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America: Like It Or Unfriend It

Posted by timothy on from the please-extend-below dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "As we celebrate America's birthday today, head over the to the NY Times and take a look at a very clever 'op-art' creation, 'Like it or Unfriend It' by Teddy Wayne, Mike Sacks, and Thomas Ng, that represents what 'America's Wall' would look like through our history. Beginning with 'Christopher Columbus wrote on America's wall: 'This IS India, right?,' through 'America added Great Britain to Kingdoms I am Fighting With,' through 'The South has changed its privacy settings to accept carpetbaggers,' and finishing with 'America stopped playing the game Wild-Goose Chase While Nation-Building,' and 'America has joined the China Network' the wall includes dozens of invitations, likes, posts and changes to privacy settings that shows a summary of American history as seen from a Facebook perspective. Our favorite from the 1980s: 'Ronald Reagan created a page: "Trickle-Down Economics" followed by "Half a million upper-income people like this.'" For another take on 4th of July data visualization, Tim O'Reilly points out flag.codeforamerica.org, which aggregates twitter posts tagged #July4 into an evolving flag tapestry.

22 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. You know... that might not be a bad idea... by mark-t · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... as a means of teaching history. This particular "wall" is a bit too brief to be useful for most purposes, but a more detailed one could probably be contrived to describe the activities surround noteworthy events in history.

    If it helps kids learn, then that's a good thing... right?

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by nicholas22 · · Score: 3

      Actually it is very depressing that THIS is how you get children to be interested in your history. I blame the parents.

    2. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by Minupla · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why do you find it depressing? I would imagine that any society where these things don't evolve would be on its way to the end.

      I expect the generation that went through school after me probably had their parents saying the same things about computers in schools, my mother probably said the same thing when "School House Rock" came on TV, and her parents probably said the same thing about organized education, so on back to the printing press, literacy, and so forth... One can imagine a parent saying "If oral tradition was good enough for us, it should be good enough for our children".

      Not all change is negative, not all of it is positive either of course. Change can however stimulate people to think in new ways and consider things that they did not consider in the past.

      An oft quoted study in fact measured productivity improvements around change. If a study group *thought* that a change was being implemented to improve productivity, productivity improved. In the case I read about I believe it was "replacing light bulbs with wide spectrum bulbs" the "work people" came in and swapped out the tubes with identical ones and productivity went up for awhile and plateaued and then regressed back to mean levels.

      So if doing something new and fresh causes kids to learn, speaking as a parent, more power to innovative educators. If it is only a short term improvement, that's fine too, just be thinking about the next thing down the road.

      "Think of the children" - why make learning hard/repetitive/stale when we have choices?

      Min

      --
      On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
    3. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by Gryle · · Score: 3, Informative

      The Battle of the Alamo occurred during the Texian revolt from Mexico and has nothing to do with the Spanish-American War. Unless you're just making a list of things the NY Times didn't put on the wall.

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
    4. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The "Columbus thought the world was round, while everyone else thought it was flat" isn't accurate.

      What Columbus was fighting against is that people though the Earth was (correctly) approximately 40,000 km in diameter (The Greeks had measured it fairly accurately) while Columbus thought (incorrectly) it was much smaller and that it was practical to sail west to India. Columbus lucked out in that America was in the way, otherwise he would have been a footnote in history as the leader of an expedition of 3 ships that sailed west never to be seen again.

    5. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by xkuehn · · Score: 3, Informative

      What Columbus was fighting against is that people though the Earth was (correctly) approximately 40,000 km in circumference (The Greeks had measured it fairly accurately) while Columbus thought (incorrectly) it was much smaller and that it was practical to sail west to India. Columbus lucked out in that America was in the way, otherwise he would have been a footnote in history as the leader of an expedition of 3 ships that sailed west never to be seen again.

