Monday Morning's Link

Huxley Vs. Orwell: Infinite Distraction Or Government Oppression?

This is brilliantly simplified and thought-provoking.

Will the New Revamped MySpace Succeed?

"Don't call it a comeback!"


They are about to relaunch a reinvented MySpace. 
Good for them. Will they succeed? I doubt it.
This is where technology and organizational communication come hand in hand.  Their brand is dead. Amazingly dead. Sure MySpace still lives on and it still has millions of users, but it has been surpassed by facebook. 


I always wonder about the number of users they provide. Here's why: Take my friend Sam for example. She has an account at MySpace, but she never uses it. She never bothered to close it is all. Sam is more of a Derridian Spectre or Trace than an actual Space. I will suppose that MySpace counts her as an active member since she has an active account. How many others, however, are a MySpace Trace? Once again I digress into philosophy.


MySpace suffers from an amalgamation of casual knowledge by consumers and associations that are clearly damaging. In other words, it had  “Negative Brand Equity.” NBE cannot be empirically evaluated thoroughly, although some hypotheticals can be applied. NBE is hard to overcome.

Take a look:

Eastern Airlines (Flew right into the ground...a couple times.)

Howard Johnson’s (a slow, slow death)

Jack-in-the-Box (expanded rapidly...food problems...now regional only)

Kinney Shoes (dead)

Polaroid (Relaunched....but hardly exciting)

Kodachrome (exists in name only...and the linked Simon & Garfunkel Tune)

Realistic (the old Radio Shack Brand)

Atari (The original!)

Pets.com

E.F. Hutton ("When E.F. Hutton Talks...")

Ted Airlines (The dead Ted page)

Gateway Computer (Acer ate you for lunch)

In one way or another each of these brands died. Many attempted relaunches. NBE, however, doomed them to failure. Once a brand loses is equity, word of mouth can kill it off and leave it for dead among the other brand carcasses. There are a few exceptions to this rule.


I'll name one: Apple. No need to rehash this amazing comeback.


So MySpace? Nah. I don't see it happening. It is in the ER an the Doctors are performing emergency surgery. Gallant effort or not, MySpace is going to flatline....eventually. 


The End.

Blogger! Protect Thyself!

There’s No Protection in Cyberspace.

Ok, let’s face facts. The law is slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. The law has not caught up to the vast technological change over the last 20 years. This is fairly obvious when you hear what people in high places say about technology. However, the law (and exploitation of the law) is catching up. Blogger be aware and beware. 

Dr. H is here to help.

The good news on this front is that on August 10 President Obama signed the “Speech Act,” protecting American journalists, publishers (both print and online) and bloggers from libel tourism. A good thing.

I am going to assume you are not stupid enough to threaten to kill President Obama, VP Biden in your blog. So don't be a dope like this guy. Don't threaten judges! Buh-bye!

And where there are judges, there are lawyers. And where there are lawyers, there are…well…let me not defame the entire profession. Let’s just say they are a smart bunch who can make you pay and pay and pay.  For example you can be sued for re-posting articles without permission….even if someone else posts them in your comments section. Sometimes even if you add a link to an article! The LV Sun is keeping tabs on the lawsuits.

Best bet: keep away from Stephens Media. Period. 

Oh...

...and if you are in Philly you might want to move to NJ because the City of Brotherly Shove wants $300 for your business license. Yes. $300 to blog. As a Jerseyite - and a Mets fan - I have no problem hating on Philly. Thanks for making my job easier!

Last but not least:

You are not considered a journalist.  So watch yourself.  You don’t want to find yourself on the wrong end of a defamation case. Anonymity is no protection either.

So here are the basics on defamation:

Some categories of false statements are so innately harmful that they are considered to be defamatory per se. In the common law tradition, damages for such false statements are presumed and do not have to be proven. "Statements are defamatory per se where they falsely impute to the plaintiff one or more of the following things":

Allegations or imputations injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession. So don’t call a plumber you did not like "a delirious unscrupulous drunkard."

Allegations or imputations of having a loathsome disease (historically leprosy and sexually transmitted disease, now also including mental illness). So calling the professor who gave you a bad grade “a herpes infested retard” is a no-no.

Allegations or imputations of unchastity (usually only in unmarried people and sometimes only in women): See previous, but make it “herpes infested retarded whore.”

Allegations or imputations of criminal activity (sometimes only crimes of moral turpitude).  So calling your Congressman a thief or a crook or a swindler fits here.

Of course if your professor is one and your Congressman does, then by all means tell the world, but you must make sure you can back that up with facts and evidence. If you cannot, a lawsuit will be coming your way. Sure, it is hard for anyone to actually win a defamation suit against you, but that might not be the point. They just might want to get your money and shit you down.

If you want to Blog like an ethical professional, read this and this.

That is all.

