Ping – Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds. – NYTimes.com

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Here’s a take, very similar to mine, on the ways in which “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” gets it wrong. The rebuttal is deeper in the article, but I loved the tongue-in-cheek, but almost poetic way in which the author here demonstrates the power of Twitter in summarizing the Atlantic article:

To save you some time, I was going to give you a 100-word abridged version. But there are just too many distractions to read that much. So here is the 140-character Twitter version (Twitter is a hyperspeed form of blogging in which you write about your life in bursts of 140 characters or fewer, including spaces and punctuation marks):

Google makes deep reading impossible. Media changes. Our brains’ wiring changes too. Computers think for us, flattening our intelligence.

via Ping – Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds. – NYTimes.com.

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Why Deloitte & Touche made Diversity Inc’s Top 50 list.

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Deloitte and Touche has a CEO in Barry Salzberg that values and models diversity internally and externally (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm). He chairs and manages an internal diversity council (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm). He is connected with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, and other diversity oriented nonprofits (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm). He supports diversity in his executives by tying compensation to the promotion of diversity (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm). He is quoted here:

“Building and sustaining an inclusive culture has been critical to Deloitte’s growth and will play an important role in our continued success. Clients expect it, new recruits want it and our people demand it. Most importantly, our culture of inclusion has a direct impact on the organization’s ability to set the standard of excellence in the marketplace.” (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm)

They hire a diverse worker body, and support diverse employee resource groups, such as LGBT groups and employees with disabilities (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm). “Thirty-two percent of its work force and 41 percent of its new hires were Black, Asian, Latino or Native American” (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm)

This company respects its employees. They promote a work/life balance, have strong metrics to support productivity and goals, and provides support (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm).

They have a mentoring program in which 75% of managers participate (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm).

They also have a Chief Diversity Officer, Allen Thomas, who is quoted here:

Diversity and inclusion is tightly woven into Deloitte’s fabric. We’ve accomplished this by setting a clear and decisive tone at the top and demonstrating leadership’s unwavering commitment to fostering an inclusive culture that provides opportunities for all of our professionals to succeed. In addition, our active support of Deloitte’s Business Resource Groups and their members across the country is a daily display of our commitment to the diversity of our people. (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3294.cfm)

DiversityInc devises it’s top 50 most diverse companies “by metrics obtained in a detailed survey of more than 200 questions” (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3273.cfm).

Any company with over 1,000 U.S. employees can request and recieve the free survey (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3273.cfm).

Some more details on the methodology of choosing the top 50:

four areas the survey measures: CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate and Organizational Communications, and Supplier Diversity. Companies are assessed within the context of their industries, geography and employee skill sets. Any company that does not offer domestic-partner health benefits is automatically excluded from the Top 50 and the 11 specialty lists (http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3273.cfm).

I think that Deloitte and Touche is regarded as a top company in terms of diversity because the structure of the leadership (e.g. a Chief Diversity Officer) as well as a CEO who supports and models diversity encourage that behavior. If the leadership provides the path, the carrot, and the stick, intrinsic valence of the idea in employees is probably not far behind, especially if it helps people, helps the company, and helps the world.

Broadcast Networks Battling Uphill for Profit and Audience – NYTimes.com

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This is posted to illustrate the tension in digital media convergence between the current, the past and the future media. When the old model begins to collapse, how do the longstanding media react? If they don’t alter their methods and change to meet new needs, they falter, crumble, and disappear.

Ratings over all for broadcast networks continue to decline, making it harder for them to justify their high prices for advertising. Cable channels are spending more on original shows, which bring in new viewers and dampen their appetites for buying repeats of broadcast shows.

For the networks, the crisis is twofold: cultural and financial. For viewers, the result is more low-cost reality shows, prime-time talk and news programs and sports from the institutions that once made “Hill Street Blues,” “All in the Family” and “Cheers.”

via Broadcast Networks Battling Uphill for Profit and Audience – NYTimes.com.

