You'd think advertisers would have learned by now how to avoid embarassing themselves. Clearly, they have not. Every year there are advertisements that fail to account for cultural values, context, or placement, and wind up sending an unintended message. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes its tragic. You've all seen the jars of Gerber baby food, right? The one with the big baby face on the front? Turns out when they first tried to sell it in rural segments of Africa, it wouldn't sell -- like at all. Turns out that the majority of the population in those markets is illiterate and so the products contained pictures of what was inside the jars and boxes. Well, the locals thought Gerber was selling, achem... baby. Needless to say, the packaging was updated shortly thereafter.
Here's the problem with advertisements where people are aware they are being targetted: What if the machine makes a mistake? What if it identifies the 18 year old male who's captain of the football team with a couple of his female friends and the machine decides that there are three females in the party instead of two, and spits out an advertisement for tampons or makeup. Perhaps even doing an impromptu photoshop with their faces and a "before and after" shot, with directions to the nearest makeup counter? Well, he might need some coverup then... To hide his suddenly very flushed appearance.
The problem with mechanical identification of any physical trait in a human being is that it won't ever be 100%, because the meanings associated with those traits are context-dependent. That is to say, the correlations are the problem, and it's true whether it's a matter of sex, race, or age... And when people are aware they are being targeted by those factors, and especially when its misread, and very especially when others are aware of this -- it can have significant social reprecussions. In marketing, context and placement means a lot -- and the only thing saving people from taking it personally is the very fact that they know it's targeted impersonally. When that changes, marketers are going to be in for a real surprise.
This has led to a whole load of crap IT dedicated to neither hard-core hardware or to hard-core software...
Ah, I'm pretty sure most IT work is a balance of the two. One does not function without the other.
What surprises me about clouds however is that its often the hard-core folks who are scared of the cloud, they bitch about security and latency but really its because they fear it will make them less important.
I think what they really fear is a loss of control. They're turning their business over to the mercy of the cloud provider, and should it go down, the entire business may go with it. Not only that, but cloud computing is still relatively new and immature as a technology. We can't truly understand all the performance and security implications yet, nor make intelligent choices about architecture, because there's not enough experience with it yet to have confidence in it.
What clouds do is hugely commoditise infrastructure and (in the case of SaaS) those massive package implementations that customise to death a package that would have worked much better without all that consultancy "help".
Consultants are another problem entirely. Cloud computing isn't going to solve it. Hell, I'm not even sure nuking from orbit would eliminate it. Consultancy was brought on because managers wanted to save a buck by only having "expertise on demand". Well, they got it. The problem is, by moving these positions from salary to a to-hire proposition, they've created a market dynamic where up-selling is how freelancers survive. Consultants don't give two shits about the "right" solution because the "right" solution is the most expensive one they can get a signature on. The lack of trust in their permanent employees has ironically led to them being bled dry by people who don't give a shit about the company... They're only there to install or maintain a thing now, in and out in a day.
The people who should fear clouds are the ones who lived off customising packages...
Are you kidding? It's a cash cow! Think of all the money to be made in converting everything to be "cloud compatible"! Think of all the different cloud providers and architectures, each with their own requirements -- and as they fail or are absorbed by other providers, things will have to be reworked again. We don't need to wait for advances in hardware or new software to come out now before we charge an arm and a leg for an upgrade -- the market itself will now churn out reasons and the businesses that subscribe to it will all be locked in. They'll have to spend the money! Where's Microsoft? I'm sure right now they're patenting the hell out of this stuff to ensure that for decades to come, new markets filled with monopolization potential will come to fruition. Cloud Computing: Too Big To Fail. And this, this is the really awesome part: Odds are looking good all your customer data, your databases, the digital lifeblood of your business, will be subject to EULAs that say "We can (in our sole discretion) modify this agreement at any time without written notice to you." Oh god, I think I just creamed myself thinking about how much I can get paid now as an indispensible "cloud consultant".
Yet, I've also found that those who rail the most against the hierarchies and authority frequently seem to be the ones who need the most oversight to get anything accomplished. Ironic?
Not exactly ironic. The problem is finding authority and hierarchies that treat those above and beneath them with equal levels of respect and have the understanding that each job has a role to play in reaching the intended goal. Very often in hierarchial systems the first thing to go is communication between different levels -- directions and orders go top to bottom, but information needed from bottom to top does not flow freely. The net result is frustration from the rank and file because the bureaucracy is hindering their ability to be recognized for their efforts and/or observations.
