All posts tagged social media

On Straw Men and Blogs

I’ve been engaged by Mathew Ingram at GigaOm recently. He’s had a couple of great pieces this past week. But he also wrote one I’m not so fond of. In this piece, he argues against Turkle and others that suggest that the technologies that we use have shaped our behaviors in ways that disconnect us from others (that’s more nuanced than he puts it, though).

What bothers me is not his opposition to something I tend to agree with. I work in the area of social ethics, so I get paid to disagree with people. No biggie. Rather, it’s the argumentation he uses. He does three things that bother me:

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by Jim Caccamo on April 27, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in love, moral theory
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 27, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/27/195/

What the World Needs Now…

Solid perspective on the role of tech-mediated activism by Hamza Shaban at ReadWriteWeb.

Twitter didn’t topple tyrants – protestors did. The Arab Spring wasn’t started by a tweet, but by a Tunisian – who set the desert on fire by using his flesh as kindling.

The social web isn’t the revolution, but a tool for revolutionaries. As Occupy Wall Street demonstrates, tech-savvy anger without a unified, actionable agenda is just noise.

Tech is important, but doesn’t do it all.  Well put.

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by Jim Caccamo on April 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in activism, communication, justice
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 26, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/26/202/

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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by Jim Caccamo on April 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in communication, temperance
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 25, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/25/applying-sherry-to-meetings/

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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by Jim Caccamo on April 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in communication, temperance
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 25, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/25/reducing-our-intake-of-phatic/

It’s Always More Complicated Than We Think

These days, there’s a cottage industry around heralding the decline of Western culture and the end of civilization as we know it.  We regularly see news stories about stupid people doing stupid things, and each election season brings books about how this political party or that is causing the end of America.

The other popular version of this motif is the “technology is the end of the world” perspective, as seen in books like The Shallows and The Dumbest Generation. Often, these sorts of books bring in in “objective scientific data” about brain function, but rarely discuss it in its full complexity.  As a result, they end up only telling part of the story—the bad part.

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by Jim Caccamo on April 19, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in fortitude
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 19, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/19/it-always-more-complicated-than-we-think/

Privacy Is About More Than Just Fear

Last week, Josh Constine over at Tech Crunch wrote an interesting piece on online data security. It is a worthwhile read (even if a bit flawed).  His thesis was that innovation is being hampered by public over-reaction to potential problems with the security of private data at social networking sites and in apps. Constine seems frustrated that Despite their own research that showed little danger of data compromise on Facebook apps, The Wall Street Journal still wrote “a hit piece” that warned people about privacy dangers at the site. Privacy concerns are, it seems, a fiction foisted upon an ignorant public by an corrupt media.

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by Jim Caccamo on April 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in fortitude, human development
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 15, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/15/privacy-is-about-more-than-fear/

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