Sometimes websites are like potato chips: You can’t have just one and you feel like crap once you’re done.

Many of us wander aimlessly around the web day after day, night after night, telling ourselves we’ll quickly check something only to surface, hours later, from a long fall down the rabbit hole known as the Internet.

Unlike Alice after her Wonderland adventure, we don’t come out of our web haze armed with grand insights of self-discovery. Instead, we feel worn down and wasteful, and fear our behavior is bordering on addiction.

A bad habit is not an addiction. Addiction makes a severe impact on a person’s well-being and threatens to destroy their lives. If you think your Internet use is approaching that level of harm, contact your doctor. There are therapies that can help.

But if you’re like me and you have a pretty balanced life yet are concerned with the amount of time you spend online, then read on for some tips I’ve gathered from the experts on some innovative ways to gain back those hours lost to the Internet:

1. Surf the web first.

What was that? Yes, surf the web first thing in the morning (or the beginning of your day). Use the Internet only in your most energetic moments. You’ll be efficient because you will be obligated to do other things (e.g., get ready for work, take the kids to school) and you’ll have the energy to ignore the endless lure of “interesting” links. Winding down at the end of a long day shouldn’t include the Internet. Our ability to make good decisions is used up by the time we usually sit down to surf. Dan Ariely, a Behavioral Economist at Duke University, says this phenomenon is explained by what is known as Depletion Theory: “our ability to make any type of difficult decisions …[is] adversely affected by fatigue.” Limit your web time to solid energy level hours, and you’ll spend less time wandering and more time researching or getting done what you need to do online.

2. Find autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Author Daniel H. Pink, in his book DRiVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, says that the best way to love a job is to have autonomy over your work, have the possibility of mastering the work, and have a sense of purpose for doing the work. Find these three aspects in the “work” of your web surfing. AUTONOMY: When you go online, remember that you are in total control over how much time you will spend. Use a timer if it helps you stay conscious of this fact. MASTERY: Learn how to research topics quickly (e.g., use the outbound links at the bottom of wikipedia entries); Aggregate social sites by using RSS or email. Automate as much as possible. PURPOSE: Go online with specific tasks in mind. Keep a sticky note on your desktop with a list of the top 10 of your life goals on it; if a website doesn’t fit under one of those categories, then close the window. Gaining control over yourself, the subjects and sites you surf, and surfing with a goal in mind will help you feel like the time you sit online is time well-spent.

3. Use Disruption.

If you spend too much time mindlessly web surfing, you’ve developed a bad habit. The key to stopping bad habits like smoking or superfluous eating is to interrupt the pattern of behavior by using a technique known as disruption. According to Psychology Today’s Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson, willpower isn’t as powerful as it seems; Disruption, in research studies, proves to be more successful in ridding yourself of bad habits. Try changing the context of your web surfing. Build a high shelf or treadmill stand for your laptop, and allow yourself web time only while standing or walking (very!*) slowly. Next, try changing the method of performance. Use your non-dominant hand to scroll, use the mouse, or one-hand type. Or use your phone (harder to read and navigate) to check social media sites, AND use your non-dominant hand to do it. By designing some well-placed disruption in the course of your habitually bad behavior, you’ll break the pattern and feel better about yourself.

With a little effort and concentration, you can kick mindless surfing to the curb. Design your life with new, healthy patterns of Internet behaviors and you’ll never spend another minute lost in a maze of cheshire cat videos again.

3 Surprising Ways to Overcome Internet Addiction is a post from: PurpleCar

Stop crying or we'll give you something to cry about

I wrote these words and made this poster, just for fun, to put up on the popular photo(and video!)-sharing site Pinterest.com. If you haven’t heard of Pinterest yet, welcome to our planet.

If you’re not from outer space but Pinterest has eluded you, allow me to sum up the fuss: Pinterest is the Wikipedia of search. Pinterest users have already filtered the Internet; they post their hard-won nuggets on the site. Google only has an algorithm; Pinterest has humans. Imagine, the massive ocean of data online, picked through by live people. (Personally, I find the search function especially useful when it comes to obscure crafts or DIY instructions.)

In a communication from Pinterest that went out late last year, the founders said they had no idea how viral the site would go. I can’t imagine the founders were that innocent; Pinterest had no other destiny but to go viral. Normal people want sites to “just work.” That is normalese for “Intuitive design/function is the fundamental necessity of a website,” and this site gets it. Pinterest is beautifully arranged, is easy to use, has simple user organization, employs no-brainer sharing options and fills a dire need that is lacking online: human input (read: filtering). Viral it was going to be, no matter what.

