Ming the Mechanic
The NewsLog of Flemming Funch

Wednesday, May 14, 2003day link 

 Social Software
There's a buzz about social software, software for better connecting people together, facilitating that they find like-minded people, work more closely together, etc. Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes and now Groove, says:
"What's incredibly exciting to me is that a confluence of factors e.g. ubiquitous computing, networking, web and RAD technologies, the state of the job market - in essence, loosely coupled systems and loosely coupled minds - have created what amounts to a petri dish for experimentation in systems for social network formation, management and interpersonal interaction. An exciting time to be exploring what may happen to social structures, to organizations and to society when the friction between our minds can be reduced to zero ... to the point where we can truly have superconductive relationships."
Superconductive Relationships! Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. But, if you follow the link to Don Park's Blog to "Misgivings about Social Software", you'll see that there are also potentially negative sides to examine.
"Korea is emerging as one of the most advanced Internet nation in the world. Young Koreans, in particular, live and breath Internet, each belonging to large number of online communities. One would expect them to be well informed and objective, yet they are not. Their views are warped and often radical. While all the world's information is at their fingertip, they consume information subjectively and produce misinformation biased by their views. Adding highly effective social software to this is frightening to me.

When I was last in Korea, a close friend of mine told me he was thinking about sending his six-year old daughter to schools in the US. I was shocked. How could he think this way? He said he initially thought the idea ridiculous, but he changed his mind after talking with people he knew, people who are just as well-to-do as his family. Apparently, they are all thinking the same thing and this warped his common sense."
There's a point there. Sufficiently pervasive and effective social software might allow groups of people to walk around in a completely different reality, and have it be continuously reinforced by people you're connected with. I suppose we're for example talking about players of online multi-player virtual reality games. And I do notice that for my 16 year old son, his social relationships within Asheron's Call, or whatever he's playing right now, often are more real than then ones in this world. And if we make the software better and better? Hmmm.
[ | 2003-05-14 15:01 | 10 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Citizen Reporters in South Korea
From Smart Mobs:
Ohmynews's influence was highlighted after an American military armored vehicle ran down and killed two South Korean schoolgirls last June.

While the accident attracted relatively little attention in the mainstream press initially, Ohmynews was aggressive in its coverage. The stories prompted one "citizen reporter" to call for protests.

The idea snowballed and South Korea experienced some of its largest anti-U.S. demonstrations in years and calls for a review of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance.

Mainstream newspapers later criticized Ohmynews, questioning whether it was ethical for a so-called reporter to incite demonstrations.

The fast rise in popularity of Ohmynews, and other online news services, is partly attributable to South Korea's high Internet use. About 70 percent of homes have high-speed broadband Internet access connections -- more than anywhere else in the world.

Paik Hak-soon, a political analyst at the Sejong Institute research center, said "the mainstream press still has the ear of the majority of the public. But things are changing."

"Twenty- and 30-year-olds are getting their news from the Internet," he said.

[ | 2003-05-14 16:57 | 0 comments | PermaLink ]

 The Daily Show
I agree with Lisa Rein that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the best damn news program on American TV. Mind you, this is a satirical show on the Comedy Channel. That's about the only way you can speak the truth about current events on broadcast TV in the U.S. Embed it in comedy. Well, *some* of the truth at least.

Tonight he interviewed Diane Ravitch, author of "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn". You see, in the U.S. it is rather tricky to write a text book for school children. Oh, not particularly because what you teach has to be correct. Rather because there's a very long list of things you aren't allowed to say, or you'll be censored, including 150 words you can't use. And, no we're not even talking about sex and traditional "bad" words. Rather words like "busboy" or "landlord", because they're sexist, or words like "imbecile" or "idiot" because they discriminate against dumb people. And stuff along the lines of: You can't include cake in a story, because it isn't nutritious. A story that is set in the mountains discriminates against students from flatlands. You can't write about old people acting like they're old. You can't say anything about people being blind or deaf. You can't mention anybody's race. Sheesh, I don't know what there's left to talk about? Certainly not the real world.
[ | 2003-05-14 23:59 | 0 comments | PermaLink ]

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