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

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

WORDS

by Feuillu

In their September e-newsletter, Merriam-Webster had this to say about which words usually make their monthly Top Twenty Looked Up Words list:

“What we do see, for the most part, are familiar words that are looked up on a daily basis and not news-driven words that come and go.”

This theme comes up in conversations about social media. Overnight success is a fantasy. Bit.ly estimates that links don’t really get much traction after a few hours, no matter where you post them; A site called Geek Estate suggests a real estate agent should expect to invest at least 18 months’ worth of work before her blog earns money.

Good content over time gets the search engine juice. No surprises there. In the same newsletter, Merriam-Webster said that news oftentimes drives up a word’s look-up frequency, but those look-ups don’t bump the word up into the big gun Top Twenty group. It’s like the difference between liposuction and a lifestyle change. Sure, you could keep throwing surgery at your “problem areas” but you’ll just keep going through the overeat->overpacked lipid cells->liposuction circle. A lifestyle switch that included exercise and healthy eating would be less taxing on the wallet, the body, and the spirit, and would effect a long-term change. You’d be in a healthy lifestyle and a mindset, instead of self-defeating loop.

What are the words you “look up” on a daily basis? I don’t mean the words unfamiliar to you. I mean to ask what are the words that are your core favorites, your old standards? For this blog, mine are (in no particular order):

1. Technology

2. User Education

3. Media Psychology

Here’s how I define them:

“Technology” I define as behavioral design in tech, specifically web applications. My “User Education” is information meant to comfort, then cajole the end-user into safer use of the Internet. “Media Psychology” as a term is new and isn’t yet in the M-W dictionary, but my formal definition is this:

“Media Psychology: the study of group or individual behavior (especially mental and social processes like perception, learning, thinking, sharing) that influences or is influenced by mass communication structures.”

I remind myself of those words and definitions each time I post here. Those areas are my work focus. I use Twitter, Facebook, and G+ for other, on-and-off-topic meandering. I don’t bother with “black-hat” search engine optimization smarminess. I also, in turn, don’t expect a lot of comments or inbound links. Growth over time will build my search engine muscle, i.e. my “look-up” frequency. People will find me eventually. People always find real content eventually, and good content finds them.

What words are in your Top Twenty list?

Let me know in the comments.

-Christine Cavalier

Links:

Grammar Girl’s Affect vs. Effect post: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx
Bit.ly’s half life of a link post: http://blog.bitly.com/post/9887686919/you-just-shared-a-link-how-long-will-people-pay
GeekEstate’s 18 month post: http://www.geekestateblog.com/why-it-usually-takes-18-months-to-make-money-from-your-real-estate-site/

3 Words That Define PurpleCar is a post from: PurpleCar

For Emergency Use Only

Please Delete

Ever hear your mom mention her sex life? A cringe-worthy moment for the ages. You wish Hermione could wave her wand and extract the very words from your ear. If you were one of the unfortunate children to actually witness parental “involvement,” then I’m sure you’ve wished Hermione had immediately applied her latest forget-it potion to your irritated eyes.

“Eye Bleach” is a term for the mythical mind-cleaner that erases offensive sights from one’s experience. Eye Bleach is a popular phrase among the early adopters and geeks, as we are the first to see many a grim meme. We fantasize about the day we can stumble upon the magic formula that would bring riches beyond those Bill Gates.

Living in today’s übermedia world poses constant challenges. More than ever, we need to control where, and at what, we look. Many of the older generations grew up in days where national newspapers didn’t dare print sensationalistic or gruesome photos “above the fold.” Playboy Magazine covers were wrapped in brown paper. Efforts were made to conceal the rank and the odious from the sensibilities of children and the genteel.

Today, all efforts are lost. The Vietnam War changed photojournalism, newspapers, and television news. Shocking images of war casualties fueled student protests and changed our expectations of news reporting. The seal on the careful distribution of images was broken. When the Internet went viral years later, that seal had all but disappeared. The desperate need for Eye Bleach grew along with the Internet’s fast and furious distribution of images and information.

