MetaFilter posts tagged with social Posts tagged with 'social' at MetaFilter. Tue, 04 Feb 2014 07:12:22 -0800 Tue, 04 Feb 2014 07:12:22 -0800 en-us 60 How in-app purchase is( not really)? destroying the games industry Thomas Baekdal writes on <a href="">How In-app Purchases Have Destroyed The [Game] Industry</a>: <blockquote> We have reached a point in which mobile games couldn't even be said to be a game anymore. Playing a game means that you have fun. It doesn't mean that you sit around and wait for the game to annoy you for so long that you decide to pay credits to speed it up. And for an old geezer like me who remember the glory days of gaming back in the 1990s, it's just unbearable to watch. </blockquote> Drew Crawford <a href="">answers</a>: <blockquote> See, in the in-app purchase model actually predates phones. It predates video game consoles. It goes all the way back to the arcade, where millions of consumers were happy to pay a whole quarter ... to pay for just a few minutes. </blockquote>,2014:site.136328 Tue, 04 Feb 2014 07:12:22 -0800 arcade casual gameindustry games inapppurchase mobile social frimble The UK's first social supermarket <a href="">The UK has opened its first social supermarket</a> as a means of combatting food poverty.* Not to be confused with <a href="">The People's Supermarket</a>, a central London co-operative that <a href="">just managed to avoid closure in 2012</a>, the Community Shop in Barnsley is run by the <a href="">UK's largest commercial re-distributor of surplus food and products</a>. It will <a href="">sell cheap items to local customers on benefits</a>, is backed by big retailers and will sell surplus stock and items with damaged packaging or incorrect labelling. Social supermarkets are a small, but growing trend and proposed as another solution to food poverty as austerity measures bite. There are examples<a href=""> in Italy</a> and are <a href="">well established</a> in <a href="">Austria</a> (where there are now around 70 <small><a href="">PDF link</a></small>), Spain (<a href="">where unions have also staged food expropriations</a>) and <a href="">Greece</a>. Furthermore in August, the Greek government brought in a <a href="">controversial law allowing supermarkets to sell expired food to the poor</a>. An October 2013 report from the Red Cross (<a href="">pdf</a>) noted <a href="">startling increases in European poverty</a> and warns of a humanitarian crisis: the amount of people depending on Red Cross food distributions in 22 of the countries it surveyed increased by 75 per cent between 2009 and 2012. European stats agency Eurostat estimates that <a href="">a quarter of all Europeans</a> face poverty or social exclusion. <small>*<a href="">And habit forming food banks</a>.<small></small></small>,2013:site.134592 Mon, 09 Dec 2013 05:34:57 -0800 Barnsley Europe EuroStat food Greece Italy poverty RedCross social Spain supermarket UK MuffinMan Suck it, Amazon and your stupid drones! <a href="">Waterstones announces their Ornithological Waterstones Landing Service, a brand new way to receive your favourite books.</a> Per the FAQ: Q. Isn’t this just what they did in Harry Potter? A: Yes, this is exactly what they did in Harry Potter. You’re asking that as if this is a bad thing,2013:site.134373 Mon, 02 Dec 2013 18:07:31 -0800 amazon humor media social waterstones scolbath Don’t tell anyone how to grieve, specially children. These days, <a href="">selfies are how we make ourselves real,</a> to ourselves and to the outside world. So, it’s no wonder that <a href="" title="Selfies at Funerals">some of us turn to our iPhones in these moments of loss</a>. <a href="">It’s a way of saying, “I still exist.”</a>,2013:site.133468 Sat, 02 Nov 2013 12:22:01 -0800 death internet loss people photo selfie social socialmedia Brandon Blatcher "...somewhere where no one was asking me for anything.” <a href=";_r=0">Daniel Radcliffe’s Next Trick Is to Make Harry Potter Disappear</a> <small>(slnyt profile, <a href="">via</a>)</small> The episode of <em>Inside the Actors Studio</em> with Daniel Radcliffe can be seen <a href="">here</a>.,2013:site.132528 Thu, 03 Oct 2013 07:34:21 -0800 actor broadway child daniel fandom fans flim franchise harrypotter hp interview nyt persona potter privacy private profile psychology public radcliffe social star zarq Game behind gamed: your narrative programming for the day <a href="">How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio</a>[1] actually makes a <a href="" title="How can we build more resilient safety nets?">case against austerity</a>[2] and for redistribution, but also for <a href="">money</a> <a href="">printing</a> (and, arguably, for bailouts), while stressing the need to keep making productivity-improving <a href="">public</a> and <a href="">private</a> investments. However, it could be equally entitled: <a href="">How The Industrial Age Political-Economy Doesn't Work Anymore</a>, viz. <a href="">Surviving Progress (2011)</a>... <blockquote><a href="">David Suzuki</a>: The economists say if you clear-cut the forest, take the money and put it in the bank, you could make 6 or 7 percent. If you clear-cut the forest and put it into Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, you can make 30 or 40 percent. So who cares whether you keep the forest, cut it down, put the money somewhere else. When those forests are gone, put it in fish. When the fish are gone put it in computers. Money doesn't stand for anything and money now grows faster than the real world. Conventional economics is a form of brain damage. [...] <a href="">Vaclav Smil</a>: People have been conditioned that things have to always get, go better, and immediately, if you say, limit something, people think this is not getting better, but it would be. This is a non-starter. People saying you should eat less, you should eat less meat, right. That's even -- that's a non-starter, right [...] There's so many things which we could do, you know, not to surrender our standard of living, not to kind of live in a gutter, right, but we don't need one and a half tank car to go from red light to red light in a city. People are not willing to go back on these things, most of them simply are not, because they've been totally hijacked by this material culture. Let's not underestimate the, you know, the, the, the persuasion, the power of this material culture is immense, it's just immense.