Facebook Places: On Being Ratted Out By Your Friends

I am always hesitant – and there’s always a twinge in my Orwellian brain – when I read that a company crated a ‘feature’ that allows me to tell you where I am. If I want to tell you I am at Starbucks, I will. If I don’t want to, I won’t.  Now, however, I don’t have to tell you where I am. You can tell people where I am. And I don’t have to give you permission to do it. Welcome to the new world of tethering. Welcome to Facebook’s Places.

One of the big concerns about technology is the way in which it impacts our lives, particularly how it impacts our working lives when we aren’t working (or when we aren’t supposed to be working). When doing my IT research, work-life conflict was a central concern for these people, because they were tethered to the workplace with pagers, phones, and laptops home nightly. 

This tethering to the workplace allows for flexibility on the one hand, but also creates work-time conflicts. They are contacted throughout their off-time and connected continually through their laptops and other mobile communication devices. Missed dinners. Interrupted dates. Late night calls about. Always being on-call. Tethered.

The hope was to emancipate (or at least spread the awareness) that working in IT did not necessarily have to be dominated by the technology – that the choice could be made to “tune in turn on drop out” as Tim Leary said. Dr. Leary also said “The PC is the LSD of the 1990s.” I wonder what he would think about Facebook, Google, Apple.

Heck, the laptop, then the cell phone, liberated me in many ways, allowing me to do work, make and receive phone calls, share e-mails and browse the Web from just about anywhere without anyone knowing where I was or what else I was doing. So why would I welcome anything that blows my cover?

The Places tool, part and parcel of the Facebook mobile application, was released last week.  As always Facebook assured everyone that they could opt out of using the product. Places does offer the end-user control, as they must purposely check their location in as they wonder the world. You are not updated in Places automatically. However…

(have you noticed that when it comes to technology there is always a however)

…by using Places, friends can give your location whenever and wherever they want. So lets say we are hanging at the City Diner on South Grand. Although you don’t want certain people to know where you are (because let’s face it, there are some whacked out people wandering around south city at 3 am), your friends can check you in. Guess what? Anyone who wants to find out where you are now has that information readily available.

Places makes it easy for your friends to violate your privacy, because the updates are not controlled by Your FB privacy settings, but by your friend’s privacy settings.

Sure you can untag yourself, like you can untag yourself in photographs. Of course when we do, we always wonder “How long was that picture of me with the dwarf and the monkey up on Billy’s page?”  Do you want the world to know you are not home? Do want more mobile advertising headed your way? Do you want this person knowing where you are? Or even worse - this one? Or even this one? Despite Facebook’s claim that “no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission” I can obviously check you in, whether you like it or not.

There are two ways to grow a business. You can create something so cool and so worthwhile that the herd rushes to by it. (Think Apple’s iPod.) Or you can have a business that millions of people already use and then force them to use your new creation. (Think Microsoft when it bundled Internet Explorer into Windows, making it the default browser and destroyed Netscape in the process.)

Facebook is going with the second option.

If you want to deal with your privacy in Places, go here.

Remember, you haven’t been tagged. 

You haven't even been tethered.  

Located. 

Fixed. 

Situated. 

Fingered. 

Designated. 

Cornered. 

Ratted Out.

You've been Placed.

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet.

I have to admit that since Wired became the GQ or Cosmo for Geeks - all about style and less about substance - I pretty much stopped reading it. I want tech news and information, not pictures of Will Farrell in a spaceman outfit. Every once in a while though, someone actually writes something worth reading.

Here's the gist:

The Web is dead. The Internet is alive and well.

Huh?

Ok, first of all you have to parse the two. We generally consider the Internet and the Web as the same thing. There is a distinction. The Internet is the underlying protocols that allow for the flow of information. This is what people mean when they mention things like TCIPs, IPs, DNSes and the like. These are the protocols that get a piece of datum from you to me. It is similar to when we mail a letter. I put a stamp on it and put it in my mailbox. It goes to my local post office. It gets routed to a larger post office. Sorted. Etc., etc., etc. Eventually it gets to the mailbox in your house. The underlying Internet is alive and well.

The Web is not healthy, however. Why? The main reason is we like simplicity. People are moving away from using their browsers to surf the Web. In fact, many of us spend most of our time on the Internet but off the Web. iTunes - on the Internet, but not on the Web. Apps on your smartphone - on the Internet, not on the Web. The Kindle - The iPad - The Nook. These types of applications cut through the clutter of the Web.

The second reason for the demise of the Web the places we do visit on the Web are fewer (and huge!). The Web was information that needed to be organized. Those who organized it best created their own specific type of experience. Facebook is the experience of Facebook. Nothing else on the web emulates it. Google is the experience of Google. Twitter is the experience of Twitter. Amazon is the experience of Amazon. And so on. When was the last time you just surfed the Web to surf the Web? What percentage of time do you just surf around? Yeah. Exactly. Me either.

As a tech guy and and organizational guy, I found the article - at a minimum - intriguing.

What would precipitate the end of Facebook? (Remember, no one thought MySpace would fall from its heights.) What does this mean for the future of the Web? Where will the next big 'organization process' happen?