Pinterest, like all other sharing sites, has its growing pains, its quirky trends, its buggy tendencies (nothing months and months of all-nighter coding and a crapton of investor dollars can’t fix!). At first, the site was filled with early adopters, designers, and Internet denizens. On second look, it’s filled with moms the world over pinning everything from recipes to punk hairstyles to sarcastic quips. The etiquette at Pinterest is just forming. Some users consider posting photos that don’t properly attribute the creator a big no-no. Others just want to collect appropriate themed pins to their boards and don’t care from whence the media came.

Probably most annoying user on Pinterest is the marketing type. These types come in all disguises. Some are Etsy sellers (“Don’t steal my idea!”), some are merchandisers (“Zomg! It’s only $79.99! at our store!”), and some are stealthy ad agency workers scoping out how this new service can reach the masses. Their self-promoting behavior has yet to take over the entire site, but the “Gifts” tab is in serious danger of becoming little more relevant than those silly Sunday circular ads in the newspaper. The “Everything” tab [every picture every member posts] also will soon come to ruin; I’ve already heard grumblings from users about the porn that regularly pops up there.

The site’s designers have a long way ahead. They need to keep a hold of the mom crowd (even the stay-at-home-moms in my neighborhood who barely know how to power up a machine are on Pinterest now) to stay afloat. But without some more solid code and some tighter filtering, the moms (who will be Pinterest’s main money maker) will drop the site like its covered in germs. I can’t wait to see how the founders hustle to catch up to the viral wave that has swept Google search and the nation.

Are you on Pinterest? What’s your favorite board? Let me know in the comments!

-Christine Cavalier

Pinterest:The Wikipedia of Search is a post from: PurpleCar

Credit Crunch

A different kind of credit crunch is happening online. The question of who gets credit for which work has crushed some social Internet spaces.

Word for word wiki-p

Twitter users demand to be credited for their original tweets, even if the tweet is nothing more than a link to another person’s work. Flickr photographers staged protests until the service found a way to attribute licensing. Pinterest die-hards won’t pin any photos that don’t link to the original photographer’s website. Etsy crafters are crazed with other sellers knocking off their designs.

Being concerned about getting your proper amount of retweet credit is what one would call a first-world problem. Credit for curating links is not as worthy as constructing the content behind the link. Good curating has a place in a world of information, but not as valuable a place as users think. Linking back to the original photo on Pinterest is a matter of etiquette but not required (In fact, searching for original websites may prove inhibiting to using the service). Etsy crafters are in it for the money as well as the craft; a knock-off design isn’t a compliment but a direct hit on a seller’s bottom line.

The Fight

Since the onset of the Internet, factions have fought fiercely over who gets credit for what and when. The fight covers written work as well as ideas, design, photos or any type of online product. Today I’ll focus on written work.

The design of the Internet at times makes attributing sources difficult (e.g., 140 character limit on Twitter, forum threading). Alas, even the very definition of what constitutes plagiarism is elusive. Esteemed website Salon.com has a recent panel piece discussing plagiarism, and while the panelists bring up interesting points, they all fail to define plagiarism in this age of digital and social media. Why do the experts avoid defining plagiarism? Because it’s nearly impossible to detect and trace, even with the most exacting of standards. The wikipedia entry for “plagiarism” is littered with citations, as if more citations make the concept simpler to grasp.

As a life-long writer, photographer and crafter, the issue of plagiarism has been relevant for me since childhood. I started struggling with the concept in elementary school. Essays were generally expected to be little more than a re-write of the subject entry in the World Book Encyclopedia. I knew, as a 9-year-old, I couldn’t possibly gather information about dinosaurs myself. So, I surmised, everything I’d write would be plagiarism, despite the fact I followed the instruction to “write it in your own words” (a favorite phrase of all teachers on Earth).

Copy and Paste

I always write everything in my own words; I’ve got plenty of my own words. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I don’t often find myself word-free. This doesn’t mean I’m plagiarism-free. In this world of big data, our unconscious minds synthesize and then spit out gobs of knowledge without remembering the source. We’re only human.

Another challenge that keeps us all from toeing the original-attribution line is the discussion of what qualifies as plagiarism. The definitions of intellectual property, copyright and fair use in the U.S. are so clouded up with legalese and popular opinion you can’t breathe let alone blog without violating the law or some random rule of etiquette. Twitter users violate laws daily. Bloggers are notorious for “stealing” ideas. Flickr photographers mimic. Even back-fence conversations with neighbors violate copyright each time a person tells a joke.