Maybe you just THINK you're doing it well. Being late to a shift/work IS a big deal (if consistently so). It's pretty selfish to think otherwise. You're absolutely right that we are living in an "accelerated" world and that a lot of older practices are obsolete and diminishing as we speak. The inward facing solipsism you express is troubling though--ever think that there might be value in other ways of working, other people's viewpoints, beyond your preconceived notions of how the World 2.0 ought to work?
Okay, first, I KNOW I'm doing it well. But I'm an atypical example: I worked software deployment for a Fortune100 company; approximately 100k desktops, 5k servers. My biggest job challenge wasn't the technology but sorting out and prioritizing information coming in from dozens of departments and having only a very limited staff to do the work. The staff under me was, unfortunately, exactly the kind of person you're describing: Under 25 types with no real-world training. I made it work anyway, but it was the hardest job of my life. Multi-tasking is a learned skill. And the most important aspect of succeeding at it is being able to shut out external distractions in spurts and then redirect and move in an entirely new direction after a quick re-evaluation in between those times. The World v2.0 ought to work pretty similar to how The World v1.0 works: But without the social barriers that existing social framework encourages. We still need leaders, and we still need a hierarchy. But what we don't need is dominant/submissive pairings: We need to understand that just because someone is higher up the ladder does not make them any more important than those farther down. If we can do away with that attitude, information will flow from bottom to top, and the cycle will be restored thus radically improving efficiency. Also, in World 2.0, peer groups that come together to solve a problem with each person fluidly moving into different positions within the hierarchy will be more prevalent.
Our generation has an horrible weakness: Actually getting things done
I'd disagree. We can get things done, if given the right environment. We thrive on less judgmental and open atmospheres, which aren't common in hierarchial organizations. Thus, the perception we get nothing done, when the reality is that like any plant starved of basic nutrients... it doesn't grow.
Whether it's 150 ms or 1,500 ms, I can't change it, and everyone else in my age group is on the same playing field.
No, but if you want a game to appeal to a wider audience, maybe a game that isn't as latency-sensitive would be beneficial. This way, 30 year old gamers wouldn't be outgunned by 20 year old gamers on account of a 50ms reaction time difference.
Weren't we supposed to be all using thin clients right now in our flying cars, sucking the fat electrons straight from the coax at gigabit speeds by now? Now comes the latest proclaimation: We're going Carebears mode. Everyone into the clouds! Tenderheart's not going to be happy about this. I sense a big carebear stare coming for the Cloud-Mongers.
You can repeat that as many times as you want, but it doesn't help your position any. In fact, it makes you look rather childish.
Wars do not spring out of a vacuum.
No, but they spring from the same basic causes time after time. I don't need to know about every war ever fought to know the causes of war.
Cultural imperialism is one of the most offensive invasions that a country can experience and yet it's the one the US does best.
Cultural imperialism sounds really impressive. But you want to know what it's really about? Change. It's one group choosing to merge with another group in order to achieve some benefit. Culture is nothing more than a system of coping strategies we impose between ourselves and our physical and social environment. If one culture is better at dealing with the problems of its physical and social environment than another, it makes perfect sense to adopt those strategies. It's maladaptive to fight them, but alas -- it is in our nature to resist change even when its good for us. This is one of the main causes of war: Fear of change.
Still think you need to know nothing about the past?
Yeah, actually. I don't need to know specifics: I need to know patterns, I need to understand why things happen. Examples can help with that, but they're not intrinsically needed.
Or is it nothing to do with you, so long as you can continue to go your own sweet way ignoring the growing anger and dissatisfaction around you.
I don't ignore it. But I'm not responsible for others' anger and dissatisfaction either.
Then when the shit hits the fan, you can claim you never saw it coming - "it's not MY fault".
The funny thing about shit hitting the fan is that it usually goes everywhere, including back the way it came. At that point, there are three choices: Work together to clean up the mess, Fight to see who cleans up the mess, or decide that it just isn't worth cleaning up and go somewhere else. Fault is entirely irrelevant in the decision-making process.
This is the delusion of this generation. The world is hierarchical. There are reasons why we have leadership. The biggest has to do with experience.
It doesn't have to be. That's not a delusion, but a hope of our generation. And this hope has recurred generation after generation, only to perish because society can find no way to realize it.
This generation thinks that being able to handle large amounts of streaming, pointless information is an asset.
