IdeaFestival

New digital tribe discovered in the wired, wired west: us

In the wired age, retrospectives come early. Like David Weinberger's seminal 2004 suggestion that thanks to the Internet, "everything is miscellaneous," this Kansas State professor goes deep, deep, deep on mediated culture, providing an anthropological introduction to YouTube.

Weinberger suggested that there was a new order for ordering, that a "folksonomy" (as opposed to a formal, top down taxonomy) was emerging; Michael Wesch describes that new digital tribe.

Wayne

In praise of the news comic

Ethan Zuckerman reflects on recent research from the AP on the patterns of news consumption - or at least the news as consumed by several people who are the subject of an ethnographic study done on behalf of the AP. Ethan:

News consumers in the US get lots of facts, quickly updated and delivered through a variety of media. But they get very little backstory to help contextualize the facts delivered, and rarely get follow-up stories, or speculations about the future. All that seems true to me, but it’s hard for me to extrapolate that from the 18 interviews the researchers performed. The AP report makes it clear that this is the magic of ethnography - the invisible roots below the visible tree of interviews. To me, it sounds like a couple of smart anthropologists cogitating about the state of global journalism and offering a (potentially correct) diagnosis.

The concern is this - if there’s a deep desire for depth going unmet by contemporary journalism, a need to have stories followed through their resolution and explored as to their future implications, that’s a highly solveable problem. There are lots of journalists - most of them, I’d posit - who’d like to explain stories in more depth to readers. I’m having a hard time resolving the study’s evidence of people 'snacking' on news with a profound desire for depth.

I don't know if journalists will ever get paid to deliver the news in the kind of depth they would like.

But as mentioned by the study and by Ethan, if the stated aim of the AP study is to find out how disaggregated news is consumed by young people today, it could do a lot worse than looking to the Onion or - gasp! - cable television. Snacks don't have to be less filling. Perhaps that's why Jon Stewart is regarded, alongside the major news anchors, as one of the most trusted news men in America.

Wayne

Rocketeer

Carrying the hopes for low-cost access to orbit, Space-X's Falcon 1 is scheduled to fly sometime in the days following July 29, according to Smithsonian's Air&Space. Unlike the first two tries, "Flight 003" will carry paying cargo, including, in another first, one very small satellite that will deploy a technology straight out of science fiction, solar sails.

On board cameras filmed Flight 002, above, and watching stage separation and the Earth gradually getting smaller is, for me, a real thrill.

Should all go well, fourteen Falcon flights are scheduled through 2011. But saying in a recent speech before the Royal Aeronautical Society that "it is difficult to predict how long that window will remain open," Musk, who has sunk $100 million of his own money into Space-X, has much bigger goals in mind for the nascent commercial space transportation sector - sending humans to Mars.

There are a couple of ways to think about "that window."

First, the risk/reward ratio in the rocket business is very, very high, so spending a mind boggling fortune is easily done.

Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott, who will be speaking at the IdeaFestival in September, will address the second.

Wayne

"Nudge:" Public policy and the science of choice

What public policy suggestions might flow from the developing field of behavioral economics, the science of choice?

The central idea in this Freakonomics post about the book "Nudge," is that freedom of choice can be preserved even while public policy influences the decisions people make, that economic behavior can be altered for the better with certain well designed "nudges."

While at first blush the idea would appear alarming - authors Richard Thaler, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, and Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law, use the off-putting term "libertarian paternalism" - it would be more alarming to believe that choices aren't already influenced by numerous social and commercial cues. You and I are not rational. Moreover, armed with a growing body of research psychologists, game theorists and philosophers tell us that we are not nearly as transparent to ourselves as we'd like to believe. We are unaware in many cases why we do what we do.

Choice in the free-to-make-all-possible-choices sense does not exist. The Freakonomics post linked above interviews the authors, who discuss at some length how choice can be preserved in that context.

Although its subject matter may not touch on behavioral economics, IF is hosting a discussion of freedom that is open to the public. It's a free event and passes (you will need one) will be available beginning July 15. I hope to see you there.

Wayne

Nigerian Ninja seeks Kentucky connection

If the capacity to be touched by those at an enormous distance is distinctive of our species, then our inability to be touched by all equally is our fallen state. Caring beyond reason about those we don't know is destined to remain an exceptional condition.

