FCOL, Saul Hansell

By far, Saul Hansell is one of the coolest writers for the NYT bits blog– when he doesn’t act like a total JERK, that is. The jerk attitude comes out when he becomes an ignorant American and tries to be all inventive and suggest certain services as if they were completely his own idea. I mean, I’m sure they were his ideas, but shouldn’t he do some basic research to check and see if his great ideas were already in the works?

I don’t blame him for being ignorant; we do it all the time. We make suggestions; ideas that we think are brilliant. Because they probably are. After all, great minds think alike.

But Hansell works for the NYT. It’s not a private blog like this one that gets 10 random users a day (and even those people get here by googling terms like ‘unicorn sex’ so they’re not reading my stuff about new media). He has more responsibility to do research before he writes. Take, for instance, his post on using cellphones as verification tools “Could a cellphone app do that for us?” he asks (Duh, it’s already happening in other countries). A few weeks later, he announces that an iphone app based on that very idea has hit the market. Gee, are we supposed to clap and cheer?

Crowd-sourcing and Lawyering 2.0

A lot of crowd-sourcing seems to be going on these days– if it has to do with information that is not confidential, why not get more people to think about it? The more heads, the better, right?

In the Joel Tenenbaum case against the RIAA led by Prof. Nesson, this “Lawyering 2.0″ has produced interesting results, with people suggesting questions we could ask the witnesses. Hopefully, we will be able to get the public more involved with some new issues, some of which we hope to launch soon. Separately, Prof. Zittrain’s Herdict project is also trying to harness wisdom of the crowd to figure out which websites are blocked around the world. In another case, Prof. Lessig is seeking the knowledge of the at-large audience in defending Shepard Fairey against AP. Hundreds of examples could be found in art history where works were based on existing works. Hopefully, some art-savvy people will be able to help out in finding similar examples.

Digital Brats

I feel that communications technologies- as they become more advanced- are not making human beings more sophisticated, but rather nurturing immaturity and insolence.

I am only speaking from a communications point of view, because I believe that new technology such as the Internet, cell phones, and games all have tremendous benefits. However, when it comes to actual face-to-face communications, these technologies are rather hindering quality communications and deteriorating individual manners.

For example, how many times does your opposite speaker answer his or her cell phone during a talk? It used to be that one would apologize to the other person and answer the phone- but then, as text-messaging took off, people start texting without stopping to excuse himself to the other person. Technically, it makes sense, because the person texting a message only has his hands occupied and his ears are still open to what the person in front of him is saying. But then came the Blackberry and the iPhone and now people are replying to and checking their emails during a physical conversation. All this is done without the apologetic “one moment, please” to the speaker in real life.

This kind of behavior among adults is something that would usually be found in children; for instance when children will be texting or playing video games, ignoring what the parent is saying. Unlike children, however, the reason behind adults’ behavior is not because they want to avoid conversation, it is because they are in too much of a rush to wait.

In the “olden days” there would be no way out in situations where a conversation (or lecture, sermon, conference, etc.) was uninteresting. But with technology, it is becoming more common to peruse on digital devices without giving the impression of being wholly detached. Great programs such as twitter or live question tools sometimes become a place where people can distract themselves without feeling entirely guilty.

This, to a certain extent, has relation with speed. The swift connection to Internet lets one click from here to there; ubiquitous mobile connection to the Internet makes cyber perusing even easier. Function replaces form and time/energy are not wasted as people multitask. Are we becoming more efficient or inhuman? With all this connectivity, why is it that people are becoming more isolated in the real world and closer in cyber? Why should these two be separate at all?

-yvette wohn

Texting during a video conversation.

Yesterday, I was waiting to meet someone at Pasgucci and was looking around, bored. I noted unsurprisingly, that half the people were on their cell phones. I was intrigued, however, by the girls sitting next to me. They looked like they were in their early twenties and they were having a video call with a boy using a cell phone. The girls took turns talking with the boy but interestingly they spoke very little; instead, looking at the boy’s face on the screen, they rapidly used their thumbs, engaging in a text conversation.

That struck me as being very weird- is it faster for them to text than talk? I was puzzling over this thought in my head- if that were indeed true, what an evolutionary milestone in communication that would be! My curiosity finally got the better of me and when they were over with the phone call, I asked them why they were texting instead of talking.

The answer turned to out to be a simple one- result of technology and etiquette. The girls said that in video phoning, they had to speak a little louder for the phone to catch their voice since they were holding the phones in front of their face; not directly next to their mouth. Because of this, it was more difficult to hold private conversations and they didn’t want to disturb the people around them.

-But then why not have a regular conversation instead of a video one? Isn’t video phoning more expensive?
-Yes, but he wanted to see my friend too.

Ah yes, video phoning makes it very difficult to lie about where you are and whom you are with. Not that people do…or do they?