No; Our generation thinks that being able to sort large amounts of information and provide contextual meaning to it is an asset.
I think you guys are referring to two different we's. The "How much lag we can detect' we was referring to how much on-screen lag players can detect while playing while you seem to be referring to how much mental lag researchers have found in people's responses.
Close. I'm looking at the entire system, not just the technology side but also the human side. Granted, the computer and its peripherals are the easiest to modify by far, but looking at the entire loop (Computer-display-person-input-computer) is the only way to make informed choices about improving the quality of real-time applications (which is the ultimate goal of this research).
The next generation of kids will have more in the flesh social interactions than you will at that time. Phones didn't save them. Texting wont' save you. That's life.
I'd believe you, except that I still have many friends who got married, popped out a kid, and work two jobs. I still find time to see them. And most of them rely more on their friends than I see the older generations doing. This whole self-reliance kick they espouse just doesn't seem to be taking hold as we age. I think facebook and instant messages, and cell phones, do have an impact: Sure, we drift apart, but we also come back together more often. Geography and situational separation just doesn't have as much effect as it used to.
the INABILITY to speak or write proper language is another one. There are many, many people out there now with a complete inability to do either.
It's the definition of "proper language" I'm disagreeing with: As long as you can communicate intelligibly with other people, it doesn't matter what dialect, accent, medium, or slang is used. "Proper language" isn't necessary for some groups -- someone who is poor and grew up on the street has little need to read/write the Queen's english well. Although, as the movie My Fair Lady reminds us: It can certainly help improve one's social status.
Truly, your ignorance is astounding. Take a look, for example, at modern Germany and tell me WWII does not still have a profound influence.
Umm... I don't live in Germany, and I think I could still have this same lifestyle without WWII happening. The only thing WWII demonstrated as far as I'm concerned is the nearly limitless ability for large groups of human beings to disagree with other large groups and then decide to start bashing the other's heads in out of some smug sense of superiority. I don't need to know about, much less study, WWII to understand how or why the world today is or to make moral choices within the context of my own life.
...average lag in the region of 133ms. On top of that is additional delay from the display itself, bringing the overall latency to around 166ms.
Considering that until very recently all displays had an inherent lag of about 70ms -- and that new [LCD] technology has pushed that higher. But we're only considering half the equation: The average human response time for auditory or visual input is 160--220ms. This increases as we age. We are also part of this system and we're a helluva lot more lagged than our technology is.
/. is full of curmudgeons, eccentrics and free-thinkers and as a member of that set I resent you trying to call us obsolete just because we don't all use the flavor of the week social network you subscribe to.
You've read too far into my post. Also, I thought we were discussing a general cultural phenomenon that appears strongly age-related. And I was providing a personal anecdote; A view based on my own personal observations. Rather than providing your own, or (le gasp) an article or citation that would allow the discourse to proceed more intelligently, you've resorted to an ad hominem attack (yes, I too can use latin and sound smart).
Slashdot isn't full of "curmudgeons, eccentrics, and free-thinkers" -- there's more of them here, sure, but there's just as many people willing to jump to conclusions, stick with tradition, and tell anyone who disagrees to get bent almost as much as their is in the real world. We've just intellectualized it a bit more. We're a bunch of somewhat smarter people arguing about the same things our less educated counterparts do. In short, our shit is mixed with potpourri.
You aren't obsolute because you don't use the same social networking site I do. You're obsolete because you can't see anything except through the colored lenses of your own preconceptions.
I'm sorry, butchery of the english language DOES make someone dumb.
Did it ever occur to you that language is intentionally mutated in order to express things beyond pure literal meaning? For example, membership in a certain social group. It can imply social status. It can also be mutated to provide a covert means of communication in addition to identifying oneself as a member of a subculture. For example, my female friends and I often use invented sign language or body language to communicate in mixed company or in public in a covert fashion. Amongst gay men, the word "meanwhile" has a very different meaning than you intend: It's slang for saying "he's a hottie" -- while on the surface sounding very mundane and even boring to someone outside the LGBT culture.
I think if anything, you're the idiot here -- you've failed to understand what language is used for as you rail against others for their poor use of it!
I think old people are concerned about a perceived lack of self-disciplined development, a meme that seems to have left the modern generation.