The Memory Rat Race

Our culture felt this shift. Various forms of art reflected the concerns. Google’s ngram viewer scans a large sample of books and rates the frequency of occurrence of each word. Here’s the ngram chart of the frequency of “memory,” “remember” and “learn” in the Google Books sample from 1900-2000 (Google’s sample does not yet go past the year 2000).

memory, remember, learn, from 1900-2000

We can see the blue line (the one at the bottom at 1940), representing the word “memory” had a significant increase in appearance after 1970, a slight dip at around 1992 but no significant loss, with increases beginning in 1999 or so. The word “remember” (shown in red, at the top in 1940) slopes downward from about 1943 until about 1980 when there was a steady increase. “Learn” (in green, in the middle at 1940) remained pretty steady until about 1990, when we see an increase.

Two popular movies from the 2000’s took particularly interesting approaches in order to address the problem of experience and memory:

In the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, main character Joel’s ex-girlfriend Clementine underwent an experimental procedure to have her memories of Joel erased entirely from her mind. When Joel learns of this, he also seeks out the doctor and undergoes the procedure. The rest of the movie explores many concepts around memory and experience, as Joel realizes how much he loves Clementine and doesn’t want to lose her or the memories of their times together, good and bad.

In the 2000 movie Memento, main character Leonard sustains a brain injury while fighting off attackers who kill his wife. Determined to avenge his wife’s murder but unable to remember anything until after he sleeps, Leonard resorts to writing himself notes all over his body so, upon awakening, he can be reminded of the information he gathered the previous day. The movie has two story lines, the forward timeline scenes shot in black and white and the backward timeline (flashbacks) shot in color.

These snapshots of Western culture’s artistic take on the prescient problem of memory are just a tiny few of the many works, both in art and in science, that address memory. Governments want to know memory’s secrets, scientists seek where memories lie, poets lament memory’s loss. Memory eludes. But we know it works. In fact, at times, it haunts.

New Lessons for a New World

When I lecture to parent groups, I outline the importance of teaching our kids new lessons to help them survive the übermedia. I give them this mantra to repeat to their children: “There is no such thing as Eye Bleach.” Parents usually chuckle when they first hear the term, as it’s so poignant it’s funny, but I go on to explain that images can haunt us. We all know how difficult, if not impossible, it is to erase disturbing pictures from our minds. It’s a hard enough concept for adults to grasp, let alone children. I’m actually working on a children’s book that illustrates the idea that we need to decide what media we consume. I’m not so hopeful in finding an agent or publisher, though. It’s too futuristic of a concept for mainstream buyers. It’s hard to be conscious of controlling the information that flows into one’s brain. How do you not see something before you know what it is that you’re not seeing? You can’t, of course. But you can learn to spot the warning signs that something repugnant is waiting. For example, an email from a particularly disgusting colleague that contains a link and the subject line “OMG YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS” is a good candidate for the “Trash” folder.

The curiosity, though, that compels us to click on the link is the toughest to fight. Also, it’s hard to break the underlying etiquette rules that dictate we click on every link, read emails, listen to voice messages, or even peruse blog posts that are sent to us by people we know. We need to fight the curiosity, and we need to change the unwritten etiquette rules to include the right to ignore. These changes pose the real challenge.

If we can be aware of the warning signs, learn to control our automatic clicking, and negotiate with friends and family that we love them but can’t always absorb all their output, then we can move past the daily need of Eye Bleach and on to something memory is meant to do.

NEW IDEA: Lessons Learned App

Here’s a funny exchange I had on Twitter today:

Who wants to write me the app?

Memory is key to our survival. It retains information like which berries killed our slow Uncle Ted. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Joel starts to lose the memory of Clementine, he realizes that those memories made up his very worthy love for her; he feels something akin to a slow death as each memory of her fades away.

Memory, as a muscle, needs flexing and care. Unfortunately, as more media comes at us on every flat surface in our lives, our memory gets fractured and frazzled. Instead of being exercised, our memory is being pulled thin. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember simple strings of data, like phone numbers or birth dates.

Like Leonard of Memento, we take to writing things down. We pay the memory industry billions each year in the forms of personal organizers, photographers, calendar software, therapists, event planners, and more. As Leonard and Joel finally each come to the realization that memory is the key to not only survival but happiness, it’s almost too late.

It’s not too late for us. Respect your memory. Don’t fill it with useless facts and data; don’t let it get drawn into a vacuum of endless posts and links. Try to stay aware that when you are caught in the Internet Procrastination Vortex, that you are actually depleting your memory’s ability to remember important things, to stay focused on and be able to recall the good, helpful information that you already know. The more you lose yourself in the vortex, the more likely you are to deplete your abilities to do anything else. Habits form. Your memory will get out the habit of being useful and get into the habit of wanting tiny bits of useless dreck that it will never have to recall in the morning.

