The Power of Information

Written by Lisa Galarneau - View Comments Categories: Information, Social Media

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Since the birth of my daughter 8 years ago, I have struggled with a lower back condition. Basically I am too flexible, and there are a couple of joints in my lower back that are very sad because they arent properly supported anymore. Softer ligaments from pregnancy, and that emergency c-section meant I lost the core muscles that had been built up back when I could do 100 sit-ups in 2 minutes.

But this little detail is not meant to get you to feel sorry for me. Instead Id like us to take a moment to really think about what weve accomplished these last 40 years.

Mans Greatest Achievement

Prior to the Internet, one could argue that mans greatest achievement, at least that with the biggest impact to the most people, was our invention of the printing press. Sure, wed had writing for a couple of millennia, and books even. But the books were of the painstakingly created variety, like those beautiful illuminated manuscripts one can admire in places like Irelands Trinity College. A lot of people were very sad when a library at Alexandria in Egypt burned down, as it contained at least 50% of the worlds recorded history. Maybe more. What the printing press meant was that one person could produce a piece of information, and the press allowed it to be copied and copied and copied some

more. Those copies were distributed widely, and became the basis of many a religious or cultural revolution. Martin Luthers protestant reformation was enabled by his use of printed materials to carry his message. Yes, there were also the scourges of society, like the Victorian penny novels that would certainly be the downfall of morality and society, but for the most part information was allowed to be free. Except when it wasnt.

Arrested for Distributing Information

Back in the 1920s, a woman named Margaret Sanger was repeatedly arrested for distributing information related to birth control. Yes, this happened in America. She was accused of some sort of indecency, and for using the U.S. postal service for her nefarious purposes. Eventually she prevailed, married a very rich man, and hired a bevy of super smart scientists to create a magic pill for her, then launched a viral campaign to educate people about all of their options and risk factors. Her organization is called Planned Parenthood, and it continues to service thousands upon thousands of people who lack the most basic information about the things that can affect their lives the most.

Transparency of Information
Information is and always has been a huge component of our societies. Some people like to control it in order to dominate others. Or to marginalize or stamp out ideas that they dont like. Just this week, news of a Syrian family who lost their 13 year old to torture and murder by government thugs. The father risked his life to produce a video of the childs broken body he is now missing. There were attempts to censor the video by removing it from YouTube, but activists successfully lobbied to have it unblocked. Horrific, but each and every instance of such transparency, of calling out the evil in the world, makes a difference.

Does Brain Beat Brawn?

People with information, like where to forage for the best food, or how to make an amazing stone ax, have always thrived a bit better. Brains beat brawn, even in the most intense survival conditions. Information is how we understand the night sky and launch ships that can travel the world and get back again. Its the Euclidean geometry

that lets you build very very big buildings. And the thing that might contribute to whether you live or die (tobacco smoking is bad for you!). Information is currency and resource and tool for good or bad purposes, depending on your proclivities. And information has the very interesting quality of moving around on its own, despite what the powers-that-be might want. Cant stop the signal is what Mr. Universe, the consummate information man, gives as his last words in the movie Serenity. Its a box, like Pandoras, that can never be closed again once open. Thats why Adam and Eve were ostensibly thrown from the garden of Eden, remember they ate from the tree of knowledge.

You Dont Know What you Dont Know

Im pretty good with information. Ive been on the Internet since 1990 or so, back when I logged into a server at UC Berkeley and ran programs like Pine, Tin and Gopher. I know my Boolean operators and the strengths and weaknesses of various search engines, so I can find stuff readily. But what about when you dont know what you dont know? Back to the problem with my back. I cant even tell you how many doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, naturopaths, osteopaths and acupuncturists I have seen over the years. Even tried Chinese medicine, except it didnt agree with my decidedly Caucasian constitution. Worrying that I will have to break down and try extreme measures like letting them inject cortisone steroids into the very sad joints. Have about a dozen business cards of various pain clinics, know every physical therapy facility in my city have done the work to solve the problem. Yet my back kills me every day, and I am missing out on life because of it.

