apophenia: fair use restraints dampen my love affair with audible.com

In apophenia: fair use restraints dampen my love affair with audible.com danah complains about her discovery that the rules of consumption established by audible.com for their digital content are breaking down treasured social behaviors that she has enjoyed in the past with real, paper books (I believe that if publishers could do what Audible.com can, they would, but they can not so there you have it, that's why libraries are still allowed to exist). This concept of sharing though... it has come up in several conversations so far and I have a hunch there is something very important here. Sharing... we like to share... its a social process that establishes our position in the social network, develops a set of IOUs in social relationships, defines us in a way. Sharing is a really important thing, it performs some extremely important functions in society that seems to think it has grown out of sharing, seems to never have noticed this one aspect of human relationships, never have accounted for it... although all of us share our knowledge, experience, food, posessions, emotions, ourselves from time to time with different people. Maybe ebcause its such a constant integral part of human relationships, that we do not notice this particular behavior as anything special. Yet it is special if only because it is ubiquitous and is a building block of social structure in nearly every respect. Yet in the computer world, sharing is seen as a bad thing. It's often classified as stealing.

One of the fundamental probelms RIAA and the like are facing with their "piracy" issues is that they are going against one of the more intrinsic parts of human nature - the social act of sharing that works as a set of social signals within a structural hierharchy of relationships. In plain speak - people buy books and music not just because they want to listen or read it, but because they want to share that knowledge, the giddiness of sharing the cool find and having someone else find it cool too. We are social animals, but the computer world is built by people who either

1. want to make sure they can get every penny for everything (sharing is aweful, the publishers association actually considers libraries the worst offenders in terms of profit loss... just think about it, libraries let people read books WITHOUT buying them! the HORROR!)

2. built by people who are either antisocial to begin with or largely choose to ignore that people use technology not for the technology but for the social interactions that technology has the potential to create/augment/change/motivate...

I consciously choose to not use the ipod for its intense anti-sharing qualities. I will never subscribe to audible or anything else that tries to force me not to share. I've bought more CD's because someone else burned me a copy of something and I liked it and bought more and bought it for others, than I have just because I found out about it through advertisement. I've bought books because I borrowed one and loved and wanted to give it to someone else, but the social rules of borrowing meant that it would't be proper to lend a lent book. There are social structures and norms that already exist in cultures that use sharing as a form of propagation both of knowledge and of consumption. Companies that produce forms of entertainment like books, music, etc... don't seem to realize that... they have put so much effort into trying to stop people from the fundamental social act of sharing and they wonder why it doesn't work...

The New York Times > Health > F.D.A. Links Drugs to Being Suicidal

The New York Times > Health > F.D.A. Links Drugs to Being Suicidal

This is an interesting article that brings up issues of drug use in treating personality and emotional disorders. A sort of "help us help ourselves" turning into "protect us from the side effects of helping us help ourselves". Anti-depressant medications may help some and damage others, its a risk people take when deciding to take a medication - there is no happy pill without side-effects... there just isn't. The issue here though, is more emotional, dealing with children and emotionally unstable children simply because they happen to be teenagers. Its hard enough without the drugs, its really hard if there is an emotional problem, seems like its a different hard with drugs and emotional problem. So now, the parents of children that comitted suicide will push for what? abolishing the drug? So that the rest of the children that are helped by them can't get any lest they try to kill themselves? Tough choice, but its the vocal few that mostly get their way not the "comparatively" happy many.

Sick of Work: Cracking Under the Pressure? It's Just the Opposite, for Some

The New York Times > Health > Sick of Work: Cracking Under the Pressure? It's Just the Opposite, for Some

Well... diary writing may be bad, and working hard and being stressed out may not be after all... what a day of scientific findings. This one, though seems far more entertaining as well as blanaced and based in something more or less reliable... hmm flourish under stress eh? interesting :)

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > A Digital Generation's Analog Chic

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > A Digital Generation's Analog Chic

This is a really interesting article about form factor and modern design and, how modern technology design sometimes overlooks some nuances of social rhetoric and everyday mundane aesthetic. The modern design pushes towards the "future" which is hard to see through the dredges of the current, but the current may not be so bad.

