unintendedconsequences

So I’m giving Twitter a go, and so far the jury is out. You answer the question “What are you doing?”, which connects you to a community of other users. From the banal to the beastly, everyone’s daily habits and tasks revealed. I’m not sure I get the appeal as yet, but further investigation may prove fruitful.

Update: reading some thoughts on Twitter and its significance in the digital landscape.

During one of our podcasts, we discussed the difference between user-centered design and user design. As I recall (and the details are hazy - my mind is a sieve), social technology is intended to serve as a forum for sharing not just creative product, but also ideas and reactions that germinate from users’ participation.

Today’s NY Times Magazine discusses an interesting phenomenon on YouTube: the increase of discussions centering around content that seeks to explore “ideological polemics - not kittens and skateboard crashes,” thus creating a dialog that transcends the original content’s subject matter. While many users still rely on YouTube to engage in voyeuristic witnessing of the dumb and dumber, the site also provides opportunity for discussion among a tightly-wound (and rather effervescent) community of theological scholars:

This level of bombast, along with the anachronistic locutions, is not uncommon on YouTube. “The Truth About Islam” seems to have attracted Internet buffs who savor the theatrics of formal debate. From their cultural allusions, it appears that many of them grew up on science fiction and courtroom dramas, as well as the Bible or the Koran. Several boast of owning, enslaving and burying their opponents with wit. They also call each other “fools,” “zygotes,” “sophists,” “tumors,” “ghouls” and “voles.” In one wounding exchange, Crusader18 says to budavol, a tenacious spokesman for secular values: “Your bigotry towards Christians leads me to believe you may have been molested by a priest . . . I hope he didn’t catch anything from you.”

Harsh. Certainly this is not for all audiences. But as a commenter named AuraX says of the message board, “this is the battlefield” — a rabbley showdown that positions itself along the fault lines of the world’s great debates.

Also be sure to check out NYTimes The Medium, a terrific place to peruse all that’s happening in the blogosphere and beyond.

Around these parts we’ve been discussing the role of the “digital native” vs. the “digital immigrant.” Specifically of interest is the importance for our schools to better meet the needs of this changing dynamic. Jim Craig of the South Bend Tribune describes this development and wonders why, for the first time in our history, kids are completely different from the adults who are trying to teach them:

Mark Prensky, in the January issue of Educational Leadership, uses the term “digital natives” to refer to kids today. These students are fluent in the acquisition and use of the tools of technology. They have an intuitive understanding of the digital language that enables the use of digital tools as an extension of their brains. They are able to learn new technologies at a speed most adults cannot comprehend. …

We adults are described as “digital immigrants.” Just like someone who learns a foreign language later in life rather than growing up with it, we will never have the same intuitive understanding our children do. This has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with how one learns.

The issue transcends education; it informs the way we communicate, transact business and market our products or services. David Armano of Logic+Emotion explores this paradigm from the advertising perspective:

In the “1.0″ days of the internet for the true believers—it was unthinkable for someone on your team to have never made an online purchase, or performed a transaction online such as banking. … Nowadays it’s near impossible to have a discussion around a brand, marketing, or design strategy without considering the latest wave of how people are using “digital”. Emerging technologies are nearly always part of the equation—and the equation shifts like the desert sands. And digital isn’t even an option—it’s mandatory.

As we approach the end of 2007, I can’t say that I buy into the idea of a digital divide anymore. I see it depicted more as a Möbius strip, one continuous surface that joins an evolving band of knowledge, getting wider and wider over time.

The $100 laptop is now the $188 laptop.

Many of you may have been following MIT’s $100 laptop initiative. In brief, they are trying to develop a cheaper laptop for students around the globe, especially for developing countries. That aim for $100 seems now to blossoming into upwards of $200. Critics seem to be now deriding this ‘price increase’ — but I’m not sure it matters much at this point. Sure, the $100 price point for a laptop would be pretty incredible. But look at how far they’ve come so far in the development process:

• They run on an open-source (free!) Linux-based operating system.
• They are highly efficient when it comes to power consumption.
• They can be run (and charged) by a pull-string or hand-crank.
• They look to be solid-state with very few, if any, moving parts.

How can the critics look down upon such advancements? We’ve been chatting in our podcast about more people around the world now having a voice. This type of project goes to further those voices, of who some, would never get a chance to be heard.

How can that be bad thing? (And when will these folks develop me a hand-crank powered automobile?!!?)

I think this says it all:

“It’s an education project, not a laptop project.”— Nicholas Negroponte

Laptop.org

Several months ago, inspired by recent discussions surrounding Wikipedia’s model of anonymity, I wrote about corporations struggling to manage their reputations in the current Web 2.0 space. In today’s New York Times, we see a furthering of this development in favor of organizations who prefer to know who is saying what about their products, services or culture.

Last week, a new Website called WikiScanner was introduced that traces the IP address of the computer used by a Wikipedia contributer. Anyone can still edit the popular online resource; however, contributions are now more easily identified to their owner(s):

Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks. … Last year, someone at PepsiCo deleted several paragraphs of the Pepsi entry that focused on its detrimental health effects. In 2005, someone using a computer at Diebold deleted paragraphs that criticized the company’s electronic voting machines. That same year, someone inside Wal-Mart Stores changed an entry about employee compensation.

Internet experts, for the most part, have welcomed WikiScanner. “I’m very glad that this has been exposed,” said Susan P. Crawford, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School. “Wikipedia is a reliable first stop for getting information about a huge variety of things, and it shouldn’t be manipulated as a public relations arm of major companies.”

Although Wikipedia discourages such insider editing, in terms of reputation management this creates an interesting debate. At what point do we redefine the role employees play in representing the companies for whom they work? Where is the line between promotion, conflict of interest, and the free-form construct of social networks?

Educators and practitioners might find interest in Andrew Hinton’s UX Week seminar titled UX Design as Communities of Practice. Hinton takes the idea behind constructivist learning and applies them to the design and development of interaction products. The complete presentation deck can be downloaded here.

We here at Unintended Consequences believe in the power of multi-disciplined delivery. Which is a fancy way of saying “Hey, we now have a blog, in addition to our newest podcast.” I still need to tinker a bit with the layout, the UI and the general information flow - but in general, we’re simply contributing to the growing omphaloskepsis of the Web. Enjoy!