2 posts tagged “data”
I have really gotten hooked on the information aesthetics blog.There are some insanely creative solutions to data visualization here. I am proud to say I poach design ideas from here all the time.I am not ashamed. No really.
OK, maybe a little.
When asked recently how many news groups or online associations would currently include me as a member my answer was one. If asked how many I have participated in over the past 15 years you could multiply that number by 100. To be honest, I don’t have the patience for the wannabes, the trolls, the flamers and every other meatball looking for some sort of self actualization with outrageous posts on the web. When a community becomes noxious I pull the plug. The internet is enough of a time sink as it is.
Certainly everyday human interaction is rife with people who get their jollies by attracting attention to themselves. From the grocery store to the sidewalk there are some interesting characters out there. Judith Donath describes the one online community I actively participate in; a technical news group that is closely moderated by a respected member. I trust that he will keep the discussions on point and target the miscreants who are only interested in the negative attention.
But I am concerned about those personas on the web that have nefarious intentions. How much different is it to spoof a website by phishing for dupes than a 45-year-old guy chatting with my 9 year old sons as they play with their PSPs online? They are playing on the same gullible nature of the uninformed and uninitiated. These are creeps, and it makes me nauseous to think of the messages my kids get when all they wanted was to play ATV. Sure I modify the settings on the game connection, and yes that curtails it for a while, but some of these folks are really scummy.
When they were little, my daughters played dress-up. They could spend the day pretending to be queen, or mom or an alien with six heads. Trying on a new persona for size seems to be a part of the human psyche. And we have all been in jobs that required us to present a persona that didn’t ring true. But I grow weary of people spoofing a persona online or making up accomplishments to bolster their credibility. Patricia Wallace refers to this evolutionary phase of the web as a new laboratory for experiments. A place where we can construct and sculpt new identities. I am fine with nuanced shadings… Defining oneself as more courageous, or extroverted or sexy. As Wallace points out, some of those experiments can spill over positively into everyday F2F interactions. But too much of it is just crap. Or worse, a safe way to practice antisocial behavior. After a while you can spot them with ease, but only after being spoofed once too often.
Terveen and McDonald describe social matching systems that are dependent on the quality of data aggregated. Certainly mining for information that is both collaborative and content-based has become sophisticated big business. But a large part of that data is still dependent on the information the users feed into the system. And if that data is corrupt, or if the user’s intentions are misguided, then the connections created by these matching systems is correspondingly suspect. In addition, I don’t really like the idea of Opportunistic Social Matching, where connections are made because someone is watching my current and past activities. Not only does this strike me as frighteningly Orwellian, but I will be really hacked off when this data is cross-referenced with all of the commerce-based data that is sitting on a server in Atlanta. I would prefer that I have the opportunity to manage how I am presented on the web, and if someone is going to connect the dots for me, then I want it exposed so I can control how the data is used.
