We Are All Borg

Great little piece by Erica Sadun at TUAW about technology and choice:

It was then I realized: I have been assimilated. I am become Borg. I have betrayed the trust of my fellow ex-librarians. (Although shelf-reading, book dusting, and card sorting are skills I hope never to re-acquire. Ever.)

Like it or not, practices don’t just reflect our commitments, they shape them.

Applying Sherry to Meetings

Just a thought.  Earlier I posted about Sherry Turkle’s distinction between “connection” and “conversation.”  Yesterday, while discussing university politics with a colleague, it struck me that Turkle’s insight about technology helps me understand why so many of the endless meetings we have (and you probably have at your work too) amount so little.

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Reducing our intake of Phatic

MIT Psychologist and longtime technology researcher Sherry Turkle published a thoughtful opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday Review this week.  In the piece (“The Flight From Conversation“), Turkle reflects on the ways in which mobile technologies are shifting the types of exchanges we have.  Tired of connecting, she wants to stand up for real, long-form conversation.

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Paying (for) Attention

This past week, three stories about advertising caught my eye.

1) Ad Age ran a story on an Innerscope Research study for Time Warner about media device use during non-working hours. Setting aside all of the questionable aspects of the report and study (using the thoroughly debunked category of “digital natives,” referring to people as consumers, and the reliability of a study with a sample size of 30), the study confirmed what we already know from experience: younger people tend to switch between media devices more than older people: 30 times per hour vs. 17. I can’t stop changing the channel on the one device (tv); kids change channels between devices. The big takeaway was that you have to advertise in creative and emotionally engaging ways if you want to be noticed.

2) Yet it may not be as simple as all that. VatorNews reported on a Nielson survey of “28,000 online consumers in 56 countries throughout Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and North America.”

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