Let me know what you’ve forgotten and what you’ve remembered in the comments.

_________________

“Eye Bleach” poster was photoshopped. Original sign here.

Beyond Eye Bleach: Learning the Lessons of New Media Consumption is a post from: PurpleCar

Here’s an email I’ve received from Write on Glass, a beta release I’ve been working on for quite a few months now. Glass recruited me, or I recruited them, on Twitter. (see a start-up foundry article here about how Twitter is the place to get early adopters to your beta, and why you should forget Facebook for recruiting this highly elite and esoteric group).

Here’s the text:

”

Glass just dropped the invite wall, so our beta is now open to everyone. And we could not have done it without you.

All of the community feedback you sent in–tweets, emails, and bug reports–may not seem like a big deal to you, but it was integral to Glass getting here. We really appreciate all the help you’ve given us. So thank you.

As a reward, you have unlocked a special theme for your slides.”

So now when new people join, they will be able to see by my slide color that I was a beta tester. This is a badge of honor for early adopters; We live for this stuff. We collect early-adopter proof like middle-aged white women collect scarves. Don’t forget those random users that have helped you iron out bugs with a helpful spirit, before the angry masses come and rain down hate on your tiniest server burp.

How to Treat Your Early Adopters is a post from: PurpleCar

Recently I wrote about how we can get caught up in Twitter trends. I was talking about riding the wave of trends we see on Twitter. I didn’t mention how we can just as easily get swept up in a trend of our own, and how we are even more likely to lose sight of our goals when we do get too involved in one particular message.

A journalist at NYU, Nir Rosen, seems to be the latest high-profile case of Twitter Contagion. Rosen has left a post and claims to have left Twitter after a rash of bad reaction to his tweet that belittled a female journalist’s experience in Egypt. She claimed to have been sexually assaulted (which seems common in Egypt), and Rosen chided her in his tweet:

Rosen's controversial tweet

If you look at Rosen’s beginning tweets about Egypt, you can see he communicates that he had neglected tweeting about the revolution because he had been traveling, and then he gets more and more involved from there.

Getting wrapped up in your own cause on Twitter is almost unavoidable. What used to be an impassioned conversation with friends at a coffee shop now is a series of “for-the-record” statements. This is where the easy use of Twitter can ruin careers. Because of the small amount of space and the general Twitter culture, tweets seem so casual. And indeed, they should be. Why shouldn’t we be able to send off snippets of our thoughts online? They are passing thoughts, one-offs, statements to be regarded without esteem. For example, your commuter friend on the train would take your “I hate this subway system and wish it out of existence” statement as nothing more than a typical Monday-commute grumble. She wouldn’t take it as a serious missive and in turn you in to the Homeland Security authorities.

Rosen beginning to tweet about Egypt

Twitter, unfortunately, is made up of text. Permanent, easy-to-search-for text, and text in our minds hold a greater weight than video. Live movement connotes passing ideas. Static movement relays a permanent idea. Twitter is a mix of the two, a passing, written idea. We haven’t, as a culture, come to grips with this new media. We don’t know how to regard it. Seasoned Twitter users can disregard grumbly statements as simple grumbly statements. But the world still equates text with “belief.”

I’m not sure where text and live movement should meet. Obviously on this blog I’ve advocated that we shouldn’t update carelessly on-line, but I’ve also lamented the fact that I can’t, that I feel restrained and cut off from communicating with friends because I can’t tweet or update casually. Will text come to be seen by us as “not-so-important”?

My guess is Millennials already see text as fleeting. There are some kids who average well over the 1000s of text messages a day. They’ve grown up in chat rooms. Their communication world is dominated by text. I’m sure there are times that they are shocked someone posted something, but their minds must look at the controversial post as something that will be forgotten and buried and never referenced again. Sure, they all realize that text messages, Facebook posts, Tweets, can all be searched and printed out, but why bother? It’s just a text message, it’s just a tweet. No big deal.

But our (very litigious) society is based on text, and perhaps the Millennials haven’t been sued or fired or blocked enough yet to realize that Text Is Still King. Text takes the uncertainty out of “He Said, She Said.” Text eliminates the revisionist history rampant in “It’s His Word Against Mine.” (as does video, too. Let’s think about this another day).

