Links of the Future

Welcome to Tuesday, April 30th 2013, traveler. It's two weeks since the Boston Marathon bombing vividly illustrated the way that our shrinking world causes far-flung cultures, ideologies and histories to collide.

• Did 'self-complexity' allow alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to hide his terrorist leanings from others?
• Keeping it in the family - why cousin marriage is more common in less democratic states (here is John Green on famous people who married their first cousin).
• Get your Stat Geek on as Steven Wolfram breaks down the demographics of Facebook. If you want to volunteer all your personal FB data for science, you can get the Wolfram-Alpha app here.
• The Underwear Effect - why people text message in the language they are most comfortable in.
• On being the only black guy at the indie rock show.
• Google shutting down Google Reader begs the question: would the government ever nationalize Google?
• Content filtering is censorship. Marketing is propaganda. Personalized marketing is surveillance. The IT industry as a tool of oppressive government.
• Hear Alexander Graham Bell speak.
• "The Lancet wishes to correct, after an unduly prolonged period of reflection... it's obituary of Dr. John Snow" - Dr. Snow, who identified the method of transmission of the cholera epidemic, died in 1858.
• Why do bulls get better at fighting bull-fighters, but whales do not get better at fighting whalers? Interesting (but long) article on Moby Dick, Hemmingway, sociology and biology. 
• Mexican eco-terrorists declare war on nanotechnology - I guess it's a preemptive strike?

Here are pictures of big cats acting like house cats. A brilliant tumblr: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Can I Trust Google?

Google is rolling out a new service today, "Google Keep," which promises to be a direct competitor to EverNote and ties into Google Drive, which I already use. And as always, it's free. Sounds like a great deal, right? But as I think about giving it a spin, I have a twinge of misgiving. It's a new feeling: doubt. Can I trust Google?

Will this great, free new service stick around? Will Google keep Google Keep? Or will it eventually get the axe?

The WaPo faces the same problem:

Google now has a clear enough track record of trying out, and then canceling, “interesting” new software that I have no idea how long Keep will be around. When Google launched its Google Health service five years ago, it had an allure like Keep’s: here is the one place you could store your prescription info, test readings, immunizations, and so on and know that you could get at them. That’s how I used it — until Google cancelled this “experiment” last year. Same with Google Reader, and all the other products in the Google Graveyard that Slate produced last week.

And if there’s even a 25 percent chance that Google Keep will be canceled in two years, do you really want to be the sucker who spent endless hours organizing your life around it?

Now, most people don’t use Google Reader, or even know it’s being canceled. Same for Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google Health and Picnik, and all the rest of the beloved little apps that have been sent to that cloud above the cloud, where data is stored forever and servers never overload. This is a pained whine emanating almost exclusively from Google power users.

Most people, however, also aren’t the sort of early adopters who will rush to download Google Keep. But Fallows is that kind of early adopter. So am I. And Google needs early adopters. They need weirdos to rush to download their new apps, try them out, offer feedback, and, ultimately, proselytize to their friends. And I do all that! For instance, have you ever tried using Sleep Cycle? This isn’t an early adopter thing — the app has been around for awhile — but I just started using it and am now annoying everyone I know badgering them to try waking up to Sleep Cycle. It’ll change your life.

But I’m not sure I want to be a Google early adopter anymore. I love Google Reader. And I used to use Picnik all the time. I’m tired of losing my services.

We're starting to see the dark side of 'free' services. Because we're not paying customers for these services, companies like Google have no incentive to keep them running when they wear out their welcome or some Google exec decides on a whim to put the axe to them.

The End of Blogging?

In a statement that has rocked the blogosphere to its core, Google has announced that as part of its annual 'spring cleaning' it will be shuttering Google Reader:

We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.

There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

To ensure a smooth transition, we’re providing a three-month sunset period so you have sufficient time to find an alternative feed-reading solution.

The problem is, there is no alternate feed reading solution. Google Reader has become the alpha and omega of RSS feed aggregation.

Hang 'Em High, Boys - The Digital Lynch Mob

Blogger Nathan Bransford writes about a Twitter 'witch hunt' that began Sunday night during the Oscars when someone from The Onion tweeted an offensive joke about 9-year-old actress and nominee Quvenzhané Wallis:

The outcry on Twitter started off merely aghast. Then, as can happen when people collectively find something to be outraged about, the anger cascaded and multiplied. People called The Onion out, called for resignations and firings, called for heads, and often in language as offensive as the language people ostensibly found objectionable.

On a night where my Twitter feed had started with people being complete jerks to Anne Hathaway for no apparent reason, all the negative energy swirling around Twitter suddenly found an even easier target.

I'm not defending The Onion's tweet by any means. It wasn't a good joke and they rightly apologized for it.

But it's kind of amazing to me how the Twitterverse can be correct about something but manage to take its self-righteous outrage so far it somehow starts feeling wrong.

It starts feeling like a witch hunt. In a medium that by its nature is effectively devoid of nuance to start with, whatever balance is possible is completely lost. And good luck to anyone who tries to stand in front of the herd and appeal for reason.

Bransford goes on to mention the marathon and generator 'scandals' that swept the internet after Hurricane Sandy.

