Iggy the cat investigates the ipad

Kevin Pereira (1) one of the fast talking, up-for-pretty-much-anything, very funny hosts on Attack of the Show noted on his twitter feed today that even cats love the ipad.

I've always said that cats are tool using animals. Few humans notice this because we are the tools they use.




Enjoy,

Sia

(1) I enjoy this gentleman's lucid, well informed critiques, as well as his interviews. Like Jon Stewart, he is courteous, thoughtful and good to his guests and much of his humor is self deprecating. Also like Stewart, he has a rapier fast wit which he uses at need. Best of all, he can take the most recondite tech and make it understandable to folks like me who just want the darn thing to work.

There are funny, smart, tech-savvy women on the show, as well. If you like computers, comics, movies and such check it out.

Welcome To The Social Media Revoution

Youth social networking researcher Dana Boyd has observed that many people presume the way they use social networks is the way everyone uses them ... Now picture our perspective leaving our own experiences, zooming out and up until we can see how all the different groups are interacting on a worldwide social network. That bird's-eye view could be both beautiful and horrible if the resolution was clear enough. That's what a Ramen-eating, ex-Apple engineer named Pete Warden is about to release to the public this week.

This Wednesday, Warden will make friend, fan page and name data from hundreds of millions of Facebook users available to the academic research community.

- to read more, go to Read, Write, Web and click on The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul

****

I'm still of two minds about this new social revolution of ours. Let us consider Facebook, which so many Pagans are using. On the positive side of the Facebook equation is the fact that I am connecting with some wonderful folks. Usually though, these are people I already know in some way, if only via email or phone calls or through their books, music or work/interests we have in common. The negative side is this: Too many people (even those who can be fascinating in person) somehow don't feel the need to post in ways that are interesting, witty, useful or insightful (1) which means that a social media site can easily become the most boring party you've ever been to. Let me put it another way: Remember High School? Want to go back? I thought so.

Now this, this I did like: Facebook Comes of Age After Disaster In Haiti

Are you on Facebook? Please keep in mind that the privacy thing is still a huge issue. Facebook is not some cute little college start up. This company is not your friend. They are watching what you do and selling any information you post online to whoever wants it.

Are you planning to use the new Google Buzz? That has privacy and safety concerns, as well, because it can upload your location as well as your status.

So...be careful out there.

Sia

Twitter - @birdgarden
Sia on Facebook

Related Articles

What Facebook Quizes Know About You from the ACLU

Pagans & Privacy: Email and Networking Sites

Overall, I have to say that I prefer Twitter.

Unique Uses for Twitter: Fundraising & Support

Does Twitter Make You A Nicer Person?

Video:

Youtube: The Social Media Revolution

Endnotes:

(1) And please, save me from all these quizzes, games and "gifts" (which are just another way for Facebook to do more data mining).

Zero Email or There's A Giant Rubber Duckie In the Data Stream of Life

This just in from Waverly Fitzgerald at School of the Seasons:

Zero Email

One of my favorite bloggers, Havi Brooks, declared a total email moratorium a few months ago. And I have to say I totally admired her boldness and envied her new found freedom. When I turn on my computer and get a message saying I have 1,120 unread messages, I feel exhausted and guilty. But I don't have the nerve desire to give up email altogether. Havi has a few other ways to stay in touch with friends, through her Kitchen Table forum and Twitter. I still haven't taken the plunge into Twitter or Facebook; a little nervous about committing more of time to electronic communication.

I do love email, because it means I don't have to talk on the telephone, because I can carefully craft my words, because I can respond on my own time frame. But I've decided to try something bold. Not as bold as Havi's moratorium, but bold for me.

I'm taking all 1,220 of my unanswered emails and putting them into a folder called “To Be Read Later.” And every day from now on, I'm going to read all the email that arrives and take action on it within 24 hours: delete, reply, archive (for information I might need later) or print (for future action). If you've been waiting for a long time for me to reply to your email, please write me again and you can see if this system works.

The Grand Canard

Dear Waverly,

May you have better luck with this plan than I did.