</blockquote> cf. <a href="">Jeremy Grantham</a>: '<a href="">We're trying to buy time for the world to wake up</a>' (<a href="">Why is this problem so hard for us to deal with</a>? <a href="">You've railed against short-termism</a>.) also btw... <ul><li><a href="">The Seven Cardinal Virtues of Equitable Growth</a></li> <li><a href="">What Would a Wonk's Perfect Policy Platform Look Like?</a></li> <li><a href="">Let's Overhaul The Financial System</a></li> <li><a href="">Majority of Americans say banks, large corporations benefitted most from U.S. economic policies</a> (<a href=",0,3243545.graphic">graphic</a>)</li></ul> and speaking of austerity... <ul><li><a href="">What Austerity Has Wrought</a></li> <li><a href="">The only uncertainty is why some cannot see facts</a></li> <li><a href="">What's It All About Then?: The Real Reason for the Fight over the Debt Limit</a></li></ul> Anyway, if the economy is an abstraction layer that <a href="">keeps on crashing</a>, then it behooves us to learn and understand the (<a href="">nonlinear</a>) <a href="">programming</a> it would take to run on 'bare metal', that is the physical resource constraints and first principals that underlie the carrying capacity of our shared world. So on that note... <a href="">Can the Internet of Everything bring back the High-Growth Economy?</a> (<a href="">pdf</a>) <blockquote>The Internet of Everything is about building up a new infrastructure that combines ubiquitous sensors and wireless connectivity in order to greatly expand the data collected about physical and economic activities; expanding '<a href="">big data</a>' <a href="">processing capabilities</a> to <a href="">make sense of all that new data</a>; providing better ways for people to access that data in real-time; and creating new frameworks for real-time collaboration both within and across organizations... we estimate that the Internet of Everything could raise the level of U.S. gross domestic product by 2%-5% by 2025. This gain from the IoE, if realized, would boost the annual U.S. GDP growth rate by 0.2-0.4 percentage points over this period, bringing growth closer to 3% per year. This would go a long way toward regaining the output—and jobs—lost in the Great Recession.</blockquote> What's more, an IoE could help supplement GDP and redefine national accounting:<ul> <li><a href="">Counting What Counts: GDP Redefined</a> (<a href="">pdf</a>)</li> <li><a href="">Beyond GDP: The Need for New Measures of Progress</a> (<a href="">pdf</a>)</li> <li><a href="">How Maryland Is Envisioning An Economic Future Beyond GDP</a></li> <li><a href="">Robert Kennedy on Shortcomings of GDP in 1968</a> (<a href="">yt</a>): "If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us."</li></ul> or as <a href="">Jeremy Rifkin</a> describes in <a href="">Saying goodbye to Adam Smith at the Dawn of the Third Industrial Revolution</a> <blockquote>While there is a fractious debate going on around the world about our debt-ridden culture and the need to live within our means, there is little serious attention directed to the ultimate debt we have incurred over the course of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions as a result of our profligate consumption patterns—our debt to the earth's biosphere. Climate change is the entropy bill—the planetary debt—for two centuries of burning fossil fuels to propel the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. What we thought was a growing store of accumulated societal wealth was really only the momentary enjoyment of goods and services made possible by the burning of vast amounts of fossil fuels and the release of carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere. Learning to live within the earth's budgetary restraints by not consuming nature's endowment faster than the biosphere can recycle the waste and replenish the stock is the ultimate test of our species' ability to live within the planet's carrying capacity. This is what <a href="">sustainable economic development</a> is really all about.</blockquote> The easy lever the Federal Reserve could always pull to lower interest rates, boost credit/housing and raise aggregate demand <a href="">no longer works</a>, which raises the question, what does? If it's not going to be a repeating cycle of endless money printing and asset bubbles (and stagnant growth at the end of the day)[3], what will the growth driver's of the 21st century be and what role do financial markets, government and other institutions have in finding them?[4] For example, think about how DARPA, universities, corporations, state law and standards bodies are collaborating to bring <a href="">autonomous vehicles</a> closer to reality.