      FTFY

    6. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      India got it's name from River Indus.........which is called Sindhu in Sanskrit. Persians and Arabs called us Hindu(Do you see the rhyme scheme in Hindu and Sindhu) and from Hindu we got Hindustaan(Land of the Hindus). The Greeks called Sindhu as Indus(whatever way the Greek spelt it! India was known to the Greeks(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_conquests_in_India) and Romans(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Roman_trade_with_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_commerce)) and Indus became India.

      The original name of the country was Aryavrata(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80ry%C4%81varta) or Abode of the Aryans(Noble people........not the Nazi thing(you can blame Max Muellar and Hitler)). Then the country was renamed Bhaarat from Bharat(Brave son of King Ajatshatru). All our modern or old text refer to India as Bharat or AryaVrata. Foreigners named us India and Hindustaan. We use Bhaarat in our daily language.

      Hinduism as religion doesn't exist in any of our texts. We call it Sanaatan Dharma(it means Eternal Law/Duty http://www.sanatandharma.org/) or just Dharma(pronounced Dharm)

    7. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by lexsird · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, fuck all of those tough subjects like math, science and history. Things that require "study", what a complete waste of time "study" is. We just need to please little Johnny so he will take his nose out of his texting to give a nod at some Facebook page. That will solve our education problems and why we are collectively becoming the dumbest fucking people on the planet.

      Do you seriously know just how far down the toilet our education system has slid in the past 50 years? An 8th grade test from that era would make an 4.0 AA graduate feel like a retard. How about we try to go back to when education was working first before we try to improve on the complete disaster that we are using now? This is the one problem with a free society, any idiot can open their mouth with an idea, and there are more idiots than non-idiots, hence the idiots can have their way.

      --
      Take the Red Pill.
    8. Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... by Minupla · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not sure you actually read my post before you replied, or the GGP for that matter. The point was not "let's teach facebook" the point was "Children respond well to material when presented in a format which they associate to (e.g. schoolhouse rock cartoons) therefore, let's present one of the "tough subjects" in a manner that will get their attention."

      While we're on the subject though, it should be noted that in the past (my parents' generation) not everyone went to school. Farmers tended to keep their children at the farms because they needed the help getting the harvest in. Therefore you had a self selected population from which you were obtaining your statistics. Your sampling methodology then would not be uniform when comparing grades and such between then and now. If you include those farmers who didn't go to school (my father was a 3rd grade dropout) I think you'll find they'd drop down your average at the 8th grade level dramatically (means disliking values of 0 as they do).

      If you consider that IQ tests tend to require an element of knowledge (language for the vast majority of them, and a cognitive framework around math for the non-linguistic ones), and you couple that with the fact that IQ tests need to be re-normed back to 100=average every few years, it rather argues that when you take an aggregate measure of human "intelligence" we're getting "smarter" (doing better on the tests). In the time frame we're speaking of, and assuming the current model of evolution holds, it seems unlikely that's due to the actual substantial increase in the collective human intellect, therefore the knowledge portion of the equation is the only element that can be improving.

      There is a well known cognitive predisposition to view the past as being better then the present, and it's easy to fall victim to this tenancy when you don't stop to do your analysis.

      Now I realize I've probably just fed the troll, but felt it important enough to make my arguments for the other non-trolls who might be reading this thread, as troll or no, we (as a society) can do damage when we think in the way the parent is exemplifying. Ideally the people represented in forums such as this one (generally forward thinking folks) should be the check against these tendencies.

      Are there issues in the education system? Hell ya. NCLB is a prime example, it rewards all sorts of bad teaching habits, incentizes behaviors like teaching the test, etc. In my field of work (Corporate Infosec) we pay a lot of attention to ensuring that reward/punishment systems are in line with the behaviors we're attempting to reinforce, rather then unaligned. I could wish that law makers would spend similar amounts of effort thinking about such things before passing broken legislation. Education budgets are drastically under prioritized (if you doubt this, look at defense budgets vs education in the G20.) All these are points where we can have a useful discussion. A new technique for speaking to children in a manner in which they might absorb some information isn't to my way of thinking one of them.

      Min

      --
      On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
  2. I didn't know I "friended" it to begin with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How to I unfriend it?