Forever Valued

The written word is the bearer of wondrous mystique. Sound vanishes. It’s heard in time and then it disappears. One cannot revisit a concert hall and expect to hear the sounds made the night before. Even if recorded, the live experience is gone. Written words, though, can last forever. I can visit a blog post and expect to see the words written the night before. In fact, if all goes well, I can visit the same blog post in 100 years and expect to see the same words posted there. Words are easily captured and kept online.

The written word has a powerful past. Historically, writing was an esoteric skill reserved for only the most elite. The written word was considered threatening to monarchies. Indeed, the written word can free slaves, start wars, end wars, birth nations and break hearts. Understandably, people tend to get a little crazed when a writer’s work is used without credit. We have to wonder, though, if the written word, especially in the form of a link or other curated object, is still as valuable as the rare and powerful words of the past.

A blog post is not of equal value to the Constitution of the United States. It isn’t more valuable than the daily banter at the corner barbershop. But once someone blogs Sweeney Todd’s daily orations, the words seem to gather more weight than necessary. People – especially those of a certain age – place banter into a different category once it’s posted; The value of online “print” is many steps above the value of the uttered phrase. Written words are a commitment, a treatise of sorts, a somewhat drastic move that we are taught to avoid unless necessary. We need to rethink this high value assessment.

People should be allowed to post their thoughts without the threat of repercussions or being accused of plagiarism. If we all followed the old adages “Never put anything in writing,” and “Always cite your sources,” there would be no Internet. Social networks, websites, and everything Internet-related (even YouTube) are all driven by text. Should we stop interacting online because we can’t remember, like humans often can’t, where we first heard or saw something interesting? Of course not. The old laws and traditional values placed on written words haven’t caught up to Internet culture and our current lives.

Governments are formed on written words. In documentation and legal areas the value of the written word remains, but not all words are of equal value. We must keep our contracts to keep our way of life, but to assign a blog post the same weight as the Constitution is a miscarriage of justice and a sure-fire way to sink our society. Instead let’s broaden our ideas of online communications and encourage innovation and creativity in groups and individuals.

Extractors, Exponents, and Experiencers

To put it simply, there are three types of people in this argument about plagiarism: Extractors, Exponents and Experiencers.

Extractors

Extractors are the criminals. They are the writers of software bots that steal and post blog entries with no linking credit. They are the writers of term papers from wikipedia articles. These people are crooks and no-one would disagree that what they do is stealing. We’re not talking about these types today.

Exponents

The Exponents will be sticklers for the perceived law or morality around plagiarism. Lawyers are at the extreme end of this spectrum and elementary school teachers are on the other end. I find many people in the start-up and early-adopter worlds fall under this category. Their tempers flare when patents or some anomalous idea is in play.

The start-up world, they argue, is based on ideas, and any infringement on intellectual property is considered stealing. Exponents can be found in all walks of life, not just in lawyerly circles. The non-techie users on popular inspiration-board website Pinterest.com post pointedly-typeset banners that declare pinners should always credit the source of the photos on their boards.

To Exponents, credit should always be given where credit is due, no exceptions. If you can’t remember the source, don’t relay the data. The Exponents are more individually-focused; they want to see the person or the organization get kudos for their original work.

Experiencers

The Experiencers are more concerned with moving ideas forward and less concerned with identifying the originator. Early adopters, tourists, and op-ed columnists sit on the agreeable end of the spectrum and the copycat businessmen lurk on the other.

Experiencers want ideas to “contribute to the canon” so to say. Experiencers want technology, thought and perhaps mankind as a whole to evolve. Individual work isn’t as important as entire movements that can effect change for the better. Experiencers would say a bucket needs many drops of water to get filled. Once one drop is next to another, we can’t tell which drop came first. Experiencers believe that ideas are like water – en masse and bonded to one another. Ideas are free, but the implementation is not. Experiencers ultimately admire not the idea generation but the application, the hard-work process of bringing the idea to life. The Experiencers would tell start-up entrepreneurs to concern themselves not with keeping their idea secret but with getting to market first and dominating the market best. The guy with the first filled bucket wins.

On The Range

Most of the time we all waiver between Exponents and Experiencers. We tend to be the stickler Exponents in our own field, widening the definition of plagiarism to the point where competitors are eliminated. We harbor fantasies of being untouchable in the market. We think any piece or concept surrounding our idea should be protected so we can have the time to fully develop it ourselves.

