(I'd recommend Philip Ball's “Critical Mass” for more on weak ties and social networks etc)
Practicalities
Facebook has the edge at the moment for advertising events, certainly in Manchester. That's simply Metcalfe's law- there are gazillions of facebookers, but fewer than a thousand Manchester twitterers. This will change, of course.
The limits of twitter- the 140 character limit demands the ability to compress your thoughts, and to use tinyurls, which are functional but aesthetically dubious. Some people are unable/unwilling to compress, and will witter rather than twitter: They will either vote with their thumbs and not use it or else send tweets spread over multiple messages, which is Bad Form Old Chap...
Twitter is “newer” in popularity, and so has a geek/early adopter cache.
Other people's posts on Facebook v. Twitter
“The usefulness of Twitter is not readily as obvious to some people as Facebook; although it may be more addictive once you get the hang of Tweeting; you get more immediate responses and it seems to live somewhere between the worlds of email, instant messaging and blogging. Twitter encourages constant “linking out” to anywhere and, in that respect, is more analogous to a pure search engine; another way to find people and content all over the Net.
"Twitter has quickly built brand awareness and a loyal following, especially among the technically adept; bloggers, online marketers, evangelists, basically anyone with something to promote seem to find Twitter extremely valuable.”
by Guest Poster on December 20, 2008
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Twitter addict. I use Twitter daily; however, my uses aren’t to update friends. My sole purpose for using Twitter is to find others within my niche. I use it as a listening tool. I get a real-time pulse of the Tech sector, politics and any news via Twitter.
Bottom Line:
Facebook’s main purpose centers on furthering and cultivating relationships with already established friends
Twitter’s main purpose centers on social networking (meeting people across the world with similar interests)”
Good post from all the way back in July 2008!
UPDATE:
This from the fiends at readwriteweb
"Twitter May Have Found its Business Model"
127.9 kilos this morning. So, down 2.5 kilos in total over two weeks, which isn't bad going, I suppose, even if that figure (ho ho) disguises the fact that most of the weight was lost in the first week. But we're dealing with such piddling amounts per week that you just have to plod on for MONTHS. So be it.
Feel a lot better, stronger. May have even put some muscle bulk on quads and hams and glutes. Have been laying off the upper body workouts for just such a reason.
Ta to Pete for being shocked and appalled at my post-stepper pizza plan. It dissuaded me, perhaps for good...
Hard to see when I am going to get some proper sessions in next week, unless first thing in morning (only 60 mins), since every night is sort of booked with meetings and stuff...
First thanks to Tim Difford for patient coaxing above and
beyond the call of duty to get me close enough to Twitter
so that Chi-Chi Ekweozor could deliver the coup de grace
at the Social Media event last night.
I came home and got going, following TD's rule for
world domination.
And made a photo using,"Paint".
And didn't Read the Effing Manual. So sent direct messages
out as updates, having already widgetted the
Manchester Climate Fortnightly blog.
So now everyone knows the names of my cats. Well, my
wife's cats technically.
What impressions?
140 characters imposes a pitch-perfect level of discipline.
Can anyone tell me whether this was accident or design?
Did the Twitter-meisters tool around with different lengths,
or was it serendipity, like SMS itself?
It's patently addictive.
It could easily be my number one time blackhole, the way
Scrabulous was six months ago.
It is going to have very interesting effects on how people
communicate with each other.
[Ed: that's enough banalities for now]
Siggie Freud is known for a lot of things, which shan't detain us here.
[Funniest Freud thing I ever read was a play called “Le Visiteur” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, set in 1938 Vienna. The Nazis are there, Anna's trying to get dad to London and someone turns up plausibly claiming to be God, wanting psychoanalysis because he's depressed about the coming 6 years... Check it out! But I digress]
Am just reading about him and the possible organic base for the “ego-defence mechanisms” in “Phantoms in the Brain”, a top notch popular science book by a journalist Sandra Blakeslee and an absurdly astute neuroscientist called V.S. Ramachandran. But I digress again.
One Freudian insight most people like is the “slips of the tongue” thing. It's technically known as parapraxis-
"A minor error, such as a slip of the tongue, thought to reveal a repressed motive."
Well, my favourite read, the FT, has lines worth reading between. And parapraxis.
In “California scheming”- an article on infotech/clean tech and the idea of a “smart grid” there is the following admission.
"While it prides itself on a brand of hypercapitalism defined by the self-reliance of its entrepreneurs and the almost constant state of creative destruction in which they work, the Valley has long been a big beneficiary of government largesse. From the defence build-up that helped to create the semiconductor industry to the birth of the internet (itself initially a project of the Pentagon), much of the research and early contracts for new technologies has been funded by the taxpayer."
This of course will come as No Surprise to anyone who knows the concept of Military Keynesianism. Noam Chomsky is extremely strong on this stuff. See here for a review of a good book about him, that has a quote about MK.
Enoch Powell was a High Tory as well as a racist. There's his infamous and career-ending “Rivers of Blood" speech but there's also the sharp understanding that Great Britain had, really, lost World War Two to the Americans, with the British Empire subsumed within the Pax Americana. (Empires often take over other empires as semi-going concerns- the Brits had done it with the Portuguese. But I digress...)
Powell also said something along the lines that British Foreign Policy (now) consisted of doing what the Americans wanted, before being asked.
And we have this in today's (15 Jan 2008) FT.“The defence secretary, John Hutton, is to attack the commitment of the UK's EU allies to the war in Afghanistan, saying Europe can no longer continue “freeloading” on the back of US military security.”
And since we all know Obama wants an extra 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, I think we can see what signal HMG is trying to send him...
If you really want the skinny on “the Special Relationship”, and the mechanics of how the Americans have ensured a biddable British elite, then you need to look at “parapolitics”. And one of the best places to start for that is Lobster Magazine, issue 56 of which is reviewed here.