  3. So... by feepness · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are around 150,000 troops in Iraq/Afghanistan. We have bases all over the world. We are currently bombing other nations (Libya/Yemen/Somalia). We have bases in over a hundred other countries around the world.

    When did we stop nation building again?

    1. Re:So... by dclozier · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When companies stopped manufacturing here.

    2. Re:So... by ShavedOrangutan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When did we stop nation building again?

      When we became too P.C. to finish a war. If we're nation building now, it's somebody else's nation and financed by our national debt.

      --
      Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
  4. Turrorists. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A part of me can't help but think of what our founding fathers would think of America today and how quickly they'd be branded as terrorists.

    War on Drugs, TSA, 'mandatory' DUI checkpoints, gun control, police abuses, etc, etc.

    That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-

    Imagine if a group of informed citizens stood up and sent that to the feds. How quickly would they be shut down?

    1. Re:Turrorists. by rbrausse · · Score: 4, Insightful

      posting something on Facebook != starting a revolution

    2. Re:Turrorists. by hedwards · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you're going to relay that anecdote you might want to point out that the individual was a journalist and made the comment on live TV while he was acting in an official capacity. This wasn't a matter of some random individual calling the President a dick on his or her free time.

      And it was the right thing to do, journalists are not supposed to express personal views with company resources, they're supposed to be trying to be as impartial as possible.
      Journalist apologizes for strongly worded criticism of Obama

    3. Re:Turrorists. by The+Great+Pretender · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While interesting, the thing that bothers me about this exercise is it puts the focus on friending/unfriending the US, but as with a lot of these exercises it completely ignores the assholishness of all those countries critiquing the US. I'm British by birth, lived there 23 years, came to the US and now naturalized. As much as people want to be critical about the US history, I grew up learning how Britain has been completely prickish throughout the whole of history in general. The difference I suppose is that we were taught about this in school. The point being there is no country, the US included, out there that who has the right to critique any countries history without critiquing their own. People in glasshouse shouldn't throw stones.

      --
      A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
  5. Totally off topic here by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had a bit of an epiphany today about date formats. Any other day of the year and this would be known as July 4th, 2011 (ie Sept 11th), and any attempt by other people to say "why are you using such a dumb arsed date format?" would be met by jeers of "It's our date format and we'll do what we like with it". However, today, on what is probably the most venerable US national holiday its known as "4th of July" .. just like it would be known in pretty well every other country in the world. I can't say that I know the history of why this is, but I do find it curious.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  6. Re:Ronald Reagan by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not really, he gave us $4tn in deficits, several bubbles in the equities market and led the nation to increasingly hand over its money to the rich on the basis of a completely disproven theory of economics. Hell, even Reagan himself know that tax cuts for the rich were not a panacea which is why he raised them that second year in office.

  7. Re:Birthday? by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Had we lost the war we wouldn't be observing Independence day at all. The reason we observe it on July 4th is because that was the day on which the Declaration of Independence was signed and the day on which quite a few individuals more or less signed their own death warrants had the bid failed.

    I think it's the right choice as it better exemplifies the spirit of the revolution than the day upon which we succeeded in throwing the Brits out.

  8. Re:Too gay for words. by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's called Ghey.

    No. The word 'Ghey' was invented by mouth-breathing morons who felt bad about getting ostracized for their use of the word 'Gay' but didn't really want to stop using it either.

    And like all good compromises, everybody hates the resultant state of affairs.

    --
    Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  9. friend or foe by slick7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It wouldn't bother me if some of our so-called "friends" quit being our friends. What does bother me is the fact that these "friends" are our friends because we give them money. In an economy that has yet to see the bottom, our so-called "friends" would understand if the money stopped, and those that don't understand, screw 'em. The abuses of the state department in squandering the tax money of the US voters while the voters once again, have to tighten their collective belts. The payoffs to these "friends" does nothing more than prop up totalitarian regimes and support an illicit drug industry.

    --
    The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.