The emails I deal with every day, from work, volunteer efforts, friends and so forth, are all in folders. The ones that need immediate attention are answered within 3 business days. But those others...well. These folders are now like giant rubber duckies bobbing along gently in my data stream. Sooner or later they clog up the harbor and interfere with shipping. You know the worst of it? I do it to myself. I send myself dozens of emails a week with ideas for this essay or that scene, and I archive a good many of the emails I receive for later use or reference. Ack! Argh! Oh, and Waverly, watch out for Twitter....

Sia

Links:

Havi Brooks

Rubber Ducky News: for those of you who are duck minded:

Thousands of Rubber Ducks Land on British Shores

The Delight of the Duckie

Love letter: Florentijn Hofman

Photo: Art Exhibit, France Excerpt from Delight of the Duckie: Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman created a 105-foot-high inflatable rubber duck for a 2007 art show on the Loire River near Nantes, France. Hofman designed his grand canard with a large, toddler-like head and no neck, which, he says, “makes it more friendly.” The wildly popular sculpture was also designed to float from place to place along the river, and visitors never knew just where they might encounter it. “The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers,” Hofman says. The result? A jovial—yet notably peaceful—daily duck hunt. See more photos of Florentijn Hofman’s giant duck, and his other whimsical works, at www.florentijnhofman.nl. Under PROJECTS click on “Canard de bain.”

Pagans and Privacy: Email and Networking Sites

"In the '20s and '30s it was the role of government. '50s and '60s it was civil rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?"
- Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing

Who owns your data? Anyone with sense would say that it is you but Facebook recently tried to claim that they owned it and got trounced by their users in the process. This issue isn't dead; it will rise, zombi-like, again and again until some future court case decides it. (1) I think that Zack Stern said it best when it wrote this in P.C. World:

Social-networking sites can be excellent ways to communicate... But Facebook reminds us that these sites aren't your friends, they aren't tools to solve problems, and they aren't a bunch of kids trying to make something cool. They're cold, unfeeling businesses. Businesses exist to make money. So take a close look at the terms, especially when the services are free. Sometimes, cost-free can be expensive.

I am a Pagan person who works in the wider world. There are places where I can let my spiritual practice be known and places where I cannot, lest I loose my effectiveness in venues where I do good work. For this and other reasons, I value my privacy.

As a private person and as a woman of a certain age, I am frankly mystified by what information young people will give out about themselves without (it seems) thinking too much about it. As Emily Nussbaum notes, their motto seems to be: Say Everything.

Talking to her the night before, I had liked Kitty: She was warm and funny and humble...but reading her Livejournal, I feel thrown off. Some of it makes me wince. Much of it is witty and insightful. Mainly, I feel bizarrely protective of her, someone I’ve met once—she seems so exposed. And that feeling makes me feel very, very old.

...It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years—you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about “jungle rhythms.” Everything associated with that music and its greasy, shaggy culture felt baffling and divisive, from the crude slang to the dirty thoughts it was rumored to trigger in little girls. That musical divide has all but disappeared. But in the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk. It goes something like this:

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another.

...When I was in high school, you’d have to be a megalomaniac or the most popular kid around to think of yourself as having a fan base. But people 25 and under are just being realistic when they think of themselves that way, says media researcher Danah Boyd, who calls the phenomenon “invisible audiences.” Since their early adolescence, they’ve learned to modulate their voice to address a set of listeners that may shrink or expand at any time: talking to one friend via instant message (who could cut-and-paste the transcript), addressing an e-mail distribution list (archived and accessible years later), arguing with someone on a posting board (anonymous, semi-anonymous, then linked to by a snarky blog). It’s a form of communication that requires a person to be constantly aware that anything you say can and will be used against you, but somehow not to mind.

(This is a useful article, full of cultural insight. Read the whole thing.)

Some differing views on privacy are generational, it's true, but some of this comes down to having healthy boundaries and using common sense. I worry that what some folks choose share about themselves now will someday bite them on the behind.

What Do They Know and Why Do They Want To Know It?