That "exceptional condition" is David Weinberger's take on mediated ethics. Ethan Zuckerman expanded on that idea last week with a very thoughtful post on media attention, national "brands" and the need for Nigeria to find its Ninjas, suggesting that Weinberger's "fallen state" has a lot to do with a collective unwillingness to challenge a comfortable story. We have a built-in context that constantly competes with new information. Ethan:

...[W]e’re more inclined to pay attention to Japan because we’ve got some context - a weird, non-representative context, for sure - while we have almost no context for stories about Nigeria. The context we do have for Nigeria - 419 scams - tends to be pretty corrosive, and may make us likelier to pick up only the stories that portray Nigeria as wildly corrupt and criminal.

Tell me about it, Ethan. As someone who has over the years grown to love my adopted home of Kentucky, I'm often disappointed to read or watch stories that deploy Kentucky shorthand. The kind, for instance, where national politicians parachute into a certain knobby region of the country to demonstrate compassion. Message: They CARE.

I guess some Martin County front porches get all the action.

Despite producing world class actors, actresses and perhaps the most widely recognized athlete in history, mention Kentucky and for most people the context of backwardness springs to mind. Sure, there are problems. But problems are not all that Kentucky has. And changing that perception - changing the context - making a new story - is one reason why the IdeaFestival is important to me.

The other: keying the words Kentucky, Nigeria and Ninja into the same sentence. You can't find that word combination just anywhere.

Wayne

Pulitzers awarded

The Pulitzers have been announced. Among the winners, the recipient of the Pulitzer for feature writing asks a thought provoking question: Would passers-by on a busy street corner recognize musical brilliance when they heard it?

Wayne

An American Generational Biography

[Update: Delano's slides are available.]

Richard K. Delano, who is the Co-founder LifeCourse Associates, a generational analysis consulting and publishing firm, is presenting this morning in an IdeaFestival event in Louisville.

It's titled "Millennials Rising: Recruiting, Retaining & Marketing to 'Today's' Generation."

IF plans to do more than of these events going forward. I blogged yesterday about another such event. So stay tuned.

Richard says he's at the tail end of three straight weeks on the road. He explains that he got involved in 1992 with Scholastic Inc., to manage its custom publication operation. By way of doing some research, he read the book Generations (1991), which was a big hit with the heavyweight political set in the White House and Congress. The book is about 500 pages, but the last chapter discussed the millennial generation, something he remembered. He has continued his generational study.

All generational change is nonlinear. Stepping WAY back, he says there have been 14 generations from 1584 to 2069, grouped in fours. We're on the cusp of a "fourth turn" now.

He believes that four generational archetypes are repeated every four years - Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad. The corresponding periods are High, Awakening, Unraveling and Crisis.

Boomers are born in a High period and came of age in the Awakening period, for example. Returning to the grouping of four theme, he believes that Boomers correspond to the "Civil War missionary generation." I'd love to hear more about that.

He believes that there is a very good story to tell about the Millennial generation now.

As a way of making a point on perspectives, the generations are like trains going through stations. The view is changing along the way but the perspectives might not.

More quickly now. I'll apologize in advance for not capturing everything:

G.I. generation participated in improving youth trends, particularly when it comes to education. It's a perspective that they've carried forward.

The Silent Generation ages 62 - 80 now were told to keep their heads low and were largely rewarded. One typical big concern for this group in the workplace might be about work pensions, something most people now don't even count on. They stayed in the background and remained socially conformed.

The Boomer population is actually a smaller percentage of the population than X-ers and Gen-Y. In a funny line, he says Boomers "took drugs to think outside the box, and give their kids drugs to think inside the box."

They were a generation of one worsening youth trend - SAT scores declined. Boomers famously resisted authority.

Since 1967 a poll of incoming freshmen has shown a decline in people who say developing a meaningful philosophy of life is their most important goal.

X-ers - 25 - 46 in age, take a more jaded view, in contrast. They want to get to the point. That realism is also combined with a certain pessimism toward the job they have. They are much more quick to job hop.

Gen-X parents focus on cost when it comes to what they want out of a college.

Millennials, who were born in 1982, are community focused. It sounds like the G.I. Generation of four generations ago. They are also the most diverse generation; it will be known for the assimilation of those immigrants.

The biggest divides between Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials are gender, race and money, respectively.

Millennial personality traits are special, sheltered, confident and team-oriented, among others traits he lists. But ironically, this generation, which will be so accomplished, may be less socially adept - something pointed out to the business owners and managers in the audience.

There is more trust in institutions and the fairness of rules. They accept peer pressure more readily.