That's so much bullsh*t it's not even funny. No, what they're concerned about is that they don't understand that our generation doesn't need formal leadership in order to organize into groups and tackle problems. You give a group of 18-25ers a problem and say "fix it", and you'll have it fixed in short order. The older generation believes a stricter social hierarchy as necessary to production. Our generation doesn't. So when we attack a problem as we do -- by pulling in our friends, our coworkers, and asking a lot of questions, they view it as a lack of "self-discipline". And they bitch about people being 10 minutes late to their shift -- and think that's more important than the fact that they're doing about twenty different jobs, holding six conversations at once on several different mediums at the same time and doing it well.
The older generation(s) do not understand that our ways of social interaction require new thinking about the environment and social structures we've long assumed to be natural and unchanging. We're living in an accelerated world -- we can't afford to take time out from this to elect a leader, attend management meetings, and keep to a strict timetable... Our generation has an excellent strength: Balancing many often competing objectives while working in a very socially fluid environment. Or put another way: We are Borg.
As a small business owner I have noticed that those "teens" turn in to my employees and think it's ok to text while working and then expect to get "good jobs" for showing up on time to work. In fact; I have a 17 year old girl who seems quite reasonable, say to me after showing up 20 minutes late that she thought, and I quote "I didn't think it was a big deal". This kind of thinking is not isolated, to her , it is very common in this age range of employees.
Sure, but how many of your 40+ employees can key data at over 100 WPM, carry on six different converations at once (and keep them separated), and perform a rather wide variety of small jobs under rapidly changing circumstances -- and do it well? How many of them will self-organize into groups to tackle a problem without formal leadership? These are the strengths of this generation. A good manager knows how to put the strengths of each member of his team to the right problem, in the right way, at the right time, to maximize results. Yes, showing up tardy is a problem -- but that's not an easy to solve problem. As to the rest, the problem lies in your own thinking and organization, not the so-called quality of your employees. You tackle business problems with what you've got, not what you want.
I like to see articles that spread the idea of cultural change being positive.
"Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change." -- Students for Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement, June 15, 1962
Fifty years later, this same generation now looks fearfully upon social change it once demanded... And yet I see no fault in any generation we have a memory of. Such is the nature of the human condition: We fear what we do not understand, and we're predisposed to stick with what works instead of trying something new. I can hear the voices of generations past: "Leave trying new things to the young, right? We only have so much energy... Put it towards something we know will pay off."
The ignorance of general history, science and geography discussed in the Newsweek article aren't new things.
In the 1950s, recent history was what has happened in the last hundred years. Nowadays, thanks to what could be terms a cultural compression -- recent history is what has happened in the last decade. The older generation(s) like to point to this and say we've gotten dumber... The truth is we've just changed our scope. What happened in the 1950s doesn't have much (if any) relevance to our day to day lives now... What happened even ten years ago now has only limited importance.
Don't judge people based on their memory or caring for esoteric issues that might have affected life in the "distant" past (for people my age, that's anything more than about 30 years ago) -- they know just as many fungible facts as their older counterparts, it's just about a smaller period of time.
"... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number." -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
People who say that successive generations are getting dumber are really just admitting the ignorance they have of the world.
I'm getting REALLY REALLY sick of reading these kinds of reports. Texting is not going to cause the end of civilization or throw us into a depraved existance where nobody sees anyone IRL anymore, and we all are addicted to our technology. This is the baby boomers taking Huxley a bit too seriously. Here's some reality for you: Most of my friends text. Some don't. Of the ones that do, they have a much more active social life and get out of the house a lot more often than those who don't. Texting, and e-mail, and instant messages, is a way for us to all stay in touch with one another in a highly kinetic world where plans are made and broken again in minutes as things change.
Texting doesn't "replace" talking -- it enables it! Look at your average baby boomer: They usually have less than 5 friends, most of them are coworkers, and if they are married their spouse provides most of the social interaction they're going to get. And they rot away watching TV or with hobbies like gardening. On the flip, you've got our generation where having forty friends on facebook is considered average. I see a friend at least once or twice a day. I get more social interaction in the flesh on an average day that my baby boomer parents and aunts and uncles get in a week, sometimes a month! And texting, email, and instant messaging make all of it possible. How else could we connect with each other in an information-rich world where things are moving so fast and we are all so mobile all the time?
Slashdot Mirror
You'd think advertisers would have learned by now how to avoid embarassing themselves. Clearly, they have not. Every year there are advertisements that fail to account for cultural values, context, or placement, and wind up sending an unintended message. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes its tragic. You've all seen the jars of Gerber baby food, right? The one with the big baby face on the front? Turns out when they first tried to sell it in rural segments of Africa, it wouldn't sell -- like at all. Turns out that the majority of the population in those markets is illiterate and so the products contained pictures of what was inside the jars and boxes. Well, the locals thought Gerber was selling, achem... baby. Needless to say, the packaging was updated shortly thereafter.