[5] --- <small>[1] one of the world's most '<a href="">successful</a>' hedge fund managers (apparently he's not having the '<a href="">economic machine</a>' work so well for him this year tho) [2] <a href="">Sanjay Basu</a>: <a href="">The Deadly Side of Austerity</a> - "As a physician watching this economic recession unfold I am beholden to one law, which is first do no harm, and I would argue that in the context of this recession if we apply that rule to <a href="">our economic and social policy</a> we might find a better way to not undergo such dramatic experiments with people but actually try to <a href="">find ways</a> to <a href="">buffer our health</a> and <a href="">develop a more resilient community</a>." [3] <a href="">population trends without productivity growth suggest a pretty dismal future</a> - "we feel that the world's overall fertility rate will fall to replacement rate by 2025. In other words, reproductively speaking, our species will no longer be expanding – a major turning point in history..." [4] <a href="">remember the role of central banking in establishing a naval trading empire that defined an age</a> - "In England the argument for some kind of bank to gather [sic] momentum after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William of Orange and Queen Mary jointly ascended the throne of England..." [5] <a href="">These 5 things need to happen before electric cars really go mainstream</a> (<a href="">Six Myths About Renewable Energy</a>)</small>,2013:site.132310 Wed, 25 Sep 2013 15:11:21 -0800 accountability austerity automation banks capital capitalism civil civilization commons communication community conservation coordination corporations credit culture currency data debt demographics design distributed economics empathy energy environment equity exchange fiat finance GDP goods government growth health industrial information institutions internet investment jeremyrifkin law leisure materialism measurement mechanism money morals politics private productivity programming progress public purpose redistribution regulation resilience revolution science services sharing social society sovereign systems tax technology trust value values work kliuless Like your Mother used to make <a href="">"It's about coming together as a local community and sharing the fruits of your labour, your creation."</a> In what has been described as a <a href="">peer-to-peer community marketplace</a>, people are connecting online with local cooks, who provide them with a meal for less than they would be likely to pay anywhere else. In Athens, the price is usually between three and four euros (&#0163;2.50 to &#0163;3.40). <a href="">Cookisto</a> started as a Masters thesis by Michalis Gkontas <a href="">(short talk transcript)</a> and has attracted 12,00 cooks in Athens. It will shortly be opening up in <a href="">London</a>. As you'd expect, there's a <a href="">video</a> and a <a href="">twitter</a>. <a href="">Bonus CNN video</a>.,2013:site.132211 Mon, 23 Sep 2013 02:31:03 -0800 Eating Food Greece Hungry London Recipe Sharing Social arcticseal LET’S LEARN ABOUT CATS <a href="">CATS? WHAT THEY ARE AND HOW THEY GOT DOMESTICATED (MAYBE??) A TUMBLR ESSAY</a>,2013:site.130838 Sat, 10 Aug 2013 14:04:34 -0800 behavior biology calls cats caturday cohabitation domestication evolution feline feral history housecats kitties lions neoteny nonsocial predator science social wildcat youreakitty! The Whelk First! "Just setting up my twttr". <a href="">This Was First</a> archives the first posts on some of the world's biggest websites. (<a href="">Metafilter</a> is sadly absent from the archive.),2013:site.129977 Sun, 14 Jul 2013 00:55:06 -0800 anniversary first history Metafilter social Bora Horza Gobuchul So "KILL PRESIDENT WITH BOMB" is right out, then? The Department of Homeland Security <a href="">released its list of monitored keywords on social networking sites</a>.,2013:site.128603 Fri, 31 May 2013 15:07:48 -0800 dhs facebook keyword list networking social twitter DecemberBoy "like most of the working class, I’ve developed a locust morality." <a href="">The Locust Economy</a> <blockquote>I was picking the brain of a restauranteur for insight into things like <a href="">Groupon</a>. He confirmed what we all understand in the abstract: that these deals are terrible for the businesses that offer them; that they draw in nomadic deal hunters from a vast surrounding region who are unlikely to ever return; that most deal-hunters carefully ensure that they spend just the deal amount or slightly more; that a badly designed offer can bankrupt a small business. He added one little factoid I did not know: offering a Groupon deal is by now so strongly associated with a desperate, dying restaurant that professional food critics tend to write off any restaurant that offers one without even trying it.</blockquote> ... <blockquote>Locust swarms are aggressively and energetically social. Remind you of any <a href="">contemporary pattern</a> of <a href="">human behavior</a>?</blockquote> "It isn’t the 1% fat cats who are becoming victims of the new economy. It is the little capitalist in the middle." <a href="">REVIEW: The Locust And The Bee: Predators And Creators In Capitalism's Future</a>,2013:site.126941 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:50:48 -0800 1 1percent aggregation capitalism economics economy extraction extractiveeconomics groupon locust middleclass ribbonfarm scarcity shareeconomy sharingeconomy social swarm swarming zombieeconomy the man of twists and turns Intelligence Tests <a href="">Is Psychometric <i>g</i> a Myth?</a> - "As an online discussion about IQ or general intelligence grows longer, the probability of someone linking to statistician Cosma Shalizi's essay <i><a href="">g, a Statistical Myth</a></i> approaches 1. Usually the link is accompanied by an assertion to the effect that Shalizi offers a definitive refutation of the concept of general mental ability, or psychometric <em>g</em>." <a href="">Myths, Sisyphus and g</a> - "Over the years I have not encountered a single endorser of Shalizi's article who actually understands the relevant subject matter. His article is loved for its reassuring conclusions, not the strength of its arguments. I am sure many 'thinkers' resisted Darwinism, the abandonment of geocentrism, and even the notion that the Earth is a sphere, for similar psychological reasons." <a href="">Nuthin' but a 'g' thang</a> <blockquote>So I've always had the intuitive hypothesis that there are different types of intelligence; that different people tend to process information in different ways, whether due to habit or nature. But then there are all those people who say that intelligence can be boiled down to a single factor, the mysterious "g" (which I assume stands for either "general intelligence" or "gangsta"). Since