When it comes to areas of expertise outside our career paths, we tend to think like Experiencers and are more lenient on what constitutes plagiarism. We can see more clearly the “big picture” of ideas and think of their origins as more generally than individually based.

This jumping between views is all terribly convenient, of course, but that’s what it is to be human. It’s also a common practice in a crappy economy. We’re all worried about our livelihoods. When hard times hit, humans align themselves with allies. Tribes tighten their circles and work though famine times together. Since 9/11and the coincidental ubiquity of Internet access, many pundits have observed that people are searching out their like-minded cohorts online instead of listening to diverse voices (so much for the democratization of the Internet). Again, this is a human trait that has helped us survive for eons.

But we must fight any tendency, be it fueled by instinct or learned skill, to over- or under-play the importance of attributing credit. Too much stickling for the rules results in censorship. Too little attribution discourages creativity. Either extreme fosters fascism. If you believe in democracy, then you believe in discourse. Let’s encourage mature discussions as much as we can.

Copy These Tips

Here are some tips and techniques to consider when you’re passing on your knowledge.

Don’t Plagiarize

The University of Pennsylvania’s writing program has a helpful website for its students called “Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism.” Here’s the gist:

1. Don’t procrastinate. Plagiarism happens most often when writers are pressed for time.
2. Make a habit of taking notes and keeping records. (You can do this on Twitter, say, with the Retweet or Favorites functions. On Pinterest you can use the “Like” or “RePin” button. On Google + the +1 or Share button. Facebook has Likes and Shares also.)
3. Don’t rely heavily on direct quotes. Use quotes only for effect, when necessary, and always keep them brief.
4. Cite when you aren’t sure if it’s required. Err on the side of caution.

If you aren’t writing formally, perhaps just a blog post or a tweet, link to original ideas when you can but don’t let it stop you from publishing a thought. Here are some phrases you can use to avoid seeming like you are pirating ideas:

Encourage Discourse

Here are some highlights from the article “Techniques for Group Discussion” from The Community Toolbox.

1. Be aware of your biases.
2. Don’t “beat a dead horse” – outline your points and then let someone else talk.
3. Remember you aren’t the be-all, end-all expert in a topic.
4. Monitor comments and follow-up.

Discuss

Anything to add? Comments commence.

-Christine Cavalier

Credit Crunch: The Online Plagiarism Battle is a post from: PurpleCar

Huge Pile of Paperclips+Design=Carpety Goodness!

Big data is pretty useless by itself. So is a building-sized pile of paperclips, or an endless amount of pictures of your cat. A small few of those paperclips could save a school secretary some headaches with dead-tree records and maybe a dozen of those photos of Mr. KittyPants are worth enlarging for that montage you have planned for the bathroom, but thousands of entries in a category need one thing to become useful: a filter.

Tech companies are constantly tweaking algorithms to sort through the huge dumps of data that come out of places like Facebook, Twitter, MMORPG’s, or the whole of the Interwebz. Too much data exists for humans to handle, even if we hired entire continents of people to do it. It’s like a trip to another galaxy: we’d have to plan for multiple generations to be made during the trip, and it would still take eleventy billion years to get there.

But big data manipulators do have one advantage: humans populate the Internet. And what do humans do really, really well, even before they can speak? They love to categorize. Big sticks, little sticks, hard rocks, flaky rocks, young mates, old people, what have you. Our brains are programmed to filter.

Human behavior on the Internet is the same as human behavior in the caves of yore. We sort. We categorize. If we cannot sort of categorize, then the whole is disregarded. The modern office supply shopper will walk past a display of “fill your own box” bin of unsorted paperclips to go over to the nicely separated or packaged ones, even if they have to pay more. The enthusiastic home photographer may be smart enough to back up their massive photo file but they rarely take the effort to re-label and sort their work. How many attachments have you received with some title like IMG_7869.jpg? Exactly.

So, what’s a non-psychology-non-sociology-trained engineer to do? Look for the human filtering, that’s what!