This reminds me of an interesting story in one of our mover-interviews this summer. There was a couple that switched to cell phones and dropped a landline in the process of moving (people often seemed to renegotiate their use of technology as they decided on its applications in the new location). While the husband worked, the wife stayed at home with a newborn baby. Her phone had good reception in the house, and, having moved so recently, she spent quite a bit of time calling friends and family back home. She was a bit tied to the house with the child needing constant attention and the only people she had managed to meet were her neighbors and some old friends that lived in the area. She was a bit lonely and wanted to talk... yet she discovered that the design of the cellphone really did not support it being used as a house phone for the following reasons:

1. Its small. Size and weight are important considerations when we select an item that we will get to carry around with us nearly everywhere. However, at home, it seems silly to always have the phone in your pocket or carry around a bag for it (doesn't it?). So the phone develops a "place" in the house, usually next to the keys, the wallet, the handbag - a cognitive trick to reduce its changes of being lost - due to its size. Then again, because its so small and mobile, it can be carried anywhere in the apartment during conversation... and then left where the conversation ended. Of course, this is not the first time we are encountering handsets we can carry around the house. Wireless housephones have been around for ages. Unfortunately a cell phone lacks one important thing - a little button on the base station of the housephone that would make the handset make a loud annoying noise, allowing it to be found. The cell phone doesn't even have to wring if you forgot to switch off the vibrate or "etiquette" mode (on some models).
** on a sidenote, this problem has been dealt with in asian countries in a brilliant way - their handsets are even smaller, small enough to be worn around the neck like pendants. (works at least for women, men can use a belt-clip, no matter how ugly that looks its at least functional and many men don't seem to mind, far fewer women use that feature according to some market research stats).

2. Vibration - cell phone are often put on vibrate - their ring tones are for the most part annoying and you don't want it to ring loudly in a quite public space (or when the child is sleeping). Its a good feature... very good, unless you happen to have a pale of water standing underneath the cabinet where it resides together with keys and wallet... and someone calls... and it happens to vibrate (move in this case) off into the water because it was on a flat surface... It can also simply vibrate off the shelf and fall on the floor, vibrating itself under the cabinet... Successfully loosing itself for the owner. When was the last time you had to deal with technology that walked of its own accord?

There are many others, but I think this relates in some interesting way to the NYT article. Some of the "older" "outdated" technology had enjoyed years of design iterations. Maybe its not such a bad idea to go back and learn form these (as some of them were very successful)

Dear New Scientist, you make me sick

Article: Dear diary, you make me sick| New Scientist

The above article reports some results from a study at Staffordshire University that purpoterdly disputes the common understanding that writing can be theraputic and that diaries are a form of therapy. In this study, researchers studied 94 diarists and compared their health with that of 41 non-diarists. That is, they went to a bunch of college kids, and asked them fill out a survey. <<-- 1! survey.

The very first paragraph of the article reports the results in a language that leaves no doubts as to their authenticity - "Keeping a diary is bad for your health, say UK psychologists. They found that regular diarists were more likely than non-diarists to suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, digestive problems and social awkwardness."

Nearly 8 paragraphs later they add the "problems" of the study - that despite the language in the first two thirds of the article there is actually no basis for asserting a causal direction. Did diary writing cause these problems or did the problems cause people to write diaries? That's relegated to future work, of course, but who cares? And how many individuals read to the end of the article anyway? The is sensationalism at its best in a magazine that is supposed to be at least half way reputable. It really bites me that researchers will do studies that are purely correlational (proper longitudinal studies, of course, take too much time, dont' they?) and then make causual claims that appear in publication. I bet that this type of report would not make it through peer review, but the New Scientist is happy to publish it!

