Books

Do I believe in Web 2.0 or what is the point of Facebook

A couple of days ago at the Sour Herring dinner at Lund one of my companions at the table said that he did not believe in Web 2.0. Interaction, he said, was overrated. Most of us around the table took the remark as humor and we were satisfied with this.

But the remark has been gnawing at the back of my mind. Do I believe in Web 2.0?

At first this may seem like a strange question, coming from me. I blog and participate in other blogs. I have set up and run wiki’s and used these technologies in the classroom, in research and with friends. Still the question is rather valid.

No blogs and wiki’s don’t require that you believe in them. If they are useful they will be used. I enjoy them and use them as a central part of my work (and play). But what about the more typical social networking sites?

Just to name a few I am a member at Technorati, Linkedin and Facebook. I have even upgraded my free account on flickr to pro (which means I am paying money for it). Besides flickr the usefulness of the others is unclear to me. Technorati is not much of a social networking site it is more of an aggregator for blogs – so let’s move on.

Linkedin seems to be a more formal social networking site based upon professional contacts. It is not really designed to encourage wide scale use. Facebook on the other hand it something quite different.

Facebook is a huge social networking site where people are actively encouraged to collect friends and interact with them by comparing films, music and books. The site encourages users to play games with each other such as the presently popular war of the vampires.

With all these applications I can really see that users can spend literally hours online finding and interacting with their online friends but after some testing I still am struck by the sensation or feeling: What is the point of facebook? It is surprising to see how many people are using it – in particular its appeal the the large group of non-techie or non-Web 2.0 crowd. But I still don’t really get it. What is the allure of this site? What need or desire does the site fulfill?

Or is it simply that the social interaction between friends, even in an online virtual forum, is the whole point. Oh well, I would like to analyze this further but unfortunately I need to update my profile 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Made my day

Professor Conor Gearty writes in “Can Human Rights Survive?” (2006):

These kinds of issues are difficult but they are what set the ethical framework for the future. Books like that edited by Mathias Klang and Andrew Murray on Human Rights in the Digital Age, should be required reading for all those interested in the future good health of our subject. It is the future battlegrounds that Human Rights supporters should be identifying and occupying, not wasting valuable time and energy re-fighting old wars. (p 146)

That just about made my day. I really should just leave my work and drink coffee, feeling good about myself for the rest of the day. Why not the whole weekend…

Posted on by mklang

Fear and Courage

Naturally no one can live life through quotations but there are some quotations that kind of manage to capture a sentiment of importance. These also tend to stick in my mind – not that I remember the exact quote, more the general idea. While in Kalmar I came across a second hand bookshop and found a philosophical book on the topic of courage. I am looking forward to reading it.

One of the more curious quotes that I like is from Camilo Jose Cela’s Journey to the Alcarria

Sometimes one has frightening sensations of well-being, strong enough to move mountains; one must fight them courageously, as one would fight an enemy. And then, with the passage of time, they leave something like a drop of gall in ones heart…

Contentment is one of the more dangerous enemies that prevent our development. When we arrive in a situation of contentment we occasionally do not dare to take a risk that may help us develop. Not really sure about the “drop of gall” part.

Part of the problem is the fear of failure or the fear of losing out. But, to quote another writer, there is another way of looking at this problem:

By embracing the inescapable, I lost my fear of it. I’ll tell you a secret about fear: its an absolutist. With fear, its all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes like a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despots fall, has more or less nothing to do with ‘courage’. It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life.

This is from Salman Rushdie’s “The Moors Last Sigh” and it hits the exact point that the fear of fear is more serious than the thing we fear itself. Overcoming our fears are as Rushdie puts it not really a matter of being overly courageous but more a need to get on with our lives…

Posted on by mklang

Passing Through

Some of you may have noticed I ride a lot of trains. Not only have I done so but with my new job I will be on even more trains. I like trains (good thing too). Train stations, however, tend to be rather boring. Today I came across an interesting exception.

My journey from Kalmar to Lund included a 20 minute stop in Alvesta. Not really enough time for sightseeing but enough for a brief look at the station house. To my surprise not only was the station house a rather grand building on its own it also included a micro exhibition on Carl von Linneaus and a second hand bookshop.

Alvesta Station House in 1907

What can I say – I almost missed the connecting train…

Posted on by mklang

For the children…

A recent AP-Ipsos poll in August showed that Americans don’t read much. One in four Americans did not read books at all. The poll shows that they tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious. While polls such as these may be interesting or indicative they are hardly the stuff of serious science.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” (pdf) found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade.

So is reading important? Well you can find plenty of people who would argue that reading books is not an essential skill. But after looking at a video of Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss Teen USA South Carolina I think that the most people would agree that reading is important.

She is attempting to address the issue of why most Americans cannot find their own country on a world map. I think her solution is to help the rest of the world to become just as dumb as Americans.

miss.jpg

Please avoid the temptation to make obvious blond jokes!