Incorporate into your design some of the following algorithm-ready human filtering that are already present online:

1. Twitter lists. Users filter followers/followees into lists. They spend human hours sorting people, according to their own opinion of those people, into categories. For the most part, lists on twitter are also named pretty aptly, like “philosophers” or “funny people” (we can also assume that those two categories are mutually exclusive). Your algorithm can compare the results of these human hours and then build results again. Perhaps you are looking for who’s famous in the paperclip community? Compare a bunch of Twitter lists, then find the most-mentioned person. Twitter’s API has a great amount of human filtering, you just need to know where to look. Language use is pretty common amongst cultures, certain terminology, etc. etc. Facebook groups will work in the same way (once the API is open).
2. Tagging and Grouping on Photo Sites. Flickr is a great example of a community that puts in a lot of human filtering hours. They tag and group photos to within inches of their lives. Flickr users also have a low tolerance level for bullshit. They call out sneaky photoshopping, they gripe about mis-tagged photos. Many of them also share their exif data (fancy photo tech terms) of each photo. If a company needs to process photographic evidence that may come in droves, then a Flickr group is a perfect way to get humans to tell your algorithm whether or not the photos are legit. In Flickr’s design, human filtering is a key element. Also with Pinterest and other curation sites. Figure out a way to use that culture of filtering to your advantage. Then go pay Flickr lots o’ start-up cash for use of the API.
3. Networks: The measurement and tracking of human networks online dominates the design thinking in every new website and app. It drives me crazy. The credibility measurement algorithms of Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, etc., all take number of Twitter followers into consideration. This is ludicrous and about as useful as our pile of perplexed paperclips. Followers can be bought and gamed, as is evidenced by #teamfollowback. Facebook networks are almost equally as useless, as users add total strangers to their Friends lists. What is useful, if anything, about follower numbers is the ratios that surround them. We can assume, say, that a user who is followed 5 times more than they follow and has no history of mentioning the terms “follow” “back” and “me” together and has built lists of people who also have similar high ratios, is a different sort of person who has mentioned those terms and does not build lists of users. This is not about the numbers in networks, it’s about the human behavior of users.

This are just a few beginning thoughts on how to harness the power of human behavior in your algorithm. Hire a Psychologist or Sociologist, or me, for that matter, to find you more easily-tapped, custom-fitted examples of online (and offline!) human filters that you can use in your website, application or algorithm design.

Anything to add? Let me know in the comments.

-Christine Cavalier

Big Data, Small Opinions: Human Filtering in Website Design is a post from: PurpleCar

Business Insider has a great post about human behavior that we all should read, 47 Mind-Blowing Psychology-Proven Facts You Should Know About Yourself. I’m not sure about the strength of that “facts” claim, but it seems like most of the research cited has been time-tested and repeated often. #8 is a fantastic explanation of how and why we are addicted to Twitter, Facebook, text messaging, email and Google search (from WhatMakesThemClick.net, author of the original 100 list, @thebrainlady on Twitter). [I've posted about the power of the intermittent reward system before; it is the dark side of The Force and it shan't be ignored.]

Take a look through this run-down and try to shut down the laptop, put down the phone sometimes.

#8 — Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information

Image: xorsyst

Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Have you ever gone to Google to look up some information and 30 minutes later you realize that you’ve been reading and linking, and searching around for a long time, and you are now searching for something totally different than before? These are all examples of your dopamine system at work.

Enter dopamine – Neuro scientists have been studying what they call the dopamine system for a while. Dopamine was “discovered” in 1958 by Arvid Carlsson and Nils-Ake Hillarp at the National Heart Institute of Sweden. Dopamine is created in various parts of the brain and is critical in all sorts of brain functions, including thinking, moving, sleeping, mood, attention, and motivation, seeking and reward.

The myth — You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs.

It’s all about seeking — The latest research, though is changing this view. Instead of dopamine causing us to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases our general level of arousal and our goal-directed behavior. (From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps us motivated to move through our world, learn, and survive). It’s not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes us curious about ideas and fuels our searching for information. The latest research shows that it is the opoid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure.

Wanting vs. liking – According to Kent Berridge, these two systems, the “wanting” (dopamine) and the “liking” (opoid) are complementary. The wanting system propels us to action and the liking system makes us feel satisfied and therefore pause our seeking. If our seeking isn’t turned off at least for a little while, then we start to run in an endless loop. The latest research shows that the dopamine system is stronger than the opoid system. We seek more than we are satisfied (back to evolution… seeking is more likely to keep us alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor).

A dopamine induced loop – With the internet, twitter, and texting we now have almost instant gratification of our desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type it into google. What to see what your friends are up to? Go to twitter or facebook. We get into a dopamine induced loop… dopamine starts us seeking, then we get rewarded for the seeking which makes us seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, stop checking our cell phones to see if we have a message or a new text.

Anticipation is better than getting — Brain scan research shows that our brains show more stimulation and activity when we ANTICIPATE a reward than when we get one. Research on rats shows that if you destroy dopamine neurons, rats can walk, chew, and swallow, but will starve to death even when food is right next to them. They have lost the desire to go get the food.