State of the Art – Amazon.com’s Kindle Goes From Good to Better – NYTimes.com

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David Pogue talks about the Kindle in this article, which we talked about in class last time. However, he also talks about that quirky aspect of Convergence, in which older formats and newer formats don’t replace each other or even resemble each other directly, but are rather influenced heavily by one another, such that anything that comes after benefits from both existing.

So, for the thousandth time: is this the end of the printed book?

Don’t be silly.

The Kindle has the usual list of e-book perks: dictionary, text search, bookmarks, clippings, MP3 music playback and six type sizes (baby boomers, arise). No trees die to furnish paper for Kindle books, either.

But as traditionalists always point out, an e-book reader is a delicate piece of electronics. It can be lost, dropped or fried in the tub. You’d have to buy an awful lot of $10 best sellers to recoup the purchase price. If Amazon goes under or abandons the Kindle, you lose your entire library. And you can’t pass on or sell an e-book after you’ve read it.

via State of the Art – Amazon.com’s Kindle Goes From Good to Better – NYTimes.com.

Case One Response (COMM 564 Ebo)

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CASE STUDY NUMBER ONE

Picture this scenario: You’re just returning from your lunch break when your boss walks up to you and tells you to pack your belongings. You’re fired. You stammer for an explanation. Did you mishandle an important project? Were you accused of embezzling company funds?

No. It’s because you’re fat.

Of course, immediately, I need to know some more clarifying information.

How do I know that I am being fired for what I’ll call obesity? What in my job requires that I must be of ‘normal’ weight? What is normal weight? Are we using a formula? Am I a dancer? Am I a model? Am I an athlete who needs to be in top physical shape to stay focused? Am I a trash person, who must be able to hang on to the back of a truck without fear of a quick turn? Is it part of a contract? Has anything actually been said to indicate that obesity was in fact the reason? The company is held, generally speaking, to a standard that prevents discrimination according to weight, which in this case might be coded as a disability.
I don’t think the case would stand very long in court or even be considered unless there is some factor which is not revealed in the case study, such as one of the scenarios I mentioned above, e.g. dancing, modeling, or some other work activity that requires the worker’s body to be of a certain fitness in order to do the work well. In this case, special care would have to be taken in the work agreement to measure what an ideal body was proportionally, in weight, and in tone, so that an objective analysis of the worker’s body could be shown to be outside of the margins of allowance. Otherwise, the scenario is akin to prejudice, in that bodily fitness has no impact of knowledge work, but may indeed be seen as having an impact on kinetic work.

I’d also add that I do not see it as very fair nor reasonable, even given a contract, that there not be an opportunity to make things right in the eyes of the contract. How many pounds out of the allowance are we? 20 pounds? 10? 10 pounds could be reasonably lost with a fitness and caloric regimen in 5 to 10 weeks. Can the work be held for that long? Is there some other task that the obese employee could do in the meantime?

John LeMasney

Open Source – The Washington Times – Home

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Some old media are embracing new methods, including openness and portability of data, such as the Washington Times. This is big.

The Washington Times has always focused on content. After careful review, we determined that the best way to have the top tools to produce and publish that content is to release the source code of our in-house tools and encourage collaboration.

The source code is released under the permissive Apache License, version 2.0.

via Open Source – The Washington Times – Home.

Video: What is Web 2.0?

Here’s a video of me presenting to a user group on Web 2.0.

more about “Internet Archive: Details: What is We…“, posted with vodpod

The Death Of “Web 2.0″

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A very interesting look at how Google’s zeitgeist tools are seeing Web 2.0 as a concept. I wonder how ‘Semantic Web’ is fairing?

And just in case you’re curious: “Web 3.0″ doesn’t seem to picking up much.

Let’s all rejoice.

Google’s “Insights for Search”, a beta service that analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered – relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time – gives an even better overview:

Week 4 reading review (for February 17th, 2009)

1.  Provide a quick over view or summary of the readings  (3 – 5 sentences)   (8pts)

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Is Google Making us Stupid talks about the idea that the way in which we gather information now is changing our ability to process information; it suggests that we are becoming less capable of processing deeper, longer works, and instead skimming along the surface of ideas, jumping from link to link, but never quite diving in.

Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? discusses the ways in which blogging is giving voice to progressive politics while potentially further quieting the voices of more disconnected, rural, and uneducated people.

The ‘podcast‘ Why Podcasting Matters for your Organization (which is not actually a podcast in the form it was delivered) argues that no matter what your role, business, segment, or product that podcasting should be either a part of your campaign as a direct tool for building an audience or as a way of reaching someone else’s target audience as an advertiser. It also talks about the simplicity with which a podcast can be created, using simple free tools, a basic understanding of RSS feeds, and a hosted space for delivery.

2.  Clearly Identify what you feel are 3 key ideas in the readings (8pts)

In Is Google making us stupid? the key idea is that avid users of the service and others like it, as well as active users of the internet in general are having their minds and mental processes changed in the same way that the printing press, television, and other mediums have changed our expectations and interpretation of content. This author in particular is seeing a negative loss of the ability to comprehend and analyze deeper messages such as those found in reading tomes like War and Peace. Personally, I feel that the new skills and the old skills are both still necessary, and will greatly intermingle as we become more comfortable with the new skills societally.

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In Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? the key point being delivered is that we need to continue to work to include those currently excluded from the new media, such as the uneducated, the rurally located, and those who are choosing to exclude themselves from new mediums at their own peril. Otherwise, we are simply making the audience for more traditional media (television, radio, newspaper) more segmented and only half-aware of the up to the second truths being delivered in the new media.

In Why Podcasting Matters for your Organization the main point is that podcasting is not just only for digitally oriented businesses, schools, and individuals, but for everyone, in the same way that blogging isn’t just for the “digerati” or “blogerati” but rather for everyone as both producer, consumer, and everywhere in between.

3.  Support your summary and/or key points with three specific references to the readings (7pts)

In Is Google making us stupid? the author quotes a study that provides some evidence for the idea that our minds are changing as a result of using the internet:

It is clear that readers are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems like they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

In Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? the author poses the issues we encounter by seeing blogs as a true vox populi:

At a time when the visible digital divide may be shrinking as increasing numbers of Americans come online, it may be replaced by an invisible version that benefits those who are well

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educated, well connected and organized.

In Why Podcasting Matters for your Organization the author talks very specifically about the idea that everybody should be podcasting, no matter how large or small their audience, no matter their intent. Click to hear the excerpt from the assignment that exemplifies this idea:

Excerpt from Audio assignment.

4.  Identify the most difficult or challenging concept for you from this week’s readings.  Saying “I don’t know” or “nothing was difficult” is not an adequate response. (8pts)

In Is Google making us stupid? the author makes broad assumptions about users of the new media, and I always tend to bristle at the idea that any two people are the same, much less an entire society. The most difficult concept here for me is believing that technology can have dramatically negative effects when my own experience has been so much a means to the opposite ends.

In Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? the most difficult concept for me is getting my mind around how we can invite diversity into the blogosphere. I personally have found that if someone doesn’t want to blog, sees a blog as a specific thing that is immobile in its definition, or if they don’t see their own view as publishable material, they simply won’t blog.  I also already have some white male guilt, so the fact that I’m such an avid blogger makes me feel like I’m somehow doing something wrong by adding to the statistic, and I don’t feel like I should feel guity for participating.

In Why Podcasting Matters for your Organization the most difficult concept for me was wondering how to help people get past the ideas of RSS, hosting, and media production in the execution of podcasts. I’ve tried many times, but the nomenclature, familiarity, and technology get in the way.

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5.  Provide 2 or 3 discussion questions for us to talk about in class (6pts)

In Is Google making us stupid? the end of the article talks about how Gutenberg’s press, and even the typewriter have had a similar mind altering effect on the authors. With this in mind, would we be better off as a society without either of those things in the long term, or are we in the short evolutional space where using tools like Google are relatively awkward because we are SO new to them?

In Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? the idea that diversity needs to be introduced to blogging; just because anybody can blog doesn’t mean everyone will blog. How can we get the heretofore unheard voices and unpublished thoughts into the blogosphere so that we can enjoy a more complete cultural view?