Update:

After her answer became an online & offline sensation Lauren Caitlin Upton was a guest on Tuesdays Today show and gave this answer:

Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t. And if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography in our education so people will learn how to read maps better.

You can watch that video here.

Posted on by mklang

Smell the Book

Arguments against ebooks is that they are not as practical as traditional books. They need power, they don’t fold well, they are not comfortable to read in the bath… But have you ever thought about the smell of real books?

“…ebook content provider CafeScribe is going pretty low-tech to give your laptop screen the same scent as a textbook: the company is shipping “musty-smelling” scratch-and-sniff stickers with every ebook order. The promotion comes in response to a survey showing that 43 percent of students identified smell as the thing they most liked about their favorite books….” [Engadget]

(via The Shifted Librarian)

Posted on by mklang

Open Library

Boing Boing reports about a cool Open Library project:

The Internet Archive has launched a demo of the Open Library, a project that seeks to gather all the information about all the world’s books and make it publicly available as a giant books wiki.

While many books are making their way online for free access, most still are restricted or cost money to touch. The Open Library combines links to open resources with information on in-copyright works and enables you and me to review, annotate, correct and convene.

I think this project (which right now seems to point to almost half a million books) is very cool — it’s going to be a major addition to the world’s open cultural infrastructure. I have a hunch that it’s going to be the primary way many if not most people access books, and I see it becoming an always-open window on the desk of every librarian.

Aaron Swartz led this project, which was conceived by Brewster Kahle — please send them support, critiques and book databases!

Lets hope the project grows!

Posted on by mklang

Librarians Rock

The general image of the librarian is definitely uncool but this image has been changing for a long time. When the New York Times published its article A Hipper Crowd of Shushers last week (8 July) this was a sign of the times.

Librarians? Arenâ??t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons â?? the ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging…

How did such a nerdy profession become cool â?? aside from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies.

The upcoming documentary The Hollywood Librarian (release 29 September) will also become part of the way in which the perception of librarians is changing.

Instead of being only the strict formal organizer the librarian is actually on the forefront of several important debates in the information society. The questions of access to knowledge, privacy, free speech, open access and parts of the DRM debate are being lively discussed among librarians.

Posted on by mklang

The invisible man of graffiti art

The New Yorker has published a long piece on Banksy, sub-titled “The invisible man of graffiti art”. Banksy is the famous, but anonymous, UK graffiti artist whose work is a mix of cheeky social commentary and plain fun. Not much is known for sure, but the article writes:

This much is certain: around 1993, his graffiti began appearing on trains and walls around Bristol; by 2001, his blocky spray-painted signature had cropped up all over the United Kingdom…

Since street art is ephemeral, he occasionally issues books filled with photographs of his work, accompanied by his own text. He self-published his first three volumes, â??Existencilism,â?? â??Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall,â?? and â??Cut It Out.â?? His latest, â??Wall and Piece,â?? was published by Random House and has sold more than two hundred and fifty thousand copies…

Ralph Taylor, a specialist in the Sothebyâ??s contemporary-art department, said of Banksy, â??He is the quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.â?? Banksy responded to the Sothebyâ??s sale by posting a painting on his Web site. It featured an auctioneer presiding over a crowd of rapt bidders, with the caption â??I canâ??t believe you morons actually buy this shit.â??

Besides his own website and his books there are plenty of images on Flickr (over 18000 images) that have been attributed to Banksy. They may be originals or simply followers of the Banksy style.

Posted on by mklang

Social Idiocy

Historian Barbara Tuchman has written several fascinating books (many of which have been top sellers). One of her most interesting books is March of Folly (1984). In which she studies human stupidity in history.

Tuchman sets specific standards to what is to be defined as stupidity (or folly as she prefers to call it). To be understood as folly, acts have to be clearly contrary to the self-interest of the organization or group pursuing them; conducted over a period of time, not just in a single burst of irrational behavior; conducted by a number of individuals, not just one deranged maniac; and, importantly, there have to be people alive at the time who pointed out correctly why the act in question was folly (no 20/20 hindsight allowed).

Itâ??s easy to understand why this book is fascinating. We are often fed with success stories but I believe that we have more to learn from failures. Success can always be attributed to a number of vague and contradictory reasons but never really pinned down â?? success can be a result of dumb luck. Failure on the other hand can be studied.

But Tuchman has a specific type of folly in mind. My thought for today is more concerned with the stupid move the idiot idea. Not quite a total nutcase but more the act of sheer dumbness that is done unintentionally. OK so we have the Darwin Awards for those who manage to remove themselves from the gene pool and phenomenon like Jackass for pubescent humor â?? but who studies the fuck up?

What I am thinking about is the social Darwin awards. People who manage to remove themselves from a social group (friends, job, hobby) through an act of sheer dumbness.

If man is a social animal then how is it that we can be socially so inept? Sorry about this strange rant. If you are still reading this you must be wondering about my weekend� It was very nice thanks!

Posted on by mklang