More, more, more – Although wanting and liking are related, research also shows that the dopamine system doesn’t have satiety built in. It is possible for the dopamine system to keep saying “more more more”,  seeking even when we have found the information. During that google exploration we know that we have the answer to the question we originally asked, and yet we find ourselves looking for more information and more and more.

Unpredictable is the key — Dopamine is also stimulated by unpredictability. When something happens that is not exactly predictable, that stimulates the dopamine system. Think about these electronic gadgets and devices. Our emails and twitters and texts show up, but we don’t know exactly when they will or who they will be from. It’s unpredictable. This is exactly what stimulates the dopamine system. It’s the same system at work for gambling and slot machines. (For those of you reading this who are “old school” psychologists, you may remember “variable reinforcement schedules”. Dopamine is involved in variable reinforcement schedules. This is why these are so powerful).

When you hear the “ding” that you have a text – The dopamine system is especially sensitive to “cues” that a reward is coming. If there is a small, specific cue that signifies that something is going to happen, that sets off our dopamine system. So when there is a sound when a text message or email arrives, or a visual cue, that enhances the addictive effect (for the psychologists out there: remember Pavlov).

140 characters is even more addictive – And the dopamine system is most powerfully stimulated when the information coming in is small so that it doesn’t full satisfy. A short text or twitter (can only be 140 characters!) is ideally suited to send our dopamine system raging.

Not without costs — This constant stimulation of the dopamine system can be exhausting. We are getting caught in an endless dopamine loop.

Write a comment and share whether you get caught in these dopamine loops and whether you think we should use what we know about these systems to create devices and websites that stimulate them.

And for those of you who like research:

Kent C. Berridge and Terry E. Robinson, What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward
learning, or incentive salience?: Brain Research Reviews 28 1998. 309–369.

Originally published on WhatMakesThemClick.net.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-2010-11?op=1#ixzz1ceHpSNzo

Why You’re Addicted to the Internet is a post from: PurpleCar

The more you yap...

This is simple. Influence off-line is gained by listening a lot and saying very little. Influence on-line is gained by listening very little and saying a lot.

One of these types of influence is not worth much.

Which type would you rather have?

Influence: Off-line vs. On-line is a post from: PurpleCar

Null News Is Good News!

There are few things the media love more than a quotable science study. Catty soundbites from reality TV stars don’t get as much attention as one crazy science statistic. A “9 out of 10 people prefer garlic cereal” headline garners clicks regardless of the study’s merit.

Here’s the real truth: Study results are not trustworthy. News media reports of study results are even less trustworthy. News media sell fear. People don’t buy “happy” news. Journalists without science degrees are tasked with selling news. They learn how to take one science journal article and run with it, not worrying about how it may negatively influence society. Let’s look at a recent example of this and then let’s go over 5 reasons why you should be very wary of studies published in news media.

A new study reported in BBC News was paired with the headline: Internet ‘may be changing brains.’  This is a perfect example of how news media twist study results to sell newspapers. The headline plays right into the common fear that the Internet is making us all stupid. (Despite the irresponsible headline, the BBC outlined the study results in a more responsible way than North American news media would. In the article you can see a few quotes from the researchers that lend us a clue about the study’s real results. E.g. ”The study cannot tell us whether using the internet is good or bad for our brains.”)

We’re all worried about Internet addiction and brain damage, so let’s talk first about this study’s subject: Environmental influence on brain structure.

Brain “plasticity” is the theory that the brain adapts and changes to the environment. Researchers have been looking at this phenomenon for a long while, most notably with the use of fMRI techniques. Internet use may be changing some brain structures slightly, but this is normal and nothing to worry about. Scientists have known about this for a long time. Just as lifting weights changes muscle structure, use of certain tools may be able to change parts of our brains. Stop using the tool, and your brain structure will probably revert back to their original state. We’re talking tiny changes here, people. Changes only scientists with huge magnets and electron microscopes can see. Internet addiction, which is really the main fear at the core of the BBC headline, is a different behavioral (perhaps also physical) process entirely. Think of Internet Addiction like Gambling Addiction and you’ll get more of a familiar picture of what a behavioral addiction is. Cocaine Addiction and Internet Addiction are not similar enough to be compared.