Stress, Emotional Labor and Information Technology Workers

Here comes the doctor part of The Doctor H Place. Something I wrote on "The Spin," part of The Untangled Web.


All too often people in other divisions of a business believe that information technology practitioners are horrible communicators. Many clients hold the same opinion. I’ve been working on a project examining communication, stress and emotional labor regarding front line IT workers and have found this belief to be wrong in both theory and practice.


Here's why.

Simple. Stuff happens.

Ok, so some wise guy - actually an RL friend of mine who I haven't seen in RL in about 10 years - asked me about my blog tagline. 


(Maybe we all need to discuss this 'friend' thing one day. Who is an RL friend compared to an online friend compared to a FB friend? Is a FB friend who you never met, but talk with everyday more of a friend than the RL friend you haven't seen in 5 years, but can immediately strike up the conversation with as if you saw each other yesterday? Are RL friends different than online or FB friends? If so, how? If you aren't my friend then why are you reading this anyway? Jerk. And wouldn't you know it, I'm already, as Bob Krizek put it, "being tangential.")


Back to it:


"An interactive communicative space for the trendy philosophical meanderings of a guy who accidentally earned a Ph.D., but can't seem to figure out what to do with it." 


My friend wasn't really interested in the first half to that comment. He knows what the heck a blog is. He also knows about my philosophical meanderings. Hey, you don't end up with a B.A. in philosophy without trying to think about things. Some of the things you think about are really, really, really weird, not merely thoughts about real ponchos or Sears ponchos.


He wanted to know about that last part.  As he put it: "How the hell can you have a Ph.D. and not know what you are doing?"


Simple. Stuff happens.


I am a liar. I worked by butt off to get my Ph.D., so that wasn't an accident. Granted if you asked me 15 years ago - hell, even 10 years ago - that I'd have a Ph.D., I would have asked what you were smoking and if you'd share it with me. I had no desire to go back to school after my seven horrible years as an undergraduate. I was through with school, forever and ever. Yet, here I am having achieved the pinnacle of achievement in our education system, such as it is.


What he wanted to know was how I ended up with no gainful employment, living on the dole, and renting the basement apartment in my parents's house. 


Simple. Stuff happens.


I mistakenly planned for one career and one career only when I started graduate school. I wanted to be a professor. I was solely focused on that. In 2007 I had 20 interviews at NCA. Unfortunately for me I was still ABD (All But Dissertation). For the academically uninclined, ABD means I was done with everything except finishing my huge research project and writing it up. What I found was that many departments are shy about hiring people who are not finished. I don't blame them. Most academics who start a job without being finished never finish. That sucks for everyone involved. I knew I'd get done by Summer of 2008. And I did too. And I did land a job but it wasn't permanent.


And then this. In 2008, the jobs in the academic market dried up. Instead of seeing hundreds of positions I could apply for there were less than 100. Still, I had my one year left in my two year gig, so there was no need to panic, right? Wrong. In 2009, there were fewer academic positions than in 2008. 


(Let me quickly run through this for people who don't get the academic job hunt. Here's how it works: Let's say you are an academic and you are looking for a position that starts in August of 2011. Yes, that's a year from now. However, job openings for next academic year are being posted right now. Applications for next year are already being sent to hiring committees. Yes. It is a year long process. And yes, it is a pain in the ass for everyone involved.)


So although I applied for many jobs in 2009 (for 2010), none of them came through. I applied for one position which received over 400 application packets from would be professors. I had a few interviews: a couple on Skype, a couple in person. What I received were letters or emails that went like this: "Thanks but no thanks." 


This summer my two year gig ended. That was strike one. At the same time my lease ended. That was strike two. No one is going to let you sign a lease if you cannot prove you have an income. Perfect storm. Finally, I have no idea, exactly what I am supposed to be doing if I am not writing and teaching. 


As for the applications for the positions that start next summer: I sent out the first batch last week. Here we go again.


So how the hell can you have a Ph.D. and not know what you are doing?

Simple. Stuff happens.

Words of Welcome From Doctor H

Hi and welcome to The Doctor H Place

I'm Doctor H. (Noooo? Really?!)

No, I am not an M.D., but I am a Ph.D. I earned my Ph.D. in Communication from the University of South Florida in 2008. I am not going to bore you with all the details. If you are interested in those details, please swing on over to my LinkedIn page at Andrew Herrmann (Yeah...that's me!).

This is where I am going to blog about culture, philosophy, academia, information technology, and anything else that tickles my fancy. Eventually a theme will arise here, but like any honest ethnographer can tell you, you don't know what you are going to find until the research has started.  

Some of what I write will make you LOL. And I don't mean the full of bologna LOL that people use as a lame response to things that aren't actually funny. I mean things that will actually make you laugh out loud. Before you get too comfortable believing that I am the class clown, remember, I have a Ph.D. so some things here might get deeper than the Mariana Trench. And some things might make you as sad as an Art Bochner personal narrative. 

So look for the first post, coming to a screen near you. And remember the eternal question as posed by Frank Zappa:

"Is that a real poncho, or is that a Sears poncho?"