What will be first? We will become less litigious or less based on text-as-Bible? My guess is that we will soon come to regard text as casually as we regard the Monday-morning swear words. Or, perhaps we will categorize text. Tweets will be seen as grumblings, Facebook updates will be seen as lawn signs, and blog posts will be seen as legal documents. Who knows? But we definitely need to adjust either our views of online postings or start putting certain kinds of text in their place.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Be careful; it’s text!

Why Is Text So Permanent? Nir Rosen’s Twitter Mistake is a post from: PurpleCar

Trends. Hashtags. Retweets. “The Conversation”

You’ve heard all these terms about Twitter. You’ve used hashtags, you’ve retweeted, you’ve engaged in conversations, hence you’ve contributed to trends. But what do all of these behaviors really mean for us as individuals? Is there anything to watch out for when we are communicating online (besides the well-trodden “don’t trash your employer” advice)?

It’s so easy to get swept up in a Twitter “cause.” Which of us weren’t caught up in the How to be a pedophile Amazon fiasco of last year? Or the more recent railing against Groupon’s ad in the Superbowl that used Tibet’s political situation as an attention-getter? How about the revolution in Egypt or Tunisia? An empassioned plea will go out from one or two users, and suddenly your Twitter stream is a virtual Tahir Square.

Have you ever regretted retweeting something later? Have you ever been called out by others for spreading information that wasn’t quite right? Ever get caught up in a Twitter retweet moment? No? Well, you probably will. And someday that wave may double-back to tow you under.

But have no fear. You can avoid being caught up in the next passionate web wave that splashes onto the ‘net. There are definitely some easy-to-understand but harder-to-recognize human social network and emotional processes happening here. Here’s some information about them and what can you do to keep yourself calm, cool and collected when a wave hits.

Brief Information About Emotional Contagion

Emotional contagion is when we take on the feelings of another person unconsciously. Usually, you need to experience the other person in physical space to start unconsciously mimicking their facial expressions, gestures and speech (this mimicking is a natural human trait that happens in most interactions).

Since Twitter is a virtual space, the question is if emotional contagion can happen online. There have been studies and experiments done in virtual environments like World of Warcraft and Second Life that suggest that yes, emotional contagion (and other virtual contagions) can and have happened online. I believe that Twitter, with it’s immediate rewards and conversation-like environment lends us all the good bricks to building a perfect social contagion. (If we have any techie epidemiologists out there, I think this is your cue to lend us your insights).

If you want some more details on emotional contagion and social network, take some time to read these two articles. They explain a bit about what is sometimes called “mob psychology” (I loathe that term) and can help you understand how information seems to immediately come into existence (instead of just merely “traveling” in social networks).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion

http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/2009/02/contagion-amongst-banks.html

A book to pick up on the influence of human (offline) social networks: Connected by Christakis and Fowler

How to Fight Off The Frenzy

When you’re about to ReTweet something or use a #hashtag, here are a few questions to ask yourself before you hit “send”:

1. Does this information reflect my own, well-established beliefs?
2. Is this information well-researched?
3. Can I see both sides of this issue rationally?
4. If my day today was made into a movie about me, would I want this wave to be a part of the script?
5. Am I spreading this information to gain favor with a certain person or group?

If you answered No to questions #1, 2, 3, 4, then DO NOT TWEET. If you answered Yes to question #5, then DO NOT TWEET even if you answered yes to the other questions. Take a moment to consider your own past thoughts, beliefs and behaviors prior to being caught up in the wave. Only after you are positive that you want this world view attached to your name do you consider tweeting out the info.

Why not get caught up in the wave? Well, it can deplete your integrity. Being seen as a wave-rider or someone who is easily influenced by trends can wear away at your reputation. The online marketing people like to call this “your brand.”

Another way emotional contagion in general can harm you is financial. Picture what happened to my grandmother’s finances as she was getting older and losing her mental faculties: she kept writing check after check to every TV preacher that her remote control came across. She’d get caught up in the emotion of the show and just write away her and my grandfather’s life savings, all of which my grandfather would need long after she was gone. Then, she’d quickly forget that she already sent that preacher $800, then write that holy huckster another check.