Internet use alone does not lead to Internet Addiction. If your Internet use is disrupting your life, examine your habits against a list of your goals. If your habits are not supporting your goals, change your behavior. If you are having trouble changing your behavior, seek counseling. Only those with severe behavioral addictions (like Gambling) who also show some chemical imbalances will need medical interventions to help with curbing the behavior. Those imbalances were not caused by brain plasticity and/or Internet use.

This study and BBC report is a good example of why we must be always on our guard against false impressions given to us by sensational headlines. The news media wants to sell news, and they won’t give you much idea about the truth behind science studies.

Here are 5 reasons why you can’t rely on study results you see in the news media.

5 Reasons Why Science Studies Are Wrong

1. No Null Results: A Null result means “no correlation.” Results that say “Hey, guess what? We’ve found NO RELATIONSHIP between these two things!” are never published in journals. In other words, if the researchers in this study found that there was NO correlation between number of Facebook Friends and a certain brain structure, then the journal would not have published it. Journals want to sell journals, too, and null results are boring. See more explanation at the Journal of Negative Results: http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr

2. Correlation Does Not Equal Cause: A link between two things doesn’t mean one causes the other. In fact, no social science can ever certainly say that one thing causes another. A lot of alcoholics also smoke, but smoking doesn’t cause alcoholism. But a news outlet would publish that study result as “Smoking and Alcoholism are linked” when in fact, they are not. Sure, they are correlated; Lots of bar patrons smoke. A CAUSE is different: smoking a cigarette doesn’t give you a craving for a drink, but smoking DOES CAUSE lung cancer. See more explanation at this George Mason University site: http://stats.org/faq_vs.htm

3. One Lone Example: One study does not mean much. For the science community to be thoroughly convinced of a correlation or a causal link between two things, many, many studies have to repeat the result. Over and over again, long term studies showed the Smoking/Lung Cancer connection. Even with the tobacco industry funding their own studies that magically would produce null results, medical facilities produced evidence many times over that there was in fact a very strong result. One new study touting some connection is to be treated with major skepticism. “Wait and See” is the approach all of us should take when we come across a lone study result. The autism and vaccines debacle is a heartbreaking example of this: Retracted Autism study ‘an elaborate fraud’: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/

4. Statistical Shenanigans: There are well-known and well-tested, tried-and-true research methods. You do them right or you don’t. It’s simple. Lots of studies published don’t get it right. Bad sample sizes (e.g. they don’t survey enough people), bad question design (e.g. they structure the questions to foster certain answers), bad sampling methods (e.g. they pick the wrong people to fill out the survey) and bad math (e.g. they didn’t run the right statistical formulas correctly) all plague many studies published in journals. Most journals have what is called “blind peer review,” which means that volunteer scientists will look over a study submitted for publication and determine whether or not the study is sound (worthy of publication). This volunteer scientist doesn’t have access to the data, so can’t herself run the formulas to check it herself. She has to look at the other parts of the study to guess whether or not the study was well done. This is a lot of work for an unpaid volunteer and it’s almost impossible to determine every study correctly. Check out this article for more info: Sloppy Stats Shame Science, The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/2724226

5. Funding Shenanigans: Paying for desired results happens all the time. As I mentioned before, the tobacco industry hired a bunch of scientists, who, coincidentally, magically produced null results for the lung cancer question. How does this happen? Don’t scientists have integrity? Why does it matter who pays for the research? Well, let’s give our scientists the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are all pure in motivation. They are just scientists and their work is their work, no matter where their paycheck originates. Let’s assume this. But here’s what tends to happen (and it’s been shown to happen over and over): Researchers who are funded by a certain company or group (say, The Roman Catholic Church) tend to find results favorable to that group’s agenda. The happens for many reasons, but the most important of which are these: Researchers are human and want to survive. In order to do this, they will design a study that will favor their funder’s agenda (e.g. writing the question as “when did you stop beating your wife” phrase instead of “True or false: there is no physical violence in my home.”). There are almost a million considerations in designing a study. Tiny decisions here and there end up amassing into one big, brown-nosed, pandering study. See here for more information: Research Grant Funding: http://www.experiment-resources.com/research-grant-funding.html 

Keep these 5 criticisms in mind each time you read an attention-grabbing headline about the latest link between Thing 1 and Thing 2. If a conversation partner tries to make a point by quoting a study result, bring up (or hyperlink to) the insider knowledge above about the dark side of science publishing. Train them (and your kids!)  to look at each media report with a very healthy dose of skepticism.

5 Reasons Why Science Studies Are Wrong is a post from: PurpleCar

Here’s some more spam, fresh off the e-mail presses. I like to put these up here so people can search on the terms in the e-mail and find a spam alert.