Here's the problem with advertisements where people are aware they are being targetted: What if the machine makes a mistake? What if it identifies the 18 year old male who's captain of the football team with a couple of his female friends and the machine decides that there are three females in the party instead of two, and spits out an advertisement for tampons or makeup. Perhaps even doing an impromptu photoshop with their faces and a "before and after" shot, with directions to the nearest makeup counter? Well, he might need some coverup then... To hide his suddenly very flushed appearance.
The problem with mechanical identification of any physical trait in a human being is that it won't ever be 100%, because the meanings associated with those traits are context-dependent. That is to say, the correlations are the problem, and it's true whether it's a matter of sex, race, or age... And when people are aware they are being targeted by those factors, and especially when its misread, and very especially when others are aware of this -- it can have significant social reprecussions. In marketing, context and placement means a lot -- and the only thing saving people from taking it personally is the very fact that they know it's targeted impersonally. When that changes, marketers are going to be in for a real surprise.
Apple Store's next product release: iRobbed.
This has led to a whole load of crap IT dedicated to neither hard-core hardware or to hard-core software...
Ah, I'm pretty sure most IT work is a balance of the two. One does not function without the other.
What surprises me about clouds however is that its often the hard-core folks who are scared of the cloud, they bitch about security and latency but really its because they fear it will make them less important.
I think what they really fear is a loss of control. They're turning their business over to the mercy of the cloud provider, and should it go down, the entire business may go with it. Not only that, but cloud computing is still relatively new and immature as a technology. We can't truly understand all the performance and security implications yet, nor make intelligent choices about architecture, because there's not enough experience with it yet to have confidence in it.
What clouds do is hugely commoditise infrastructure and (in the case of SaaS) those massive package implementations that customise to death a package that would have worked much better without all that consultancy "help".
Consultants are another problem entirely. Cloud computing isn't going to solve it. Hell, I'm not even sure nuking from orbit would eliminate it. Consultancy was brought on because managers wanted to save a buck by only having "expertise on demand". Well, they got it. The problem is, by moving these positions from salary to a to-hire proposition, they've created a market dynamic where up-selling is how freelancers survive. Consultants don't give two shits about the "right" solution because the "right" solution is the most expensive one they can get a signature on. The lack of trust in their permanent employees has ironically led to them being bled dry by people who don't give a shit about the company... They're only there to install or maintain a thing now, in and out in a day.
The people who should fear clouds are the ones who lived off customising packages...
Are you kidding? It's a cash cow! Think of all the money to be made in converting everything to be "cloud compatible"! Think of all the different cloud providers and architectures, each with their own requirements -- and as they fail or are absorbed by other providers, things will have to be reworked again. We don't need to wait for advances in hardware or new software to come out now before we charge an arm and a leg for an upgrade -- the market itself will now churn out reasons and the businesses that subscribe to it will all be locked in. They'll have to spend the money! Where's Microsoft? I'm sure right now they're patenting the hell out of this stuff to ensure that for decades to come, new markets filled with monopolization potential will come to fruition. Cloud Computing: Too Big To Fail. And this, this is the really awesome part: Odds are looking good all your customer data, your databases, the digital lifeblood of your business, will be subject to EULAs that say "We can (in our sole discretion) modify this agreement at any time without written notice to you." Oh god, I think I just creamed myself thinking about how much I can get paid now as an indispensible "cloud consultant".
Yet, I've also found that those who rail the most against the hierarchies and authority frequently seem to be the ones who need the most oversight to get anything accomplished. Ironic?
Not exactly ironic. The problem is finding authority and hierarchies that treat those above and beneath them with equal levels of respect and have the understanding that each job has a role to play in reaching the intended goal. Very often in hierarchial systems the first thing to go is communication between different levels -- directions and orders go top to bottom, but information needed from bottom to top does not flow freely. The net result is frustration from the rank and file because the bureaucracy is hindering their ability to be recognized for their efforts and/or observations.
Maybe you just THINK you're doing it well. Being late to a shift/work IS a big deal (if consistently so). It's pretty selfish to think otherwise. You're absolutely right that we are living in an "accelerated" world and that a lot of older practices are obsolete and diminishing as we speak. The inward facing solipsism you express is troubling though--ever think that there might be value in other ways of working, other people's viewpoints, beyond your preconceived notions of how the World 2.0 ought to work?