this went against years of casual observation, I was somewhat pleased to see the eminent Cosma Shalizi write an essay debunking the notion of "g". But then I saw this blog post defending the notion of "g", and claiming that Shalizi makes a bunch of errors. Basically, the disagreement revolves around the question of why most or all psychometric tests and tasks seem positively correlated with each other. Shalizi points out that this correlation structure will naturally lead to the emergence of a "g"-like factor, even if one doesn't really exist; his opponent points out that if no "g" exists, it should be possible to design uncorrelated psychometric tests, which so far has proven extremely difficult to do. The latter post, by a pseudonymous blogger calling himself "Dalliard", contains a bunch of references to psychometric research that I don't know about and have neither the time nor the will to evaluate, so I'm a bit stumped. Normally I'd leave the matter at that, shrug, and go read something else, but I realized that my intuitive hypothesis about intelligence didn't really seem to be explicitly stated in either of the posts. So I thought I'd explain my conjecture about how intelligence works. In a nutshell, it's this: What if there are multiple "g's"? ...just imagine several dozen hyperplanes, and project them all onto one hyperplane... Remember that psychometric tests are <em>simple</em> mental tasks, but most of the mental tasks we do are <em>complex</em>, like computer programming or chess or writing. And for those tasks, learning and practice matter as much as innate skill, or more (for example, see <a href="">this study about the neurology of chess players</a>). Therefore, everyone can be "smart" in some way, if "smart" means "good at some complex mental task".</blockquote> also btw <a href="">To Make Mice Smarter, Add A Few Human Brain Cells</a> (<a href="">previously</a>),2013:site.126930 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:40:00 -0800 ability behavior biology brain cells cognition CosmaShalizi culture data experiment experiments genes genetics glial habit human hypothesis information intelligence IQ learning measurement mental mice myth nature neurology neuroscience physiology practice probability psychology psychometrics research science selection shalizi social statistics test tests theory thought understanding kliuless empathy used to abuse others and empathy used to help others <a href="">The two aspects of empathy</a>, cognitive and affective, as described succinctly and clearly by neuroscientist Simon Baron Cohen. Ever wondered how chronically abusive people seem to have X-ray vision knowing just what cruel thing to say to hurt most? It's because they have greater cognitive empathy and less - or very little - <a href="">affective empathy</a>. Psychologist, Daniel Goleman adds another aspect of <a href="">empathy</a> into the picture, <a href="">compassionate empathy</a>.,2013:site.126403 Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:26:36 -0800 affective Baron cognitive Cohen emotions empathy Goleman mind narcissist neuroscience psychology Simon social sociopath nickyskye Incommensurable values <a href="">Economists and the theory of politics</a> - "why unions were often well worth any deadweight cost" <a href="">abstract</a>: <blockquote>The standard approach to policymaking and advice in economics implicitly or explicitly ignores politics and political economy, and maintains that if possible, any market failure should be rapidly removed. This essay explains why this conclusion may be incorrect; because it ignores politics, this approach is oblivious to the impact of the removal of market failures on future political equilibria and economic efficiency, which can be deleterious. We outline a simple framework for the study of the impact of current economic policies on future political equilibria — and indirectly on future economic outcomes. We then illustrate the mechanisms through which such impacts might operate using a series of examples. The main message is that <a href="">sound economic policy</a> should be based on a careful analysis of political economy and should factor in its influence on future political equilibria.</blockquote> <a href="">viz</a>. <a href="">What kind of mass movement with truly powerful institutional support can take the place of unions?</a> - "I agree with just about everything they say about the value of unions, but I also feel forced to acknowledge that it doesn't matter. As a truly powerful mass movement, unions are dead and they aren't coming back. This has left a gaping hole in American politics: Corporations and the rich continue to have enormous institutional power, while the working and middle classes have almost no one to <a href="">speak for them</a>. I figure that filling this hole is the most important problem the left has to address over the next decade or so. Unfortunately, I don't know how." <a href="">cf</a>. <a href="">The Tyranny of Political Economy</a> - "In reality, our contemporary frameworks for political economy are replete with unstated assumptions about the system of ideas underlying the operation of political systems. <a href="">Make those assumptions explicit</a>, and the decisive role of vested interests evaporates. Policy design, political leadership, and human agency come back to life... Expand the range of feasible strategies (which is what good policy design and leadership do), and you radically change behavior and outcomes." <a href="">also</a> <a href="">btw</a>... <ul><li><a href="">Markets in almost nothing</a> - "One of the first things I noticed when I started studying economics was that goods that can't be bought and sold are basically ignored."</li> <li><a href="">Wealth and Motivations for Saving</a> - "teach the public more about how wealth builds over time"</li> <li><a href="">The Supply and Demand for Safe Assets</a> - "Where do safe assets come from? Empirical evidence suggests that the private sector creates more near riskless assets when the supply of government debt is low and reduces privately-created near riskless assets when the supply of government debt is high."