I know, without liking it one bit, that whatever I write in private emails and in on-line groups may be read by people to whom they are not addressed, and they will do so, legally in most cases, and without my permission. Knowing that, I try to use caution and some common sense and I don't post anything I really want kept private. I do not use Facebook, nor will I. I'm careful in other ways, as well.

Charlie Rose recently went to Silicon Valley and did a series of interviews with the movers and shakers there, including Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Information at Google. The bogger at Bleachblog was struck by the same moment that caught my attention, a casual comment made by Mayer about who knows what and why:

....Ms. Mayer said something that astounded me; Some specific credit card company knows with 80% accuracy who is going to get a divorce 2 years before the cardholders themselves... Ms. Mayer explained that the whether a person is to stay married greatly affects their ability to pay off debt and therefore affects their credit rating. I wonder who they could sell this information to. Divorce attorneys/ Counseling Services. I can see it now. You get a free pen in the mail from Dr. Staytogether's counseling service offering help for your pending divorce that you do not know about yet but with 80% accuracy will happen in 1.5 years. Amazing.

Ms. Mayers was referring to information contained in a book titled Super Crunchers. If you want a scary read, put down the Stephen King and read that, and The End of Privacy.

Linked In:

I know a good many Pagans who use Linked In for the same reasons that my friend Snakemoon and I do: we have a professional presence in the world and since information on our work is already out there, it's up to us to manage this information, the same way we manage any other part of our working life. Linked In is also a great way of finding a job or hiring when you have one to offer.

Tech Love:

I have worked with tech for most of my adult life. I have often worked in tech and I lived surrounded by technophiles in Silicon Valley for over a decade. One could even say I married into tech. (Hi, honey). I say this so you'll know I'm not a luddite. But I am an informed and cautious consumer, and I tell other Pagans this: What you choose to do in these cases is up to you, but allow me to urge caution. Data Mining is an epidemic and it's growing, along with worldwide Internet use and leaps in technology. It's a business and it is not in your best interest to give your Self away. For example, Google (which already has privacy issues with G-mail) has recently leaped ahead in this issue and not in ways I like. Arts Technical writes:

Google's newest advertising strategy, behavioral targeting, has finally arrived. The strategy, referred to as "interest-based" advertising, will go beyond current targeted advertising practices and track your Internet usage habits in order to serve an ad that the search giant hopes is better suited for you. This means that, instead of visiting a music site and simply getting music-related ads, you might visit a music site and getting ads for the newest "Cats Meowing Christmas Carols" album—because Google knows you spend 95 percent of your Internet time at Catster.

That's charming if you love cats, but what about your other interests... hummm?

So...What Are You Reading?

Those of you who shop at Amazon.com know that they do the same sort of thing when they recommend a book for you based on your previous searches. Some people find this useful. I find it creepy and intrusive.

Teeny, tiny, tiny, print

...and by the way, they sell that information to other companies. That's how you got on that mailing list. Read the fine print, folks; it matters.

Sia

Endnotes:


(1) John Svoikla suggests four basic principals for this issue in his article titled What Facebook's Stumble Can Teach Your Company. He goes into some detail (read the whole thing) but these are, in brief:

1. Allow users to own their own content and identify
- Allow? really? look for some court cases on this issue in future.

2. Make all sharing options default to the most conservative setting
- in other words, ask your users to think twice before posting their most intimate details.

3. Create a better infrastructure for anonymity and tracking of content
- among other things, allow the user to remove certain content permanently

4. Don't sneak up on your audience
- be transparent. Let your users know, in clear language, what you are doing and why, and ask for their input.

Related Articles:

The blog that started the uproar at Facebook:
Facebook New Terms of Service: We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Data, Forever.

