#misuse of technology

[ashbelero]

Every time I open the home screen.

Someone take away my photo editing shit, please. Clearly I don’t deserve it.

[aurora-eos]

Flock cameras should have been a thing for taking pictures of murders of crows and other large bird assemblies

[exxos-von-steamboldt]

(via Bringing Back the DEAD - YouTube)

[jethomme]

Shall we try, at this last hour, to INTEGRATE with nature, or will we continue to be the self-arrogating "superior" species which acts as an INVASIVE species with our big brains and untamed egos?

[lylaru-blog]

Reflection on communication

We spend much of our day emailing, texting, posting on Facebook, tweeting and other non verbal forms of communicating whether in the name of efficiency, getting to the masses or out of obsession. But when someone dies we never say I wish I could get one more email or text from them. It's their voice we want to hear to have that human connection.

[psychbuilder]

When states monitored their citizens we used to call them authoritarian. Now we think this is what keeps us safe

By Susan Moore The Guardian - Comments Originally published July 3, 2013 Here is an excerpt: What I failed to grasp, though, was quite how much I had already surrendered my liberty, not just personally but my political ideals about what liberty means. I simply took for granted that everyone can see everything and laughed at the idea that Obama will be looking at my pictures of a cat dressed as a lobster. I was resigned to the fact that some random FBI merchant will wonder at the inane and profane nature of my drunken tweets. Slowly but surely, The Lives of Others have become ours. CCTV cameras everywhere watch us, so we no longer watch out for each other. Public space is controlled. Of course, much CCTV footage is never seen and often useless. But we don't need the panopticon once we have built one in our own minds. We are all suspects. Or at least consumers. iTunes thinks I might like Bowie; Amazon thinks I want a compact tumble dryer. Really? Facebook seems to think I want to date men in uniform. I revel in the fact that the algorithms get it as wrong as the man who knocks on my door selling fish out of a van. "And not just fish," as he sometimes says mysteriously. The entire comment is here.

[psychbuilder]

Avoiding the digital ‘flock’

By Chuck Leddy, Harvard Gazette Originally published June 27, 2013 Here are two excerpts: Digital tools actually encourage flocking (called “homophily” by social scientists), Zuckerman said. For instance, “Facebook is very good at connecting us with people we’re already connected with.”  Zuckerman also mentioned Facebook’s search function, which personalizes results based on your “likes” and the preferences of your friends. “It’s kind of creepy,” said Zuckerman. “I’m not sure I want my friends pre-filtering for me.” Whether in the real or virtual worlds, said Zuckerman, “We have a talent for finding people with the same socioeconomic background or racial background. But this tendency to flock may be keeping us from finding the information we need,” and the tools we’ve built for the Internet only enhance our flocking bias. “My fear is that our tools are not promoting diversity,” said Zuckerman, whose appearance served as a launch party for his book “Rewire.” Personalization tools “want to give you precisely what you want, to make you comfortable” and ready to buy things, he said. “The danger is that we may be driven into small circles of the same content,” a sort of digital self-segregation into echo chambers where none of our assumptions get scrutinized. (cut) How then should people manage their tendency to seek out like-minded folk? First, they need to track their behavior for the presence of flocking bias. Zuckerman showed a graph exposing his own Twitter “follow bias”: Only 27 percent of the people he follows are women. “This is an embarrassing slide,” Zuckerman said, “but now when I follow someone, I think about” the follow bias. He said people need to be self-reflective about their media-consumption preferences, and push back against them. “I know that left on my own, I’d spend all my time reading cute cat macros on Reddit” or constantly consuming news about his beloved Green Bay Packers. The entire story is here.

[psychbuilder]

Morality and ethics - the 'next big thing' for IT suppliers

By Brian Glick Computer Weekly Editor's Blog Originally published on June 10, 2013 Here is an excerpt: But with that greater influence, comes greater responsibility. It is inevitable there would be a backlash, and that backlash is well and truly underway. IT was at the heart of the global boom in financial services. Today it stands accused of enabling the behaviours of bankers that crippled Western economies. Facebook and social media have transformed personal communications, enabled new communities and improved information sharing for all. But at what cost for privacy of our personal information. Google and Amazon have made it easy to find information, to buy quickly and cheaply, opening up new knowledge and commercial opportunities. And they are pilloried as arrogant tax avoiders. But the biggest example of the dark side of technology so far is dominating front pages and web pages alike around the world - the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring of electronic communications, and the allegations of complicity on the part of the global internet giants that provide that data. Look at all the great things the web allows us to do - and look at how easy that makes it to create a surveillance society. As someone said recently, if you could give George Orwell one Tweet from beyond the grave, he would write: "I told you so #Prism". This backlash is an inevitable stage in the progress of technology and the digital revolution, but of course it presents challenges on a scale that the world has never before had to comprehend. The entire blog post is here.