As recently as last week, security analyst and author Bruce Schneier wrote about how the internet enables The Court of Public Opinion:

Elon Musk

Recently, Elon Musk and the New York Times took to Twitter and the Internet to argue the data -- and their grievances -- over a failed road test and car review. Meanwhile, an Applebee's server is part of a Change.org petition to get her job back after posting a pastor's no-tip receipt comment online. And when he wasn't paid quickly enough, a local Fitness SF web developer rewrote the company's webpage to air his complaint.

All of these "cases" are seeking their judgments in the court of public opinion. The court of public opinion has a full docket; even brick-and-mortar establishments aren't immune.

More and more individuals -- and companies -- are augmenting, even bypassing entirely, traditional legal process hoping to get a more favorable hearing in public.

Schneier calls the "Court of Public Opinion" and alternative system of justice. But despite being one that takes place in the digital age, on the internet, it's not a new system:

The court of public opinion has significant limitations. It works better for revenge and justice than for dispute resolution. It can punish a company for unfairly firing one of its employees or lying in an automobile test drive, but it's less effective at unraveling a complicated patent litigation or navigating a bankruptcy proceeding.

In many ways, this is a return to a medieval notion of "fama," or reputation. In other ways, it's like mob justice: sometimes benign and beneficial, sometimes terrible (think French Revolution). Trial by public opinion isn't new; remember Rodney King and O.J. Simpson?
Mass media has enabled this system for centuries. But the Internet, and social media in particular, has changed how it's being used.

Now it's being used more deliberately, more often, by more and more powerful entities as a redress mechanism. Perhaps because it's perceived to be more efficient or perhaps because one of the parties feels they can get a more favorable hearing in this new court, but it's being used instead of lawsuits. Instead of a sideshow to actual legal proceedings, it is turning into an alternate system of dispute resolution and justice.

Whoever wrote The Onion Twitter joke will likely lose their job. That Applebee's server will likely get her job back. Seems legit, right? It's not as though we're hunting people down with torches and stringing them up from the nearest tall tree.

But consider these examples: in 2006 in China an internet video showing a woman in high heels stomping a kitten to death sparked widespread outrage. Internet users across China pieced together clues from the video to identify the woman and get her fired from her job. This phenomenon has become increasingly common since, acquiring the name human flesh search.

The Lost Art of Making a Mix Tape

Is the ‘Mix Tape’ a lost art? If you actually made a cassette tape of music probably very few people could play it anymore. But even the venerable Mix CD may seem increasingly irrelevant. Why go to the bother of burning and handing out CDs that can only hold a limited amount of music when you could digitally distribute unlimited amounts music in mp3 form?

I’d argue that those limitations are exactly what keeps the Mix CD relevant. The format limits you to 80 minutes of music. That’s pretty spacious, but it still means you have to be selective about what you put on it. And because most mailboxes these days are filled with nothing but flyers and credit card offers, finding something as personal as a Mix CD in there is that much more meaningful.

A CD with a discrete, ordered tracklist also offers something an individual mp3 cannot: context. Personally, one of the things I enjoy most about making mixes is ordering songs in such a way that they either flow into each other or highlight contrasting sounds. Even on traditional albums the tracks are ordered the way they are for a reason. On a couple of occasions I’ve listened to CDs for the first time in the ‘wrong order’ due to technical difficulties. It’s amazing how much more enjoyable they are when the order of the songs is what the artist intended.

In my opinion the personalized Mix CD is still relevant. In fact in this day of instantaneous messaging and digital downloads, having someone drop a CD in your mailbox could seem quite personal. Mix CDs make great gifts when funds are low!

What songs you should put on a CD, what flow it should have, whether you should limit yourself to ten or fill up the entire CD... those are subjective. Make the mix you want to make. But I’m going to tell you how to make one that sounds good. Not in an artistic sense (that’s subjective) but in a technical sense.

More than a feeling

What is love? A micro-moment of positive resonance doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the popular song. But in an article in The Atlantic, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson suggests that love is exactly that:

Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.

Rather, it is what she calls a "micro-moment of positivity resonance." She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in "It's a Wonderful World" when he sang, "I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"

Fredrickson seems to be attempting to quantify love, or at least isolate its sources. Turning our most powerful emotion into 'micro-moments of positive resonance' may feel like its on the same level with explaining The Force through midi-chlorians: it robs it of its mystery. But if Dr. Fredrickson is onto something, maybe we can up our midi-chlorian count and get better at falling in love.

E-Book Retailers vs. Common Sense

Joanna Cabot has written a fantastic open letter to E-Book retailers. It begins:

Dear E-Book Retailers:

I’ve read so many wacky news stories this week that my head is spinning.

There was the Random House thing—the idea that a publisher actually had to explain to its paying customers whether they owned their bought books or not just boggles my mind. Then there was the Norwegian lady who had all her books deleted, then un-deleted, by Amazon. And the assertion by a Kobo tech support person that accounts belong not to households but the one sole individual whose name is on the credit card …

She makes some excellent points, points which I think will have legal ramifications for 'e-tailers' in the future. For instance, that button? On your website? That I click to purchase the e-book? It says BUY NOW. Not RENT NOW or LEASE NOW, but BUY NOW.

On this issue, I think it should be clear. If the button said ‘buy now’ and I clicked on it and I paid anything remotely resembling full retail price, I should own the book. And therefore, I should be free to read it on any device I choose, with no limits—no ‘only five devices,’ or ‘only Amazon devices,’ or any such nonsense.

  Read the whole thing here. Then re-post it to the world!