Okay, first, I KNOW I'm doing it well. But I'm an atypical example: I worked software deployment for a Fortune100 company; approximately 100k desktops, 5k servers. My biggest job challenge wasn't the technology but sorting out and prioritizing information coming in from dozens of departments and having only a very limited staff to do the work. The staff under me was, unfortunately, exactly the kind of person you're describing: Under 25 types with no real-world training. I made it work anyway, but it was the hardest job of my life. Multi-tasking is a learned skill. And the most important aspect of succeeding at it is being able to shut out external distractions in spurts and then redirect and move in an entirely new direction after a quick re-evaluation in between those times. The World v2.0 ought to work pretty similar to how The World v1.0 works: But without the social barriers that existing social framework encourages. We still need leaders, and we still need a hierarchy. But what we don't need is dominant/submissive pairings: We need to understand that just because someone is higher up the ladder does not make them any more important than those farther down. If we can do away with that attitude, information will flow from bottom to top, and the cycle will be restored thus radically improving efficiency. Also, in World 2.0, peer groups that come together to solve a problem with each person fluidly moving into different positions within the hierarchy will be more prevalent.
Our generation has an horrible weakness: Actually getting things done
I'd disagree. We can get things done, if given the right environment. We thrive on less judgmental and open atmospheres, which aren't common in hierarchial organizations. Thus, the perception we get nothing done, when the reality is that like any plant starved of basic nutrients... it doesn't grow.
Whether it's 150 ms or 1,500 ms, I can't change it, and everyone else in my age group is on the same playing field.
No, but if you want a game to appeal to a wider audience, maybe a game that isn't as latency-sensitive would be beneficial. This way, 30 year old gamers wouldn't be outgunned by 20 year old gamers on account of a 50ms reaction time difference.
Weren't we supposed to be all using thin clients right now in our flying cars, sucking the fat electrons straight from the coax at gigabit speeds by now? Now comes the latest proclaimation: We're going Carebears mode. Everyone into the clouds! Tenderheart's not going to be happy about this. I sense a big carebear stare coming for the Cloud-Mongers.
If I'm hiring you for a job though,
And there's the rub: It's not a reflection of a person's intelligence, but rather their background, if they don't have a certain linguistic skillset.
Personally I've always preferred the original, not the compromise second draft.
Yeah... but the attitudes embodied in the first led to the Weathermen fiasco.
Your ignorance truly is astounding.
You can repeat that as many times as you want, but it doesn't help your position any. In fact, it makes you look rather childish.
Wars do not spring out of a vacuum.
No, but they spring from the same basic causes time after time. I don't need to know about every war ever fought to know the causes of war.
Cultural imperialism is one of the most offensive invasions that a country can experience and yet it's the one the US does best.
Cultural imperialism sounds really impressive. But you want to know what it's really about? Change. It's one group choosing to merge with another group in order to achieve some benefit. Culture is nothing more than a system of coping strategies we impose between ourselves and our physical and social environment. If one culture is better at dealing with the problems of its physical and social environment than another, it makes perfect sense to adopt those strategies. It's maladaptive to fight them, but alas -- it is in our nature to resist change even when its good for us. This is one of the main causes of war: Fear of change.
Still think you need to know nothing about the past?
Yeah, actually. I don't need to know specifics: I need to know patterns, I need to understand why things happen. Examples can help with that, but they're not intrinsically needed.
Or is it nothing to do with you, so long as you can continue to go your own sweet way ignoring the growing anger and dissatisfaction around you.
I don't ignore it. But I'm not responsible for others' anger and dissatisfaction either.
Then when the shit hits the fan, you can claim you never saw it coming - "it's not MY fault".
The funny thing about shit hitting the fan is that it usually goes everywhere, including back the way it came. At that point, there are three choices: Work together to clean up the mess, Fight to see who cleans up the mess, or decide that it just isn't worth cleaning up and go somewhere else. Fault is entirely irrelevant in the decision-making process.
This is the delusion of this generation. The world is hierarchical. There are reasons why we have leadership. The biggest has to do with experience.
It doesn't have to be. That's not a delusion, but a hope of our generation. And this hope has recurred generation after generation, only to perish because society can find no way to realize it.
This generation thinks that being able to handle large amounts of streaming, pointless information is an asset.
