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Academics To Predict Next Twitter and Its Pitfalls
An anonymous reader writes "University researchers in the UK have put together a team tasked with predicting the next big thing in terms of communication technologies, in a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls before they become a problem. This is in the wake of the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, which has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of personal information available online."
One character messages only. Now you can say the same things even faster.
Somebody just got a big fat grant for sitting around and smoking dubies.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm getting killed here. (Sent my Blackberry from the $2 window)
Thanks to the stimulus input, Medbook Space, the social network for medical records will be the next online sensation. X-rays, videos of prostrate exams, drug history ... all available to employers, insurance agencies and interested voyeurs.
Seriously, forget the academics. Put 10 teens in a room of various social types with a smart developer who listens and a programmable mobile device. You'll come out with a product.
-_-
You'd probably not be swatting away for some douche at a University, trying to finish you thesis or get tenure. You'd probably scrape together every last penny you had and become a first round VC.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
So now they're trying to figure out a way to regulate new technologies out of existence before they've even been conceived of? Such progress....
Who in their right mind would ever put their own personal information on the web?
If people are stupid enough to do it, then let them be the victim of their own stupidity.
Anon.
Rather than keeping your bank account a secret, make it available to the online community. Part of the Free, Unlimited Community Knowledge and Education Department.
Task Mangler
I use pseudonyms as a barrier between me and Identity Theft, because facebook, myspace all look like vectors for Identity theft to me. Using a fake identity can't be a bad thing when people are inclined to steal it.
Unfortunately, our institutions are yet to realise that protecting privacy by educating people about using encryption is a good first step to reducing fraud related behaviour. Until that happens, the bad guys have the advantage.
Simply put, the authorities have related encryption to illicit activities instead of a set of basic tools that people can use to protect themselves on line. In terms of protecting ourselves people are often encouraged into the worst sets of behaviour, so we haven't even done the basics now, let alone 10-15 years time. I predict more scams in the future.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Flutter is the new twitter. Duh. KIM GET COFFEE!
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
...in a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls before they become a problem...
The question that has to be asked is: "...they (ethical issues), become a problem to who?"
As far as I know, those who put info online do so with knowledge of what they face and especially the privacy issues that may arise. I get a feeling that folks involved in efforts as mentioned in the introduction are living in the 50s where privacy was such a big deal.
Today's kids do not see that as much of an issue I might add. I hope they direct their efforts elsewhere.
The only way to make a social networking product be as big as My Space / Facebook / Twitter AND not suck monkey nuts is to keep the marketeers out of it, and that just isn't going to happen.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
. . . that it requires a two-decades old word to describe it: "lame".
If it became half as lame as it is, it would still be "whack" (from only one decade-and-a-half ago).
Thus is explained the interest of academics in seeking out its kin.
Why don't they just go read some good science fiction? Or talk to some good sci-fi authors?
Outside of the news media and various politicians, does anyone actually use Twitter? I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention it outside of those spheres.
I mean honestly I don't really see what the big deal about it is.
twitter + video.
No clips longer than 3 seconds.
I pray that it replaces the retardation that lives on youtube.
Quality will still be shit, but quantity will decrease drastically.
Click on your mood and you get a corresponding smiley on your blog, website or friend's computer. Surely I need not go into the ethical implications of it?
Considering that NONE of the major disruptive social
technologies have come from academics, thus far, it would
behoove this group to tell us what they plan to use
to divine these gems of knowledge.
-Pick a card, any card.
-Runes
-Dice
-Flip a coin
Perhaps they should just stick to what academics do best,
measure things when/after they happen and then explain what
we all just saw.
Sounds like a funding ploy. Do they get paid
anyway if it turns out they're wrong?
Will taxes be used to pay for this?
In the next Twitter, there's no typing. You signal emoticons. If you are too fat to use the mouse, they will develop a device that interprets your emotions from the configurations of your fat cells, and you don't ever have to get off the couch.
etc
Futurist Traditionalism
Here is your chance to corner the world market for the next big thing and have Bill Gates cleaning your shoes. As a bonus, they are even on special! Remember me when you're rich? (Can I have a research grant now? Please?)
Even if they predict right their prediction could affect the outcome.
I don't see an ethical dilemma with technologies that allow me to share information voluntarily. I want them to respect my preferences and disclose what they do with the data, but it's no different with doctors, banks, or retailers. Why is this an ethical problem for a web site?
It's a bit depressing how these recent Internet-based "communication technologies" are all centralized. In some sense, this seems to be a natural offshoot of applications springing up on the web -- individual websites are centralized entities by design. It's also about control and monetization, which is good for the service provider... perhaps less so for the user and for reliability/redundancy/etc.
But I also wonder how much the unanswered technical challenges presented by anonymous internet-based attackers hinders development and adoption of new distributed protocols. The last thing anyone wants is another medium for distributing spam, malware, and so on.
So what will these academics predict? Another Facebook? Or another World Wide Web?
So you're implying that Rush, Hannity et al. are really academics and liberals? They certainly fit the description as condescending assholes who sit around talking about nothing.
After all the social networks are using the same business strategy.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/13/ashton-kutcher-promises-to-punk-ted-turner-if-he-beats-cnn-to-a-million-twitter-followers/
From TFL:
So Kutcher is throwing down the gauntlet. In a video released on YouTube today (embedded below), he's promising to "ding dong ditch" billionaire Ted Tuner (founder of CNN) if he beats CNN to a million Twitter followers. What is a ding dong ditch you may ask? Well, it's when you go up to a person's house, ring their doorbell, them run away and watch as they look around to see who's there. Yes, it's kind of a wussy version of stuff they used to do on Kutcher's hit MTV show "Punk'd."