The next-of-kin angle is somewhat clever. But be assured that if you are the legitimate beneficiary of anything, certified mail (real, paper mail with official delivery conditions) will inform you. We are not yet in a paperless society and we won’t be soon. Lawyers love them some paper. Trust they won’t be giving it up – ever.

Be careful out there, folks!

Text of email:

Next-of-Kin Spam is a post from: PurpleCar

I saw a post on Craigslist from a comic asking for a writer. I didn’t reply, but I was inspired to exercise my line-writing chops. My work life centers around tech, so I concentrated on writing tech lines a comic could use.

Here are 2 of my old lines and 8 new ones for your enjoyment:

Some sites just make me want to toss my cookies.

I knew I was Internet addicted when I Googled “My keys” when I was in a rush to get to work.

They say porn drives the Internet; can’t the Internet afford its own car by now?

Parental controls are like potato chips: you can’t have just one and they break easily.

The number of online friends you have is the same number of people that can’t stand you in real life.

Chat rooms are neither for chat or a room. Discuss.

I got a lot of ergonomic suggestions on how to avoid pain from typing; No-one suggested that I get the hell off the Internet.

They say everything is mobile now. You know what isn’t mobile? My car, after I ran it into a tree while texting.

The cops got it all wrong arresting the teenagers for sexting; They should be cracking down on middle-aged people.

There’s all these hyped up “teach your toddler to read” programs; READ? In the age of the Internet, three-year-olds should be taking “How to Look Away -Advanced Techniques.”

I’ll add more if I get inspired.

Got any of your own? Add ‘em in the comments!

Tech One-Liners is a post from: PurpleCar

Well, this is new.

Screen shot of spam

Here’s the spam email text:

New York State — Department of Motor Vehicles

UNIFORM TRAFFIC TICKET (ID:342501),
POLICE AGENCY
NEW YORK STATE POLICE
Local Police Code 8
THE PERSON DESCRIBED ABOVE IS CHARGED AS FOLLOWS

Time: 7:25 AM
Date of Offense: 07/02/2011
IN VIOLATION OF NYS V AND T LAW

443 Description of Violation
SPEED OVER 55 ZONE

TO PLEAD, PRINT OUT THE ENCLOSED TICKET AND SEND IT TO TOWN COURT, CHATAM HALL., PO BOX 117

And there’s an attachment to download.

Uh, yeah, OK. Sure I’ll download that… when monkeys fly out of my butt. And not just any monkeys. The Monkees.

Let’s go over the basics. How do we know this is spam? (Or a “phishing” attempt?)
1. No real identifying information (traffic tickets would have at least a Vehicle tag number!)
2. Traffic tickets are sent in snail mail (real U.S. Postal Mail Service).
3. No full official-looking address to send a ticket to. The real traffic cops want their money. They wouldn’t make you go hunting for the address.
And the kicker:
4. Attachments. Never download an attachment in an email without checking with the sender first. I don’t care if the email is from your mother. Double-check with her over the phone if she sends you something. Seriously. Don’t do it. If you are REALLY SUPER SURE you need to download an attachment AND YOU WERE EXPECTING TO RECEIVE ONE, then you can download at your own risk. AND NEVER EVER RUN AN .EXE THAT CAME IN AN ATTACHMENT IN EMAIL. EVER.

I don’t think many people will be fooled by this particular spam, obviously. But people need to learn to use email safely. It’s easy to mindlessly click on attachments.

My rule is this: never click on them. Don’t download them. If you need something for work, just stick the email in a folder and save it there. You don’t have to download the attachment unless you want to print out the document.

This spam email’s purpose is to get people to download the attachment and run whatever .exe virus it has in it. Computer viruses do much damage, all different kinds, and can run in the background without you even knowing it (by the way, if your computer is running slowly, have it checked for virus). If you keep a general healthy suspicion about email attachments, you should be able to avoid most viruses. (Some viruses run upon opening the email. You can change your email settings to warn you if some program is trying to run on your machine. Always say no if a warning window comes up, unless you know what you’re doing. The important programs, like updates, will run again sometime in the future, so you won’t miss your chance if you say “no” while you’re opening email).

If you’ve downloaded this attachment, update your virus protection software immediately and run a systems check from that software. Go through this weekly. Keep an extra special eye on your social media and email accounts. Consider sending a warning message to contacts that says “Don’t open any attachments from me in this next week. My machine may have a virus on it.”

Good luck.

Traffic Ticket Spam is a post from: PurpleCar