Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:57:26 GMT

This is insane. Can't explain. Busy and tired. Go read it. Bonkers on a stick. The imminent electoral death of New Labour might be enough to save us from Peter Mandelson - the Voldemort of British politics. I'm not looking forward to Cameron's lot and I'll be earnestly voting LibDem or Green (depending on whether the Green Party get their shit together on science policy). Getting Mandleson away from the levers of power will be a very good thing. If you are a UK citizen, keep track of this story and write to your MP about it once we've got the full details.

Social media douchebag explodes into vapourous cloud of socio-kinetic stupidity

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:29:20 GMT

I was reading Twitter while waiting for MacPorts to install Scribus on my machine. I saw a tweet from someone or other pointing to this article on Internet Evolution, a blog sponsored by IBM discussing "the future of the Internet". On there, I found a perfectly sensible article about the snarky nastiness of Twitter at Web 2.0 Expo - really a marriage made in heaven, apparently. I remember watching some of the tweets from that, and was sad to see that danah boyd was getting heckled for giving a presentation that was "too academic" (translation: based on actual research rather than hunches, intuition and anecdote, and based on the work of other people whose work is based on actual research rather than hunches, intuition and anecdote). Expecting the attendees at Web 2.0 Expo to be able to cope with something "academic" is, of course, grossly misplaced trust. Unless you hammer home the thesis with 17,000 LOLCATS and goofy Flickr pics, the attention of these thought leaders is difficult to maintain.

But in the comments is this utter gem of a comment by "bauerb", "[a] broad spectrum thinker who does not fear to consider the absurb [sic], the impossible, the incomprehensible, or seemingly random collections of information" according to his profile.

He is rather modest: he does not fear considering the incomprehensible, but he also does not fear producing the utterly incomprehensible. He also claims this is not a joke. Without further ado:

This is precisely why it was necessary to develop the SKBC. Its a non-lethal sentiment dispersement tool that can be deployed to dissolve the impact of rapidly forming Tweet-Clouds. The formula is basic physics, and founded on simple kinetic principals. To understand the concept, you must understand the basic principals. In this case, I use Twitter as the Target:

1. Twitter is a Kinetically Charged System

2. The kinetic energy of a system at any instant in time is the sum of the kinetic energies of the bodies it contains

3. Twitter: A system of bodies known as Tweets

4. Tweet: A body that is defined by its data payload and transference

5. Kinetic Energy = Total Mass moving at the speed of the Centerof Mass

6. Opinion = Entity + Sentiment

7. Twitter Opinion Mass = # of Tweets sharing a common Opinion

8. If we can measure TOM at a Point in Time, (Mass)

9. And we can measure the rate of change in Sentiment(Acceleration) of the TOM

10. I can work out the precise mass and velocity of a "socio-kinetic" projectile that would be required to obliterate the Target Tweet Mass.

This is a simple combination of Bombardment Weaponry and Kinetic Physics. The Good news is that because Popular Sentiment actually does abide by many of the laws of physics, we know that we neutralize the force of a massive system by a counteracting force that may be smaller, but has a much faster rate of acceleration.

There is no good reason why popular Social Media constructs need to be "turned off" for fear that they will divert attention from objective. Efficient neutralization is easier, and more strategic. "digital hecklers" [digiklers?] , just like small children, will soon lose interest in being disruptive when they realize they efforts cannot possible provide any self-validation.

BTW, its sounds funny to talk about Social Media Countermeasures as a "Cannon", but I think it gets the point across. And oh yean, this is not a joke

Socio-kinetics, you say? That sounds suspiciously like the Time Cube. This guy really is the Gene Ray of social media. I can't imagine the misery of any developers who work for him.

As for the actual topic: the live backchannel. I've seen it used really well - Simon Willison's talk at BarCampLondon7 really showed how you can use the backchannel for good. But the people there might actually know something since it was about NoSQL databases, triplestores/key-value stores etc. rather than about Web 2.0.

A reasonable complaint

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:06:42 GMT

I'm in a university library reading room in London. Taped onto every desk is a list of rules for use of the reading room. On the desk next to mine, someone has scrawled on them the following:

Why do you need to put this sign up right on front of every single person's nose? Put a few signs up on the wall and I'm sure people will get it.

This seems like a very reasonable complaint. Also in the room, there's actually a big advert on the wall from "TDA" trying to get people to go into (primary and secondary school) teaching. Not on your nelly! My one rule: if they aren't old enough to opt-out, they aren't old enough for me to teach.

Tom Morris

Social media douchebag explodes into vapourous cloud of socio-kinetic stupidity

A reasonable complaint