Think Social Network Blogs Can't Hurt You?
- protecting your health information

For the legally minded among us:
Security vs. Privacy: Reinterpreting the Fourth Amendment

Privacy Concerns: Facebook and Google
- an earlier essay by Yours Truly on this zombie-issue when rose again from the grave in 2008. It has some notes on privacy and G-mail that might be useful and a nifty picture of Maat

Video:

1. Facebook: Federal Human Data Mining Program

2. (humor) Facebook in Reality


Links:

Privacy International

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

Only The Lonely

I like people...in moderation. One friend describes me as an extroverted introvert, by which she means that I am friendly, outgoing and love company as long as I get long periods alone to recharge my emotional batteries. It's true; I'm lucky enough to enjoy my own company and I need lots of quiet time, as well. After that, I'm back and ready to party.

I'm careful now to blend my need for friendship and alone time in such a way that I don't often suffer from the painful and intense loneliness I knew as a kid growing up in an alcoholic and deeply dysfunctional family. A recent article on the modern epidemic of loneliness and it's link to social networking sites which according to one researcher, "...risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity" has me thinking about friendships.

I tend to think of my dearest friendships as falling into three main types: golden, silver and copper. For example, I have golden friendships, the ones that will never tarnish, and that go back 20 and 30 years. These are the "Yes, you can have one of my kidneys to save your life" levels of friendship. Regardless of what goes on with our partners, work, kids, distance, change o' life or change in general, I love these people and will be there for them, even when it is difficult or inconvenient for me to do so. If a crisis occurs, and they need a home or help of some kind, they can call me and vice versa. We are together (one way or another) for beginnings and endings, all kinds. I ask for their advice on the big decisions. They are the people on my speed dial, and in many cases, I'd call them before I'd call blood kin. I can call them at 3 am, I could call them from jail. I can call them when I'm lost (all sorts of ways) and I can call them when I'm really, really happy, triumphant even, knowing absolutely that they will be happy for me.

We keep each others secrets unto death. No kidding.

This a short list of people. It has to be. You can't offer that kind of quality caring and commitment to a large number of people, any more than one gardener working alone can tend 1,000 acres. Intimate, committed friendships take care and time, forgiveness, compassion and consistent, heart-to-heart (if not always person to person) contact. We might even loose contact for a while but we'll pick up where we left off because we "get" one another on a level that no one else does. We have history, we have trust. This takes time to build and time to maintain.

Then there are the silver friendships. These are special people I've met each time I've moved who are funny, smart, committed, big-hearted and great company. We might work on projects together and find we like one another. We might meet as neighbors, have the same hobbies or share our skills and talents for a cause. In any case, some part of us "clicks" beyond the immediacy of our engagements so that if one of us moves out of the circle where we first met, we stay in touch. I know that they would visit me in the hospital (or get me there) if the need arose, and I will do the same for them. We will come to each others parties and talk (nicely) to that friend's annoying relatives at weddings and holiday celebrations. We will each tolerate any dull meetings the other needs us to attend (and trust the other one to follow through when we need a similar sort o' favor). We'll share amusing (but not mean spirited) gossip, we'll lend books, and we'll deal with the hard stuff, too. because friends at these levels have done their emotional homework.

Last are the copper friendships. These friendships are more basic and more effected by time and distance. These are people I know and like and who travel, work, live, volunteer, create or do ritual in same social circles I'm in. We share certain values, ethics, interests and, in some cases, subculture(s). I might see them at certain conventions, give aid to their projects and ask for their help on my own. I like them and will go out of my way to see them or spend time with them, but I would not ask for their help on the big things or expect them to understand (or even listen to) my troubles. They make me laugh and I value them as people. Some of these folks are movie friends or gardening friends or friends-who-organize. The emphasis is on the shared interests first, and the friendship second and I don't expect the depth and width from these friendships that I enjoy with my silver and gold friends.

The word "thrive" is derived from the Old Norse word, thrifask. which literally means, "to have oneself in grasp" or "grasp something for oneself."

- Vijai P. Sharma, Ph.D on Human Touch

How friendships thrive:

Each of these friendships have some things in common: They involve good manners and require certain social obligations. When it comes to social obligations, the understanding, accepting and keeping of same seems to be a dying art form. Here is some of what I mean.