In Why Podcasting Matters for your Organization the idea is introduced that podcasting has such a low threshold of entry that anyone can do it. Why isn’t everyone doing it?

6. Discuss how this week’s readings might relate to your upcoming presentation, paper or to the “real world.” Here too, saying “I don’t know” or “it does not apply” is not an adequate response.  (8pts)

In Is Google making us stupid? the concepts have strengthened my view that technology is a tool like fire, a hammer, or a calculator. It can be used to smash, burn, and cheat, or it can be used to cook a wonderful palate changing meal, build the most magnificent palace, or help us determine the calculations to send humans to Mars.

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In Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? the charge is made that we are not doing enough to bring the diverse voice to the mic, and that we are not doing enough to create an audience for the myriad of bloggers that already exist. I’d argue that in past mediums, and in life itself, that media and species evolve according to the fitness of the species, the ability of the medium to transform content into audience thought, and a masterful execution. I think that it will work out in the end, somehow, and that we should stop worrying and just blog, already.

In Why Podcasting Matters for your Organization we learn that everyone should be using these tools. As an advocate of this idea, I know from experience that wanting others to use the technology isn’t enough. It has to be useful for them, it has to be easy to use, it has to be seen as a common practice, it has to be supported, and there has to be an intrinsic reward. Otherwise, consider it forced.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

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Dr. Ebo asked us to give two specific examples of discriminatory practice related to the following types, using the EEOC web site as a guide.

Age: An employer who chooses one employee over another equally qualified employee for a job based on their age would be in violation of discrimination laws. If an employee decided to reduce benefits to an employee based on the idea that advanced age was causing more frequent insurance claims, they would be in violation of discrimination laws. http://www.eeoc.gov/types/age.html

Disability: An employer who decided to fire a secretary who was recently diagnosed with legal blindness, but who was still able to perform basic job duties would be in violation. An employer who refused to install a ramp for an employee who became wheelchair ridden in a car accident would likely be in violation, if the install of the ramp was an affordable expense to the business and would not bring undue hardship. Disability Discrimination

Equal Compensation: Two persons doing the same job who are of equal skills, effort, and responsibility, etc. but who were given different pay or benefits would put the employer in violation. If an older construction worker and a younger construction worker both do a similar job, but the employer sees the older employee as an insurance risk for that reason alone, they can not simply reduce benefits based upon that belief. Equal Pay and Compensation Discrimination

National Origin: If an employer hires one person over another because both they and the new employee were both of German descent, the employer would be in violation. If an employer set an employee of a particular national origin to a task that they felt matched some national association with that task (a Chinese American to do an accountancy task, for example, playing on the stereotype) they would be in violation. National Origin Discrimination

Pregnancy: An employer who discovers that a suitable candidate for employment is pregnant can not dismiss her from consideration based on the fact that she’s pregnant. If an employer typically allows an employee to enjoy a benefit whle on leave, they must provide the same benefit to an employee who is away because of a pregnancy.   Pregnancy Discrimination

Race: An employer must not give preferential treatment or a difference of responsibility, etc., based on racial differences. If a boss were to choose a caucasian worker over a hispanic worker to manage a project because they believe that caucasians are more responsible than other races, they would be in violation.  Race-Based Discrimination

Religion: If a employer were to choose a Christian over an atheist for a job because they felt the job required a moral compass and the atheist would be less likely to be morally complete, they would be in violation. If a Christian employer were to only ever promote people who noticeably prayed they would be in violation. Religious Discrimination

Retaliation: An employer who demotes an employee as retaliation for reporting a discrimination violation is in violation for this alone. Threatening an employee who reports a violation of discrimination laws is also prohibited. Retaliation

Sex: An employer who insists upon sexual favors from an employee is in violation. An employer who maintains a hostile work environment due to sexual overtones in the workplace is in violation.  Sex-Based Discrimination

Sexual Harassment: A worker who is subjected to overtly sexual conversations of co-workers because of the allowances of the employer puts the employer in violation of sexual harassment rules. A co worker who commits sexual advances, asks for sexual favors, or promotes a sexually based hostile work environment for others is in violation.  Sexual Harassment