</li> <li><a href="">The safe asset shortage</a> - "Safe debts – or what is often called information insensitive assets, as they do not suffer from the types of financial frictions that are characteristic to other financial assets – play a major role in facilitating transactions for institutional investors. And, as we have learned in the recent years, they also play a major role in triggering financial crises when they lose their safety status and turn into information sensitive assets."</li> <li><a href="">GDP, welfare and the rise of data-driven activities</a> - "The worry today is not that investment in technology might not be as productive as we thought (the so-called computer paradox), but the fact that the economic value of the fast growing consumption and production of online data may not be adequately captured in official statistics." <li><a href="">Uncle Sam, venture capitalist</a> - "AMERICA, like much of the world, is facing a <a href="">crisis of innovation</a>. Its roots rest in several significant challenges: an awareness that rapid technological progress and growth will be crucial in weathering demographic headwinds and the threat of climate change among them. But there is very little consensus in Washington on just what the government ought to be doing to help."</li> <li><a href="">What Google Reader tells us about banking and nationalisation</a> - "Which is why the government taking charge of a service like RSS for the benefit of the <a href="">public good</a> — or for that matter providing the country with universal internet or high quality media — should not necessarily be treated with suspicion or mistrust. In the civilized world there is a perfectly reasonable way to ensure arm's length detachment and to protect such institutions from the political meddling of government."</li> <li><a href="">If You Can't Fix It, You Don't Own It</a> - "Who owns our stuff? The answer used to be obvious. Now, with electronics integrated into just about everything we buy, the answer has changed. We live in a digital age, and even the physical goods we buy are complex. Copyright is impacting more people than ever before because the line between hardware and software, physical and digital has blurred. The issue goes beyond cellphone unlocking, because once we buy an object — any object — we should <i>own</i> it. We should be able to lift the hood, unlock it, modify it, repair it... without asking for permission from the manufacturer. But we really don't own our stuff anymore (at least not fully); the manufacturers do. Because <a href="">modifying modern objects</a> requires access to <i>information</i>: code, service manuals, error codes, and diagnostic tools."</li></li></ul> like think about sovereign debt -- that is safe assets -- more as a <a href="">national equity</a>: [<a href="">1</a>,<a href="">2</a>,<a href="">3</a>,<a href="">4</a>,<a href="">5</a>] <blockquote>The US national debt is in truth - like all national debts - a complete and surreal fiction: it is a national equity, the greater part of which is interest-bearing either as claims over public or private revenues. At least two-thirds of the quasi tax credits created by banks came into existence as mortgage loans, and are therefore backed by claims over the productive value of the US land and buildings which they fund. Much of the rest consists of claims over the value of US assets which fund the productive capacity of US corporations. The remainder - which provides the credit necessary to finance the circulation of goods and services in the US - is based upon the magnificent productive capacity of the US people. Only by liquidating US Incorporated could this <a href="">National Equity</a> ever be redeemed... There is no shortage of dollars because every dollar's worth of productive capacity - public or private; productive people or productive assets - in the US is the capacity to issue a dollar credit, which reflects the increase in the US national wealth which underpins the US national equity. President Barack Obama and his government should get busy creating national equity by instructing the Fed to create and issue the necessary finance for the creation of a new generation of US infrastructure; the transition to a low carbon future which the US can, and should, be leading; and in increasing the capacity of the US people to do so.</blockquote> (or how the government budget constraint is different than a household's or corporation's -- namely that they can tax and can't be liquidated, unless extraordinarily mismanaged or conquered, I guess...),2013:site.126371 Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:42:30 -0800 banks capital currency data debt economics efficiency employment equity exchange facts fail failure finance goods government information infrastructure innovation institutions investment justice labor labour market markets measurement money morals nation open ownership politics production productivity public share sharing social source sovereign state tax technology trust union unions utility value values wealth kliuless "A law should serve the people, but it didn't protect me." <a href="">In Korea, Changes in Society and Family Dynamics Drive Rise in Elderly Suicides</a> - "The epidemic is the counterpoint to the nation's runaway economic success, which has worn away at the Confucian social contract that formed the bedrock of Korean culture for centuries." <blockquote>That contract was built on the premise that parents would do almost anything to care for their children — in recent times, depleting their life savings to pay for a good education — and then would end their lives in their children's care. No Social Security system was needed. Nursing homes were rare. But as South Korea's hard-charging younger generations joined an exodus from farms to cities in recent decades, or simply found themselves working harder in the hypercompetitive environment that helped drive the nation's economic miracle, their parents were often left behind. Many elderly people now live out their final years poor, in rural areas with the melancholy feel of ghost towns.