* Put in the time.
If you cannot meet with me in person, then call. (Yes, Skype is acceptable.) The point is to hear your voice and tone, to see your body language, to look into each other's eyes, to hug, if possible, to connect in some basic, human way on a fairly regular basis. We have need of this, a need that is so physical and so ancient that it is crucial to healthy human relationships, and quite possibly, human health.

* Thou shalt not bore.
Something bothering you today? Fine. In that case, you may rail about it in an interesting fashion, but you may not whine. Nor do I wish to know every detail of your mundane life. I have my own daily minutia to deal with.

* Think about your life and what it means: Don't just tell me what you do, tell me what it means to you, how it felt, how it changed you, and how this will effect your future.

* Pay attention to other people: If you want me to pay attention to what you are doing, saying, thinking, planning and feeling then you must pay the same level of attention to me. I am your friend, not your audience. (1)

* Follow-through on your commitments and tell the truth. Be someone I can trust.
This one is a deal breaker.

* Forgive my errors as you expect your own to be forgiven and own your anger like an adult:
If I do wrong, tell me that. Fight fair, and air resentments (directly to me) when and if necessary. I'll listen and I'll make changes and amends as needed, expecting that you will do that same when your time comes. But leave out the drama and trauma; we're well past high school.

* Practice and refine your manners:
Remember birthdays (send cards, not emails. Failing that, call). Be a good and thoughtful guest at parties (RSVP, bring something, come on time and don't say too late). Throw the occasional party yourself. Be both considerate and kind. If you were not taught how be a social person, keep in mind that it is never too late to learn.

Not Everyone Is Meant To Be Your Friend:

Everyone else I know is either an associate (deserving of my best professional behavior) or an acquaintance (who deserves politeness, kindness and pleasant but firm boundaries) or a stranger (who, as a human being, deserves respect and civility until they prove otherwise).

Talk To Me: As Oscar Wilde once said: "Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation..." If you are my friend, I don't want to have to read your Face Book page to know how you feel or what you're up to (and, trust me on this, I won't).

Here's the great flaw in social networking tech:

I can't see your expression in an email, and I won't hear that note of sadness or joy in your voice that tells me I should ask "What's really going on?". If you want to be my friend, then you take the time to connect. We get together and you see me. Failing that, you pick up the phone.

Sia

Related Articles:

Why Loneliness Is Bad For Your Health Alone in a Parallel Life
Why the computer friendships arn't the same as real world friendships.

Friendships: Enrich Your Life and Improve Your Health
Some tips for making and being a friend.

Get off Facebook and Get a Life

Excerpt:

...the amount of time we spend with each other has slumped dramatically and in turn is damaging our health.

He says our devotion to such sites could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, and the function of arteries, and influence mental performance.

Levels of hormones such as the "cuddle chemical" oxytocin, which promotes bonding, altered according to whether people were in close contact or not.

This could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia.

Endnotes:

(1) I have a copper level friend who I kept up with on Live Journal when I moved from California to Oregon because, unlike most people on L.J., she wrote interesting and thoughtful entries. In person, I adore her. She is well read, insightful, busy, creative and very involved in the Pagan community. I called her recently to get her take on a PantheaCon, feeling that she would have insights that others might miss. "But I posted about that on my L.J." she said. This disturbed me for a couple of reasons:

1) Her L.J. post on PCon was simply a list of what workshops she had gone to, and who she had seen and I wanted more from her then weather notes, bare facts and restaurant tips and

2) I wanted the (brief) phone conversation only she and I could have, one based on her knowledge of people, groups and traditions she and I both know from years spent working together in the Bay Area. In other words, I didn't want to read her press release, I wanted her to share with me, in a way unique to us, one that would allow me to appreciate her deeper experience and learn from it myself.

Our conversation t'was not to be for other reasons, as well; like a lot of people her age, it turns out that she hates to talk on the phone.

I notice that she no longer even bothers post a paragraph with a topic sentence, story line and beginning, middle and end to her Live Journal, she now "twitters" (feh!) these short strings of seemingly errant text, littered with html, straight to her journal. It's like reading code. I like her a great deal, and when I see her, I'll buy her a drink and ask for her views, but I read her L.J. with much less pleasure and attention than I did before.