In releasing this to the Internet and tweeting it out, it's pretty clear that Kutcher wants to be the first Twitter user with a million followers. That should be enough to put him over the top, but he may need a little more help as singer Britney Spears also remains ahead of him (though slightly with just over 870,000 followers).
So, Tweeter user base goes something like this:
1 - News and politics junkies
2 - People of questionable music tastes
3 - Teenagers with no taste or imagination whatsoever
4 - Whatever the groups above feed upon
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you think you have a better idea of emerging technologies, ethical issues they raise and ways of addressing them than the boffin academics, why don't you post a comment on the "discussion" blog of the project website at www.etica-project.eu?
they will miss it altogether!
Scatter - The social network site where you see all kinds of sh*t about your friends that you really wish you did not see.
One character messages only. Now you can say the same things even faster.
Feh. Ancient history.
An entire genre of prose was derived from the high cost of sending telegrams. Hemingway is probably the most famous example, but a whole generation of journalists learned to pare down their sentences to the absolute minimum to save on transmission costs.
True story: A foreign correspondent was sent to a distant country to prepare some coverage of an imminent war. Because telegraph costs were so high, the home office had prepared large amounts of background already, and kept it sitting on file. All they needed to know was when to print it.
The parsimonious editor sent the following message to his correspondent:
?
To which the correspondent replied:
!
The same day the front page announced news of the outbreak of war.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
140 frame videos of John Cleese insulting the viewer.
Or TwitLiza . . . if you'd like to have an argument . . . a very, very, very circular argument.
ENIGMA, Bletcherous Park, Thursday — Academics at De Montfort University in Leicester have put together a team tasked with getting grants to claim to predict the next big thing in communication technologies, in a bid to tackle funding pitfalls before they become a problem.
"Widespread Internet adoption has afforded some technologies rapid growth," said Dr Bernd Stahl, "but have also generated downsides. For example, uppity Internet users think all this is for their social enjoyment and cultural enhancement, rather than to firmly attach a vacuum hose to their wallet."
Under the two year project, entitled Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications, researchers aim to identify information and communication technologies likely to emerge in the next 10 to 15 years and spot any unforeseen drawbacks to milking the consumer as hard as possible, but no harder. "The Web 2.0 model — you create the content, we get the money — has much potential. However, cautionary examples such as Wikipedia show what happens when you put that sort of power in the hands of a nonprofit. So much money left on the table!"
Dr Stahl's team will identify and list the future applications and the issues that are likely to arise. "So far we've successfully predicted that 'e-mail' will become quite popular — that's where you send messages electronically, without using paper. Outlandish, I know! There's also a possible niche for sending short text messages using telephones, if the telephone is attached to the network by a sufficiently long cable. In conclusion, send us more money and we'll see what we can do for you."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Sorry, but you're completly missing the point.
The supermarket is a semi-private place: you show your face knowing that only a fraction of people (those that live in the same town) are present there; and if do something embarassing, an employer 10 years from now won't be able to know.
Facebook is a worldwide public place. You have to be cautious because everything you say there is on the record, for everyone to see.
So the decision to be anonymous on facebook has an entirely different meaning than the supermarket. It is far from paranoia, even more so when you think of all the new ways this information could be used ,in the future.
And of course, the thing that really matters here is politic: by setting up an anonymous account on facebook, you can lead a political life, convincing people to go to protests, or to vote or donate for a cause. It is a pretty new thing to be able to do so anonymously, and there is nothing cowardly about it when you see how scientology (for example) illegally harasses opponents.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
I'm predicting that people providing shortened blog entries like a diary will go in the direction of every-detailed-thought you could imagine. This will end up in court-cases proving a person's state of mind at a given time. Also predicting that teens will share every single 'emo' they have during the day. Pairing this with GPS technology, people's whereabouts, destinations and emotional state could be public domain. Predators will exploit this. If everyone were constantly tweeting, and the emotional content could be analyzed in real-time, think of what google maps could show! Imagine blue splotches at a blues music venue or red-splotches at a boxing match or a riot.
They are constantly looking for next mega-fad whether fashion or a toy. Most teens are smart enough not to be brainwashed by ads.
Academics are notoriously poor predictors, perhaps from living in the their ivory towers (yuppie bubbles). The most egregious example was the head of MIT's Media Lab, the prima donna of computer tech in its day, writing a book (Being Digital) in 1993 about the future of computing without mentioning the World Wide Web. To be fair, 1993 was year hoards of people started downloading the first decent browser (Mosaic) and hand-coding hmtl web pages for content. Negroponte's book was collection of columns he wrote for Wired Magazine in the previous three years.
Also MIT eventually become the base of the Web inventor - Tim Berners Lee. However once the Web became commercial it pretty much ignored Lee's additional ideas.
> University researchers in the UK have put together a team tasked with predicting
> the next big thing in terms of communication technologies, in a bid to tackle
> ethical pitfalls before they become a problem.
MP: So, what have you figured out? What is the biggest Intertuby-thing on the horizon with ethical issues?
Scientist: We've determined the biggest ethical threats are enormous government studies of Internet technology leading to possible government censorship, monitoring, and regulation.
MP: "A need for increased government participation is shown!", got it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
but it should. Jerk.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
This reminds me of a scene in "A Hard Day's Night (1964)" where George Harrison is asked by Simon to give an opinion on some shirts for teenagers. George badmouths him until he gets himself fired.
Simon runs to his calender and finds out the "next big thing" isn't due to occur for several weeks. He breathes a sigh of relief not realizing that The Beatles were the "next big thing" and he has just lost them.