</blockquote> <a href="">How Capitalism Creates The Welfare State</a> <blockquote>[T]he forces that free market capitalism unleashes are precisely the forces that undermine traditional forms of community and family that once served as a traditional safety net... in South Korea, the shift has been so sudden and so incomplete that you see just how powerfully anti-family capitalism can be... The result is a generation of the elderly committing suicide at historic rates: from 1,161 in 2000 to 4,378 in 2010. The Korean government requires the elderly to ask their families for resources if they can pay for retirement funding – forcing parents to beg children to pay for their living alone – a fate they never anticipated and that violates their sense of dignity. Hence the suicides... We see the consequences far beyond the suicides of elderly Koreans. And in my bleaker moments, I wonder whether humankind will come to see this great capitalist leap forward as a huge error in human history – the moment we undid ourselves and our very environment, reaching untold material wealth as well as building societies in which loneliness, dislocation, displacement and radical insecurity cannot but increase."</blockquote> <a href="">Dying Alone Becomes New Normal as Japan Spurns Confucius</a> - "Itoko Uchida, 82, was counting on the nephew she raised to support her in old age. <a href=",93038/">He refused</a>, forcing her to pay for a sponsor to join the 420,000-long queue of Japanese waiting for a nursing home bed.",2013:site.125602 Mon, 04 Mar 2013 01:12:04 -0800 aging capitalism care community culture death demographics elderly family health insurance japan korea social society southkorea suicide welfare kliuless To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions... On December 5th, Instagram's founder Kevin Systrom <a href="">announced that Instagram would cut support for Twitter cards</a>. On December 10th, <a href="">Twitter updated its mobile apps to include Instagram-like photo filters</a>. On December 12th, <a href="">Flickr did too</a>. On December 16th, <a href="">the New York Times reported that Systrom may have perjured himself</a> during the process of selling Instagram to Facebook. On December 17th, Instagram updated its <a href="">terms of use</a> to announce, among other changes, that its users now <blockquote>"agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."</blockquote> In response, Wired has posted <a href="">How to Download Your Instagram Photos and Kill Your Account</a>. <a href="">Previously</a>.,2012:site.122998 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:39:56 -0800 facebook filters flickr instagram media photography social systrom technology twitter davidjmcgee "Which is another way of saying that Facebook is George Costanza's worst nightmare: It enforces, second by second, the collision of worlds." <a href="">Are Your Facebook Friends Stressing You Out? (Yes.)</a> - "The finding, which is similar to one determined last year, is nice as a headline: It's both unexpected (friends! stressing you out! ha!) and ironic (the currency of the social web, taking value rather than adding it!). What's interesting, though, is the why of the matter: the idea that, the report theorizes, the wider your Facebook network, the more likely it is that something you say or do on the site will end up offending one of that network's members... Unsurprisingly, per the study's survey of more than 300 Facebook users, 'adding employers or parents resulted in the greatest increase in anxiety.'" <blockquote>Facebook's power, and its curse, is this holistic treatment of personhood. All the careful tailoring we do to ourselves (and to our selves) -- to be, say, professional in one context and whimsical in the other -- dissolves in the simmering singularity of the Facebook timeline. The circumstantially mediated relationships typical of IRL interactions -- you see your boss at work, your friend after work, your mother-in-law at Thanksgiving -- are mediated instead by one overarching, and overpowering, circumstance: Facebook. Suddenly, Work You is the same as Family You is the same as Friend You (is the same as Gym You is the same as Cooking Class You is the same as Trip to Thailand You is the same as Road Trip You is the same as Words With Friends You is the same as Happy Hour You). The You itself -- which is to say, you yourself -- gets flattened, condensed, homogenized. Contextual personhood gives way to comprehensive personhood. You become, for better or for worse, universal. Which: stressful! Because, as liberating as it is to erase the divides that separate formerly fractured identities -- as nice in theory and in practice as it is to live an all-purpose, one-size-fits-all existence -- the mingling comes with costs.</blockquote> *Michael Zimmer - <a href="">Facebook's Zuckerberg: "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity"</a> *Steve Cheney - <a href="">How Facebook is killing your authenticity</a> *Kieran Healy - <a href="">Actually, having one identity for yourself is a Breaching Experiment</a> <small><u>previously on MeFi</u> *<a href="">The Five Stages of Facebook Grief</a>: "Facebook's popularity is based on the reality that human beings are social creatures. Staying connected with people we know is innate to us. But maintaining separate social groups that we don't want to clash is also innate." *<a href="">Redefining the you that is you</a>: You Are Not Your Name and Photo: A Call to Re-Imagine Identity.