No; Our generation thinks that being able to sort large amounts of information and provide contextual meaning to it is an asset.
I think you guys are referring to two different we's. The "How much lag we can detect' we was referring to how much on-screen lag players can detect while playing while you seem to be referring to how much mental lag researchers have found in people's responses.
Close. I'm looking at the entire system, not just the technology side but also the human side. Granted, the computer and its peripherals are the easiest to modify by far, but looking at the entire loop (Computer-display-person-input-computer) is the only way to make informed choices about improving the quality of real-time applications (which is the ultimate goal of this research).
The next generation of kids will have more in the flesh social interactions than you will at that time. Phones didn't save them. Texting wont' save you. That's life.
I'd believe you, except that I still have many friends who got married, popped out a kid, and work two jobs. I still find time to see them. And most of them rely more on their friends than I see the older generations doing. This whole self-reliance kick they espouse just doesn't seem to be taking hold as we age. I think facebook and instant messages, and cell phones, do have an impact: Sure, we drift apart, but we also come back together more often. Geography and situational separation just doesn't have as much effect as it used to.
the INABILITY to speak or write proper language is another one. There are many, many people out there now with a complete inability to do either.
It's the definition of "proper language" I'm disagreeing with: As long as you can communicate intelligibly with other people, it doesn't matter what dialect, accent, medium, or slang is used. "Proper language" isn't necessary for some groups -- someone who is poor and grew up on the street has little need to read/write the Queen's english well. Although, as the movie My Fair Lady reminds us: It can certainly help improve one's social status.
Truly, your ignorance is astounding. Take a look, for example, at modern Germany and tell me WWII does not still have a profound influence.
Umm... I don't live in Germany, and I think I could still have this same lifestyle without WWII happening. The only thing WWII demonstrated as far as I'm concerned is the nearly limitless ability for large groups of human beings to disagree with other large groups and then decide to start bashing the other's heads in out of some smug sense of superiority. I don't need to know about, much less study, WWII to understand how or why the world today is or to make moral choices within the context of my own life.
But that doesn't have anything to do with how much lag we can detect
You're saying we can't measure the time from when a person receives an input until there's a neurological response?!
Surely you don't think that you're part of the first ever generation to have no regrets? One can't grow personally without being grounded.
My first regret was buying covergirl makeup. They've been piling up since then. Some of them even have names: John, Dave, Sarah, Chris...
...average lag in the region of 133ms. On top of that is additional delay from the display itself, bringing the overall latency to around 166ms.
Considering that until very recently all displays had an inherent lag of about 70ms -- and that new [LCD] technology has pushed that higher. But we're only considering half the equation: The average human response time for auditory or visual input is 160--220ms. This increases as we age. We are also part of this system and we're a helluva lot more lagged than our technology is.
I want an upgrade.
/. is full of curmudgeons, eccentrics and free-thinkers and as a member of that set I resent you trying to call us obsolete just because we don't all use the flavor of the week social network you subscribe to.
You've read too far into my post. Also, I thought we were discussing a general cultural phenomenon that appears strongly age-related. And I was providing a personal anecdote; A view based on my own personal observations. Rather than providing your own, or (le gasp) an article or citation that would allow the discourse to proceed more intelligently, you've resorted to an ad hominem attack (yes, I too can use latin and sound smart).
Slashdot isn't full of "curmudgeons, eccentrics, and free-thinkers" -- there's more of them here, sure, but there's just as many people willing to jump to conclusions, stick with tradition, and tell anyone who disagrees to get bent almost as much as their is in the real world. We've just intellectualized it a bit more. We're a bunch of somewhat smarter people arguing about the same things our less educated counterparts do. In short, our shit is mixed with potpourri.
You aren't obsolute because you don't use the same social networking site I do. You're obsolete because you can't see anything except through the colored lenses of your own preconceptions.
I'm sorry, butchery of the english language DOES make someone dumb.
Did it ever occur to you that language is intentionally mutated in order to express things beyond pure literal meaning? For example, membership in a certain social group. It can imply social status. It can also be mutated to provide a covert means of communication in addition to identifying oneself as a member of a subculture. For example, my female friends and I often use invented sign language or body language to communicate in mixed company or in public in a covert fashion. Amongst gay men, the word "meanwhile" has a very different meaning than you intend: It's slang for saying "he's a hottie" -- while on the surface sounding very mundane and even boring to someone outside the LGBT culture.
I think if anything, you're the idiot here -- you've failed to understand what language is used for as you rail against others for their poor use of it!