Citing Threats, Entrepreneur Wants to Quit Caller ID Venture

The New York Times > Technology > Citing Threats, Entrepreneur Wants to Quit Caller ID Venture

This is fascinating. When callerID just became available for residential customers, phone companies were forced to ask their customers whether they wanted to opt out. A very large proportion of customers did (I wonder, actually if there are any figures for that). Even now, if you are getting your landline phone, you are offered the option to "block caller ID" but for a fee of course. With the advent of cell phones, caller ID was not an issue for some reason. Cellphone companies didn't even offer the opt-out version. In fact, when they got accused of overcharging customers because they were charging for incoming calls (in the US, this was/is not an issue in Europe), cell phone companies actually cited caller ID as a feature that would allow their customers to decide whether they wanted to take (and, by definition, pay for) a particular phone call or not. At the time, they claimed that if someone was blocking caller ID why would you want to talk to them anyway (framing the "blockers" as them shady people).

What's curious is that initially, caller ID played hell with some of the assumptions telephone users have gotten used to make about their phone calls - a measure of obscurity was taken away - i.e. you couldn't repeatedly call and hang up on your ex anymore because now they would KNOW it was you without having to actually TALK and CONFRONT you... ouch...(then *69 appeared as a feature, or was it before caller ID? In any case, it was extremely unnerving but offered enough loopholes to make it manageable).

Because cellular phones made callerID simply an aspect of the technology, these expectations of obscurity never came up. In fact, some people now get annoyed about calling landline phones because they actually have to introduce themselves in order to be recognized and have to spell out their phone # instead of simply saying - you now have it on your phone, don't you? This loss of introductions is a very little thing, but my grandmother still gets a little freaked when I pick up the phone and say "Hi grandma!" before she has a chance to say hello... On the other hand, I find myself a little disconcerted when I actually have to introduce myself over the phone to someone - its such an odd, almost uncommon thing for me.

So here comes Star38, advertising a service that would not only let you block caller IDs, but to successfully pretend to be someone else entirely. A license to lie that apparently bothered a number of people (exciting a number of others). What I am curious about, however, is the sentence in the article that says people were concerned about their privacy... whose privacy? the giving or the receiving end? The very curious thing is that existence of Star38 would actually make the whole thing of caller ID safer, by make it very clear to cellphone users that they simply can not believe their callerID (thus ruining some phisher-business, no wonder they sent death-threats). It doesn't just give a license to lie, it actually teaches everyone a good measure of caution. The caller may not be who you think they are... We might have to re-learn to introduce ourselves and to stop relying on the ID feature... a step back or forward?

An Online Pioneer Resists the Lure of Cashing In

The New York Times > Technology > An Online Pioneer Resists the Lure of Cashing In - NYT printed a nice story about Craig's List due to the big event of EBay buying a stake in the company. In my interviews with movers Craig's list came up several times, with respondents routinely singing praises to it. It truly think these praises were where they were due.

There is one thing that Craig's list succeeded at doing where most failed. It created a social space where people feel like they are interacting with people like them (and these are quite different people). Another interesting thing that we observed was the secondary effect of Craig's list listings. I think in general, this could be extrapolated to a secondary effect of online presence for physical locations, but it happened in the context of craig's list only.

In effect, users found apartment listsings on the site and went to take a look. The apartments they found were absolutely atrocious, but there was one next door that turned out to be perfect. This suggests a curious thing - at a certain point of adoption/penetration of a particular technology, not everyone needs to have an online presence to enjoy effects of it. In fact, these rental properties essentially piggy-backed the efforts of the property that put itself on Craig's list, because the latter increased non-local traffic. By the same token, I wonder if this is happening to individuals - that is, if someone is not using a particular technology but people around them are, then the non-users will experience secondary effects of access and use. I wonder what these might be.