</small>,2012:site.122253 Tue, 27 Nov 2012 10:54:43 -0800 anxiety facebook family friends identity interaction online persona social socialcircles socialgroups stress theatlantic you flex They deserve better <a href="">The poor in America: In need of help</a> <em>Some 15% of Americans (around 46.2m people) live below the poverty line, as Ms Hamilton does. You have to go back to the early 1960s—before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programmes—to find a significantly higher rate. Many more, like Ms Dunham, have incomes above the poverty line but nevertheless cannot meet their families’ basic monthly needs, and there are signs that their number is growing. Once upon a time the fates of these people weighed heavily on American politicians. Ronald Reagan boasted about helping the poor by freeing them from having to pay federal income tax. Jack Kemp, Bob Dole’s running-mate in 1996, sought to spearhead a “new war on poverty.” George W. Bush called “deep, persistent poverty…unworthy of our nation’s promise”. No longer. Budgets are tight and the safety net is expensive. Mitt Romney famously said he was not “concerned about the very poor” because they have a safety net to take care of them. Mr Obama’s second-term plan mentioned poverty once, and on the trail he spoke gingerly of “those aspiring to the middle class”. “Poor” is a four-letter word.</em>,2012:site.121662 Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:51:28 -0800 bop bottomofthepyramid development economic election obama poor poverty president programs romney social TheEconomist UnitedStatesofAmerica USA infini epistolary novel <a href="">Clay Shirky: How the Internet will (one day) transform government</a> [<a href="">1</a>,<a href="">2</a>,<a href="">3</a>] <a href="">Open Source Politics: The Radical Promise of Germany's Pirate Party</a><blockquote>If anything, the Pirate Party is more akin to the Communist Party, in that it was born out of an emerging economic and social era driven by a new technology, and that it advocates for people's rights in, and postulates new rules of engagement for, how to live in this new era of new advances. If the communists were beholden to industrialization, then the Pirates are beholden to the Internet. "The ancient dream of compiling all human knowledge and culture and to store it for the present and future is within close grasp," the Pirate manifesto posits. "The digital revolution brings humanity the opportunity of advancing democracy" and "enables completely new and previously unthinkable solutions for the distribution of power within a state." "The aim," it calls, "is to distribute power as broadly as possible over all citizens and thus secure their freedom and their privacy." The Internet has radically transformed human society by democratizing access to information, as well as the aspiration to shape knowledge.</blockquote>also btw... -<a href="">The Power of Networks</a> -<a href="">When We Build</a> -<a href="">The mathematics of democracy: Who should vote?</a> -<a href="">Military Aid Plummets as Washington Turns Focus to Bolstering Legal System</a> [<a href="">1</a>,<a href="">2</a>,<a href="">3</a>],2012:site.120291 Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:42:23 -0800 clayshirky collaboration coordination culture democracy design future github government internet judiciary justice law medium networks opensource participation pirate politics RMS sharing shirky social society technology voting kliuless Obama/Romney respond regarding poverty. There's been little discussion about the problem of poverty in the current Presidential election, the conventions pretty much ignored it. "The Circle of Protection, composed of Christian leaders from across the religious spectrum, released President Barack Obama's and GOP nominee Mitt Romney's video responses today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C." <a href="">Both candidates responded.</a>,2012:site.119912 Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:04:28 -0800 justice obama poverty romney social Sojourners HuronBob Tracking LiveJournal's decline "Once universally praised for founder Brad Fitzpatrick’s open-source platform and commitment to a free userbase—he once vowed that LiveJournal would always have basic (non-paying or ad-supported) accounts—LiveJournal is known these days mostly for being popular in Russia (the Russian name for blogging is “LJ.”) and Singapore, and for housing gossip blog Oh No They Didn’t." <br><br> <a href="">What happened?</a>,2012:site.119695 Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:33:36 -0800 community dailydot internet livejournal social rollick Design is first and foremost a philosophy, a system of values <em>This is a big deal because one of the main ways that people are socialized is through using, observing and contemplating material objects. The idea that people learn their places in society by engaging with the physical stuff around them has a long history in anthropology, but it was finally cemented into the theoretical mainstream in 1972 when Pierre Bourdieu published his Outline of a Theory of Practice. Bourdieu makes the case that we come to internalize the expectations of our particular social group by analogy with categories, orders and relations of things. Spatial arrangements of objects in the home, for example, or the use of different farming tools at different times of year, come to stand for intangible relationships between genders, social strata and the like, thereby anchoring abstract ideas about social organization to the physical world.</em> ~ <a href="">Designing Culture by Colin McSwiggen</a>,2012:site.119688 Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:22:54 -0800 class culture design implications industrial product social society status infini use value vs. exchange value <a href="">What Is Value? What Is Money?</a> (<a href="">via</a> <a href="">via</a>) <blockquote><a href="">What is value about?