Don’t think this can happen to you? It has and it does, because this is how the human animal behaves. Social contagion happens naturally, and I posit that it flows even more easily in the lightning-paced environments of online social networks. Our small communications (posts, tweets) are currently seen as so insubstantial that we tend to ignore their worth. You can view your tweet as just a tiny drop in the virtual noise bucket, but not only do those drops add to the growing tsunami but they are archived just about forever by Google. As we’ve seen this week, the tsunami may do things like take down a totalitarian regime, but they can also drive people to suicide or get people fired. Do you want your trail of tweets to be a trail of tears or a solid reflection of who you are? See, it isn’t just a click. It’s a representation of who you are, a snapshot of your belief system, a mini-movie of your world view.

You can fight it. View each post as a step toward your goals, even if your goals are small and casual, like “be a funny person” or “take life lightly,” or majestic like “become CEO of a Fortune 500.” Always be present online. Staying present and true to yourself are the biggest challenges we face as web surfers. We are little learners in a huge school of fish. It’s all too easy to ride the tide; all too difficult to swim our own way.

In the comments, please let me know what waves drowned out your ability to breathe on your own.

Twitter As Social Contagion is a post from: PurpleCar

Twitter was filled with outrage over the offensive content of a Groupon.com ad which made light of the human rights abuses in Tibet.

I’m going to tell you why the Groupon Tibet ad was genius. Evil genius, maybe, but genius nonetheless.

3 Reasons Why the Groupon Tibet Ad Is Right-On-Target:

1. Good Reach. The ad will offend only a small amount of people enough that they will pull their Groupon accounts (i.e., if they remember to do it when making the media switch from TV to Internet-enable device).

2. Culturally Relevant. The ad hints at the Millennial and Generation X buying-and-giving philosophy/ trend (i.e. buy something and the company donates money to charity from the proceeds of the sale. Groupon hinted that eating Tibetan food only helps raise awareness of the Tibetans’ plight).

3. Guaranteed Laugh (or “low-hanging fruit”). The bait-and-switch is always popular, and the typically insular American humor with the conservative overtones will delight the section of population that would never be reached through online marketing.

According to a givingusa.org report on charitable giving for 2008, US citizens gave about 13.3 billion US dollars to International organizations (which was roughly 4% of the total giving for that year). According to Pew Internet studies, less than 17% of the total 79% of the US population online use a Twitter or other status updating service (as of May 2010). This means that the people on Twitter who were vocal about the Tibet jab in the Groupon commercial probably didn’t give any money to efforts to help Tibet and are also in the rare minority of the 100 million people estimated to have watched the Super Bowl last night.

Think about this. Groupon already has the Twitter and Facebook markets; they are naturally reaching the Millenials and the GenXers who are online through those services. To survive, Groupon needs mainstreamers; They need the Mr. Regular Joes who go online only to check email to head over to groupon.com and sign up.

Like it or not, the US is historically insular. We have a long tradition of making fun of foreigners. (One may argue that we are laughing with them and not at them, but let’s not argue that right now). Most viewers of that Groupon commercial were not like you and me, the so-called Denizens of the Internet. They were regular folk that haven’t yet realized the potential gains that can come from more Internet use. The start of the commercial was a stereotypical human rights plea with a typecast actor, and then Groupon pulled the prank on the audience at the end. The bait-and-switch, the foreigners-as-comedy schtick, it’s TV ad gold.

Knowing the target audience is an ad agency’s job. The Chicago agency responsible for the ad, Crispin Porter + Bogusky knows how to conduct Psychology, Sociology and Business research. For the tiny amount of customers Groupon loses, the nascent company will gain the mainstreamers that it so desperately needs to survive. This is indeed the “science” of marketing at its best.

Are you surprised that marketing is some of the worst, amoral, and defeating stuff on earth? This is the current ad climate, people. Crispin Porter + Bogusky did their job; Groupon showed guts (not honorable bravery, but still…) by going with the “guerrilla” marketing that their brand needed. Hemming and hawing about how Groupon “lost touch” and “stepped over the line” shows naivete about the exhaustive research behind marketing campaigns and ignorance of what makes up an attention-getting ad. Social media alone does not a full marketing campaign make.

I’m sure I’ve offended some of you. Let me know what you think in the comments.

More sources:

http://www.suntimes.com/business/3700657-417/groupons-super-bowl-tibet-commercial-draws-harsh-reaction.html

http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Trend-Data/Online-Activites-Total.aspx

http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/News/2009/docs/GivingReaches300billion_06102009.pdf

photo credits: Tibet Laurus Travel on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurustravel/
Groupon: screen shot, 07 Feb 2011 groupon.com

Groupon Ad *Evil* Genius is a post from: PurpleCar