I think old people are concerned about a perceived lack of self-disciplined development, a meme that seems to have left the modern generation.
That's so much bullsh*t it's not even funny. No, what they're concerned about is that they don't understand that our generation doesn't need formal leadership in order to organize into groups and tackle problems. You give a group of 18-25ers a problem and say "fix it", and you'll have it fixed in short order. The older generation believes a stricter social hierarchy as necessary to production. Our generation doesn't. So when we attack a problem as we do -- by pulling in our friends, our coworkers, and asking a lot of questions, they view it as a lack of "self-discipline". And they bitch about people being 10 minutes late to their shift -- and think that's more important than the fact that they're doing about twenty different jobs, holding six conversations at once on several different mediums at the same time and doing it well.
The older generation(s) do not understand that our ways of social interaction require new thinking about the environment and social structures we've long assumed to be natural and unchanging. We're living in an accelerated world -- we can't afford to take time out from this to elect a leader, attend management meetings, and keep to a strict timetable... Our generation has an excellent strength: Balancing many often competing objectives while working in a very socially fluid environment. Or put another way: We are Borg.
As a small business owner I have noticed that those "teens" turn in to my employees and think it's ok to text while working and then expect to get "good jobs" for showing up on time to work. In fact; I have a 17 year old girl who seems quite reasonable, say to me after showing up 20 minutes late that she thought, and I quote "I didn't think it was a big deal". This kind of thinking is not isolated, to her , it is very common in this age range of employees.
Sure, but how many of your 40+ employees can key data at over 100 WPM, carry on six different converations at once (and keep them separated), and perform a rather wide variety of small jobs under rapidly changing circumstances -- and do it well? How many of them will self-organize into groups to tackle a problem without formal leadership? These are the strengths of this generation. A good manager knows how to put the strengths of each member of his team to the right problem, in the right way, at the right time, to maximize results. Yes, showing up tardy is a problem -- but that's not an easy to solve problem. As to the rest, the problem lies in your own thinking and organization, not the so-called quality of your employees. You tackle business problems with what you've got, not what you want.
I like to see articles that spread the idea of cultural change being positive.
"Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change." -- Students for Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement, June 15, 1962
Fifty years later, this same generation now looks fearfully upon social change it once demanded... And yet I see no fault in any generation we have a memory of. Such is the nature of the human condition: We fear what we do not understand, and we're predisposed to stick with what works instead of trying something new. I can hear the voices of generations past: "Leave trying new things to the young, right? We only have so much energy... Put it towards something we know will pay off."
The ignorance of general history, science and geography discussed in the Newsweek article aren't new things.
In the 1950s, recent history was what has happened in the last hundred years. Nowadays, thanks to what could be terms a cultural compression -- recent history is what has happened in the last decade. The older generation(s) like to point to this and say we've gotten dumber... The truth is we've just changed our scope. What happened in the 1950s doesn't have much (if any) relevance to our day to day lives now... What happened even ten years ago now has only limited importance.
Don't judge people based on their memory or caring for esoteric issues that might have affected life in the "distant" past (for people my age, that's anything more than about 30 years ago) -- they know just as many fungible facts as their older counterparts, it's just about a smaller period of time.
"... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number."
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
People who say that successive generations are getting dumber are really just admitting the ignorance they have of the world.
I'm getting REALLY REALLY sick of reading these kinds of reports. Texting is not going to cause the end of civilization or throw us into a depraved existance where nobody sees anyone IRL anymore, and we all are addicted to our technology. This is the baby boomers taking Huxley a bit too seriously. Here's some reality for you: Most of my friends text. Some don't. Of the ones that do, they have a much more active social life and get out of the house a lot more often than those who don't. Texting, and e-mail, and instant messages, is a way for us to all stay in touch with one another in a highly kinetic world where plans are made and broken again in minutes as things change.
Texting doesn't "replace" talking -- it enables it! Look at your average baby boomer: They usually have less than 5 friends, most of them are coworkers, and if they are married their spouse provides most of the social interaction they're going to get. And they rot away watching TV or with hobbies like gardening. On the flip, you've got our generation where having forty friends on facebook is considered average. I see a friend at least once or twice a day. I get more social interaction in the flesh on an average day that my baby boomer parents and aunts and uncles get in a week, sometimes a month! And texting, email, and instant messaging make all of it possible. How else could we connect with each other in an information-rich world where things are moving so fast and we are all so mobile all the time?