</a> and how do we measure value? <a href="">Traditionally</a>, the way of measuring value has been not been through measures of value, but actually through measures of appropriation: measures of the amount of money that you can appropriate through that business, not the value that it generates in society. <a href="">We're starting to see this difference.</a></blockquote><a href="">Reinventing Society In The Wake Of Big Data</a><blockquote>With Big Data we can now begin to actually look at the details of social interaction and how those play out, and are no longer <a href=",+Macroeconomics+-+The+Financial+Times+Online">limited to averages</a> like market indices or election results. This is an astounding change. The ability to see the details of the market, of political revolutions, and <a href="">to be able to predict</a> and control them is definitely a case of Promethean fire -- it could be used for good or for ill, and so Big Data brings us to interesting times. We're going to end up <a href="">reinventing</a> what it means to have a <a href="">human society</a>.</blockquote>more on 'data science' -<a href="">No, Really, Some of My Best Friends Are Data Scientists</a> -<a href="">Data Science: The Problem Isn't Statisticians, It's Too Many Poseurs</a> more on 'big data' -<a href="">Moving from Big Data to Smart Data</a> -<a href="">Top 10 categories for Big Data sources and mining technologies</a> -<a href="">Hadoop 2.0</a> -<a href="">Grid computing</a> -<a href="">NSA Overview of Cloud Computing</a> <a href="">When Central Is Essential</a> - "economist Glen Weyl* views changes in technology as leveling the playing field between <a href="">central governments and free markets</a>"<blockquote>In his famous 1945 article, "<a href="">The Use of Knowledge in Society</a>," F. A. <a href="">Hayek argued</a> that despite their inequity and inefficiency, free markets were necessary in order to allow the incorporation of information held by dispersed individuals into social decisions. No central planner could hope to collect and process all the information necessary for social decisions; only markets allowed and provided the incentives for <a href="">disaggregated information processing</a>. Yet, increasingly, information technology is leading individuals to delegate their <a href="">most "private" decisions</a> to <a href="">automated processing systems</a>... While these information systems are [currently] mostly nongovernmental, they are sufficiently centralized that it is increasingly hard to see how dispersed information poses the challenge it once did to <a href="">centralized planning</a>.</blockquote><a href="">The Optimist's Case For Information Technology</a><blockquote><a href="">Schools</a> have poured a ton of money into ICT and tech-focused startups are <a href="">circling the education sector</a> aiming to disrupt it. Something's going to change here. <a href="">IBM built</a> a supercomputer that can win at Jeopardy which is cool but useless and now they're trying to turn it into a medical diagnostic engine. Computer-driven cars are already a real thing. Right now, price is a big barrier to adoption but if there's anything we know about ICT hardware it's that <a href="">the price will fall</a>... I don't know that doing a medical consult with your home computer and then having your prescription automatically disatched by autonomous vehicle equals a change comparable to indoor plumbing, but it's a <a href="">big deal</a>.</blockquote><a href="">Two Types of Knowledge: Human Capital and Information</a> - "Human capital is knowledge that is hard to transfer. Information is knowledge that is easy to transfer." <a href="">Desire Modification: the ultimate technology</a> - "With humanity divided into clades by motivation and personality type, evolution would be very important." [<a href="">1</a>,<a href="">2</a>] --- <small>*<a href="">The Situation Bears Watching</a> - "Hermann Weyl, the mathematician who was Einstein's friend, was a great uncle."</small>,2012:site.119532 Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:12:16 -0800 accountability automation calculation capital complexity computation computers computing control corporations culture data democracy design development economics evolution exchange government information institutions knowledge markets money networks organization privacy process programming regulation science social society systems technology transparency utility value values wealth kliuless LETS <a href="!1F687E3E-3C98-4AD1-892C-D001FFF6BE4D">Start Your Own Currency</a> - "In the Catalonia region of Spain, a restaurant and a community garden are part of an experiment in alternative cash--they are accepting a home-grown currency called the <a href="">Eco</a> as well as the <a href="">Euro</a>." [<a href="">viz</a>. <a href="" title="For Spain's Jobless, Time Is Money - As Spain struggles with the industrialized world's highest jobless rate, young Spaniards are increasingly embracing self-help initiatives such as time banks and local currencies to cope.">gated article</a> (<a href="">Google link</a>), <a href="">cf</a>. <a href="">The</a> <a href="">W&#0246;rgl</a> <a href="">Experiment</a>],2012:site.119350 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 01:23:17 -0800 altruism commons coop co-op cooperation cooperative cooperatives coordination credit currency design exchange finance government institutions money mutual networks sharing social system trust value values kliuless Dispruting the Squishy <a href="">Got the homepage blues? Rebel Mouse is here to save the day.</a> <a href="">Former Huffington Post</a> CTO, Paul Berry, has launched what looks like a digital newspaper of your on-line social life. While the website only allows for Facebook and Twitter integration at launch, Instagram and Tumblr will be integrated. <a href="">Personalized</a> aggregation of <i>your</i> content presented in way that makes it easy for others to subconsciously consume multi-dimensional social networking.,2012:site.119057 Sat, 18 Aug 2012 11:25:49 -0800 aggregation applications beta grok networks rebelmouse social start-ups waitinglists vozworth