There is a ton of data on screen that I'm not capturing as he scrolls through the Millennial data, sorry.

It's a "Harry Potter" generation - smart and educated and more oriented toward institutions than the recent past. Walt Disney, Google, Department of State, FBI and CIA are top job choices for this group. They have a very different sensitivity toward life and community. For companies, making social commitments are important to Millennials. Google exploits this by not limiting social networking on the job.

The number of passing AP exams also continues to rise among all racial groups in this generation.

But don't think that the group will think outside the box - he emphasizes that each generation has its strengths and weaknesses. It's a steady refrain.

There is, however, a huge shift from "I" to "we," something that should be applauded.

In conclusion, the generations are now spinning into the "fourth turning," where the Millennials take the country can't be predicted with accuracy. It's simply not a linear process, he cautions.

He also touches on similarities the between the generations in the U.S. and China, something I'd like to hear more about.

And with that, we're done.

Wayne

Breaking the "mixed reality" barrier

Jaron Lanier popularized the term "virtual reality" and we're all familiar with, well, reality. But is there a mixed reality?

In a post yesterday, Jennifer Ouellette describes some experimentation reported at the American Physical Society meeting this week that points to a Matrix-like mixed reality state. Get this:

[University of Illinois professor Alfred Hubler used] a real system -- in this case, a standard mechanical pendulum -- coupled with a virtual system (a virtual pendulum) that was programmed to follow the well-known equations of motion. He and his colleagues sent data about the real pendulum to the virtual one, while sending information about the virtual pendulum to a motor that influenced the motion of the real pendulum. They found that when the two pendulums were of different lengths, they remained in a "dual reality state" in which their motion was uncorrelated, and thus not synchronized....

But then they discovered that when the pendulum lengths were similar, they reached a critical transition point and became correlated, or, in Hubler's words, 'They suddenly noticed each other, synchronized their motions, and danced together indefinitely.'

...Hubler thinks his lab-induced mixed reality states could be used to better understand real complex systems with a large number of parameters, by coupling a real system to a virtual one until their constant interactions result in a mixed reality state -- for instance, modeling neurons by coupling a real neuron with a virtual one.

Being a lapsed private pilot and fan of all-things-flying, my mind went to the transition state reported by 1940's era pilots who approached the sound barrier. There was intense buffeting, poor axis control and no certainty about what might happen next.

Sounds about right.

Alfred Hubler's web site is here.

Wayne

The story of intelligence is the story of compassion

Could the secret to human intelligence be our willingness to cooperate, to restrain the competitive instinct, to set aside societal inequality? Primatologist Brian Hare, recently named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of America's top young innovators, believes the answer may be yes. 

Unlike Chimpanzees, dogs are able to infer human intentions. A dog can, for example, understanding what its owner means when she points to food or to a favorite chew toy hidden from view across the room. And as the result of some really fascinating tests he's developed, Hare believes that dogs - and bonobos, another of his subjects - have developed this ability to read intentions through cooperative strategies that minimize - or at least temporarily set aside - social hierarchies in favor of a mutual goals. Chimpanzees, which are live in strict social orders, often fail, surprisingly, to cooperate to problem solve even when there is a clear benefit for all that can be obtained by working together.

That willingness - or unwillingness - to set aside differences may have enormous consequences.

Smithsonian:

Hare and others have speculated that social and emotional skills led to the evolution of intelligence in the great apes and humans. Since the 1970's, some scientists have claimed that animals are more likely to survive and reproduce if they are able to read social cues - to keep track of what other group members are up to and to deceive them if necessary. But Hare focuses on a slightly different type of social intelligence, the ability to work with others, regardless of whether they are strangers or rank lower in the social hierarchy.

There's a lesson here for us Hare says: 'It's true humans have bigger brains and language, and so forth. But we would not have evolved the kind of intelligence we have - the kind that allows us to use our brains together, to build things, to be mentally flexible - if we hadn't had a shift in temperament....' Controlling one's fears, paying attention to others, finding joy in working with others - that's the path to intelligence, he says, whether for dogs, apes or humans.

Bringing the story forward, Yale psychologist Daniel Goleman has pioneered this understanding of emotional intelligence in his work and publications, and discusses the idea in a popular TED video that may interest you. Have a great weekend,

Wayne

"Fastest global diffusion of technology in history"

What does it mean when there is one cell phone for every two people on the planet? The Washington Post reports. Hat tip: Putting People First.

Wayne