PurpleCar — Find Your Creative Drive

Accessible education is better than democratized data.

by Christine Cavalier on 21 June 2010

I just said this on Twitter: “Accessible education is better than democratized data.”

Social media people are enchanted with the tech and their use of it. Grandiose claims abound about the “democratization” of information due to the internet’s proliferation. Social media people claim that the (seemingly) unfettered access to information on the web will bring down academia, traditional business models and the whole of Eastern and Western culture. Students will eschew the Ivory Tower for self-schooling, businesses that don’t catch on to “the conversation” will die embarrassing deaths, and we’ll all be connected to each other across country borders.

The fact is, every new technology was touted at its inception as the “answer” to elitism, to class boundaries, to poverty. In Nick Carr’s latest book The Shallows, he spends the first hundred pages or so on historical philosophy, trying desperately to place this notion in the time line. Societal structure may be molded a bit differently, but education is still esteemed, tried and true business models still work, and we mostly connect only with people of very like minds online (see Going to Extremes by Cass Sunstein). A whole bunch of data online isn’t going to get me the heart surgeon I need, or the long-term investment plan I want, or the diverse circle of friends I should have to keep me reasonable. It’s better to make education, given by other educated individuals, accessible to more people than to just pile up a bunch of facts and make them available to anyone with internet access.

Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irrationality, chronicles how we overvalue our own creations. We are so totally biased for our own ideas that we not only fail to see the merits in others, but we assume that everyone shares our value in our ideas. Step back, take stock. Know where we, the internet generation, sit in history. Don’t get carried away with our own invention of the Internet and accessible data. Real democracy comes with real education.

-Christine Cavalier

2 comments

Losing Ground: When Twitter Deletes Tweets

by Christine Cavalier on 15 June 2010

in Using Today’s Technology

Screenshot of JOIN TODAY Twitter homepage

What? I could be new to Twitter.

So, Twitter is World Cup Headquarters. Or, so Twitter staff hopes. In order to prepare, they’ve been “working through tweaks” in the service, according to the official Twitter blog. This has resulted in many users losing not just a few tweets to deletion, but thousands of tweets. Poof. Gone. I was at more than 14,000 tweets. I’m down to around 900.

I joked about this today on Twitter, presenting the idea that I’m new to Twitter. I mean, only 900+ tweets, that’s a total n00b number. Someone called PurpleCar may have called you a jackass, or called you out on some extremist crap, or made some snarky remark in the past, but now there’s no proof that this was me. So for all you know, I’m sweet. Nice, even. Nicest person on Twitter!

More jokes between me and my Twitter people went back and forth. You have to laugh at this stuff. Twitter deleted my past, but actually it was their past to delete. We all want to keep our data out there forever, as if every tweet is our genetic data, our little children we set loose on the world. Narcissism runs deep.

Tweets aren’t holy. They aren’t meant to be recorded for posterity, for our eventual controversial best-selling biography, for our great-grandchildren doing genealogy research. Tweets are small snippets of current thoughts, not earth-shattering wisdom for the ages. Your daily data isn’t divine. Get over it and have a sense of humor about data loss.

Today, I chose to joke that I could now easily reinvent myself, seeing that I’m free of past mis-tweets. In my last tweet on the subject, I put a link up to George Michael’s song Freedom. I’ve included the lyrics below. Listened to/Read in the context of “Hey, I can reinvent PurpleCar” and “Yous guys cain’t prove nothin,'” the song turns out to be pretty relevant. Happy New Tweeting, everyone!

Twitter’s blog post “What’s Happening with Twitter”

FREEDOM (YouTube Vid)

FREEDOM Lyrics

Freedom ’90
George Michael

I won’t let you down
I will not give you up
Gotta have some faith in the sound
It’s the one good thing that I’ve got
I won’t let you down
So please don’t give me up
Because I would really, really love to stick around

Heaven knows I was just a young boy
Didn’t know what I wanted to be
I was every little hungry schoolgirl’s pride and joy
And I guess it was enough for me
To win the race? A prettier face!
Brand new clothes and a big fat place
On your rock and roll TV
But today the way I play the game is not the same
No way
Think I’m gonna get me some happy

I think there’s something you should know
I think it’s time I told you so
There’s something deep inside of me
There’s someone else I’ve got to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Take back your singing in the rain
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you
And you don’t belong to me
Freedom
You’ve gotta give for what you take
Freedom
You’ve gotta give for what you take

Heaven knows we sure had some fun boy
What a kick just a buddy and me
We had every big shot good-time band on the run boy
We were living in a fantasy
We won the race
Got out of the place
I went back home got a brand new face
For the boys on MTV
But today the way I play the game has got to change
Oh yeah
Now I’m gonna get myself happy

I think there’s something you should know
I think it’s time I stopped the show
There’s something deep inside of me
There’s someone I forgot to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Don’t think that I’ll be back again
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

Well it looks like the road to heaven
But it feels like the road to hell
When I knew which side my bread was buttered
I took the knife as well
Posing for another picture
Everybody’s got to sell
But when you shake your ass
They notice fast
And some mistakes were built to last

That’s what you get

I say that’s what you get

That’s what you get for changing your mind

And after all this time
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes
Do not make the man

I’ll hold on to my freedom
May not be what you want from me
Just the way it’s got to be
Lose the face now
I’ve got to live

5 comments

Pioneers! O Pioneers! Rewritten for the Tech Crowd

by Christine Cavalier on 10 June 2010

in The Writing Life, Works

Last year a major clothing retailer used a reading of Walt Whitman’s poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! in a TV ad. This sparked some renewed interest in the poem, published in the book Leaves of Grass in 1891.

The original poem is an ode to the early settlers of America and the American West. If you read the poem now, with the perspective that Whitman is writing about the early adopters of the internet, almost every single stanza still holds true. Whitman was one of those timeless writers that deftly uses a specific example to capture the general feeling of a universal truth, in this case, trail-blazing.

I re-wrote Pioneers! O Pioneers to show this point, and to pay homage to my online friends who have taught me much along the way. Rewriting the poem is my way of introducing you to Whitman’s original poem and its truly timeless essence.

My rewritten homage to Whitman and my ode to my early adopter peers is below. Whitman’s original poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! is printed below that. You’ll have to click to see more (or come to the site if you are seeing this via an RSS reader) to see the poems.

[continue reading…]

4 comments

Clichés to Avoid

by Christine Cavalier on 4 June 2010

in Main Page

Here’s a great list @PublicityGuru posted on Twitter today. Lists a ton of cliché phrases that should be avoided when writing press releases and other official documents.

You can find the list here: http://suspense.net/whitefish/cliche.htm#

Some of the great ones: Whole Hog, The Real McCoy, Hell-Bent For Leather — lots of funny stuff there. Check it out.

1 comment

Guest post on Part Time Vagabond

by Christine Cavalier on 28 May 2010

in Main Page, Media

Click over to the website of my friend Chris Cavs (I know, I’m a Chris Cavs, he’s a Chris Cavs) to see my guest post today.

http://www.parttimevagabond.com/2010/05/friday-snapshot-ocean-city/

Chris Cavs posts about his travels and the part time traveling life at “Part Time Vagabond, the intersection of travel, outdoor life, and good craft beer.”

Check out his great site. It’ll give you the adventure bug!

-Christine Cavalier, PurpleCar

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