A Riot to Tweet?

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If there is one thing that could make me look with favour on the idea of "banning suspected rioters from social media", it's reading Jeff Jarvis lecture the UK government about free speech, pointing to the US constitution and continually promoting his new book as he does so.

Jarvis' argument combines slanted rhetorical questions with banal platitudes. He asks "Who is to say what communication and content should be banned from whom on what platform? On my BlackBerry? My computer? My telephone? My street corner?" To which Mr. Cameron would probably say "Me and the police. Weren't you listening?"

And then there are these:

  • When anyone's speech is not free, no one's speech is free.
  • Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
  • Restricting speech cannot be done except in the context of free speech.
  • A tool used for good can be used for bad.
  • When debating public identity, one must decide what a public is.

To which I say: "If you have something to say, just say it."

In short, Jarvis knows nothing about the riots but knows that any interference with Twitter … Continue reading

Linking to Dystopia: Wikileaks, Google, and Amazon

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  • [WikiLeaks claims credit for the Egyptian uprisings] The frustrating thing is that WikiLeaks is an important and worthwhile development (and yes I have donated money to it). But there is a self-centred nature to its publicity that doesn't help, especially when it's way off the ball like this one. (via Jodi Dean)
  • [Making the world's information available, until we get bored] Google's massive resources and short attention span is becomign a problem. In 2008 Google announced, in its usual self-congratulatory tone, a project to digitize the world's newspaper archives as part of its mission to make information accessible to everyone.* In May, Google shut down the initiative, with less fanfare, choosing instead to focus its efforts on a new payment system.** According to the Richard Salvucci* Google has done this before, buying the Paper of Record initiative and then shutting it down without explanation.* 
  • [Everyone Knows You're a Dog] El Reg is reporting that YouTube is moving towards a "real name" policy, which would seriously screw anyone wanting to upload videos of repressive actions. This looks to be part of the Google+ move … Continue reading

Links: Carr, Facebook, Ravelry, Amazon

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  • At The Economist, Nicholas Carr and Jay Rosen are debating "This house believes that the internet is making journalism better, not worse". *  No prizes for guessing who I agree with: opening statements are factual from Carr, wishful thinking from Rosen. Also mentioned at Nicholas Carr's Rough Type blog.*
  • Also on Rough Type, Nicholas Carr is adopting Clay Shirky's asterisk-style* linking, at least for one post. I'm doing the same but can't be bothered to get rid of the underlining.* 
  • Israel uses Facebook to blacklist pro-Palestinian protesters.* The window in which Facebook was a space where the younger generation could meet outside the view of officialdom* is now closed.
  • Ravelry, the social network for knitters, discussed at Slate.* Quotation: "The company that runs it has just four employees, one of whom is responsible for programming the entire operation. It has never taken any venture capital money and has no plans to go public. Despite these apparent shortcomings, the site's members absolutely adore it." I'd say "Because of these characteristics" rather than "Despite these apparent shortcomings".
  • Amazon wants to buy UK online bookstore The Book Depository. Continue reading

An Uncertain World III: Everything is Obvious, by Duncan J. Watts

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Before leaving for a holiday (it was lovely; thanks for asking) I was going through a trio of books on the topical topic of “prediction is difficult, especially of the future”. I decreed that Dan Gardner’s Future Babble was limited, but otherwise OK, and then deemed Tim Harford’s Adapt a failed attempt to justify free-market thinking in the aftermath of its biggest failure in decades.

So now it’s onto the final book of the trio, and my favourite by some distance. Australian Duncan Watts is a physicist-turned sociologist who now works! at! Yahoo! (I called him American a few posts ago. Thanks to Kevin Horgan for correcting me.) You may know Watts from such hits as his explication of network science Six Degrees of Freedom; his Music Lab experiments with Matthew Salganik and Peter Dodds (pdf) showing that social influence can overwhelm any special quality of particular songs in separating hits from misses; and his arguments against Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Each of these reappears in his latest book, Everything is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer) – henceforth EIO (home page).

(Attention conservation notice: for some reason this took for ever to write and I still don’t like it, but I said I’d post it so I’m damn well … Continue reading

Postponement

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I hoped to have a review of  Everything is Obvious up by now, but, well, life and that. And now I'll be offline for about ten days. Perhaps my batteries will be recharged when I get back. It's a good job nobody is paying me for this or I'd be fired.

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