The Power of Facebook

Well, I was cruising Facebook this morning, and happened across the page of a naturopath named Dr. Ben Lynch. I noticed he was dispensing advice on his page, and because it was easy, I sent him a quick note Within a couple of hours a response, and a solution I had never heard of. Blithely, like telling someone with scurvy that they should take some vitamin C. Further research proves it credible, and I now have some hope of solving a problem that has a huge negative impact on my life. And Dr. Ben? Hes got a sustainable business model based on classical marketing principles: identify a problem and solve it. With a product or service or information. Want to know how to

succeed in the digital universe? Look at what hes doing: the 15 minute free phone consultations, the podcasts, the oodles of advice and information he dispenses generously. Thats how social media works.

What is Quora?
I also spend a lot of time on Quora, a site thats a bit hard to describe, but its like when the nerdy kids sit around saying why do you think we exist? or whats the best shooting scene in a movie? Except the questions go beyond the mundane. Ashton Kutcher frequents the site, and Quorites ask him questions, which he answers. Venture capital neophytes ask for frankly, insider information, on how to score funding, and how to build decent products. Its thousands of conversations, a mish-mash of chaos and spontaneity. And really good information. Some might call it a waste of time. I think of it as sharing, in the same way my blogging is sharing. Except in this case the community has told me what they would like to know, and sometimes thats surprising.

The Power of Questions on Quora

Its funny that people ask questions like how do I get a geeky girl to like me? or how did people waste time before there was the Internet? its like a window into otherwise unexplored regions of our collective consciousness. I find I know so much more than I know, and I find that I am curious about many, many things things that I had sort of given up ever knowing. And I get a small bit of delight when someone acknowledges my contribution through the tiny but pervasive upvoting mechanism.

Information is Changing Our World

I think its incredible how freely flowing information is changing our world. How much people share, how much people contribute. Its like were all in on this big project called growing the Internet and we are committed soldiers each doing our little part. The only problem with this fantastic information revolution is that it has done away with arguing about random facts, a fun past-time in those days before the Internet. Now somebody always has a phone, a magic device that fits in the palm of a hand and allows access to much of the information in our world. For free. Relatively few controls thanks to the efforts of the ever vigilant Electronic Frontier Foundation,

and other pioneers who remember that time before the Internet, and dont take it for granted. Truly incredible.

I Cant Remember Telephone Numbers

Strange that I can no longer remember a phone number or navigate a phonebook, but we cant have it all. One of the upsides is that this ubiquitous access to information means I dont have to stuff my head with it all. And that, quite simply, is why kids think school is irrelevant. They know that they will forget those facts, and know that should they need them, they can find a person or device that will connect them to the answer.

What We Need to Learn

What we need to do is learn about this powerful stuff called information, and how to consume it and create it, and connect people to it, and to use it to forge a better world. Because it is the stuff of magical change, and thats what were waiting for. Guest Author: Lisa Galarneau Ph.D. is a User Experience Researcher (Virtualization) Volt at Microsoft. You can find her on the Web and LinkedIn Image by Lemsipmatt

5 Insights On The Future Of Social Media

Written by Lisa Galarneau - View Comments Categories: Internet Trends, Social Media, Trends

It is a very sad fact about our world that it is most often through conflict and disaster that we discover the most about ourselves and our connections to others. I have felt this palpably in recent months and years as Ive watched the ebb and flow of so many conversations, about things both mundane and monumental. The hardest is the desperation and shock of people in peril and the loved ones that worry about them. In the eye of these storms, social media emerges as a kind of curiosity: look at what people do! Tools are launched and then find their unique purpose. If the founders are lucky, maybe a global phenomenon. Anyone can have a voice (whether anyone listens is another matter). We can connect to people in many places. Thats our power of now.

Is social media about sociality, or something else entirely? Social media is real-time. Its raw. Its usually un-edited and un-flltered. It asks us to make our own decisions about which news to follow, about which voices to promote, and which to marginalize. The editors of these new media are mostly individuals, each deciding what is relevant or meaningful. Too frequently they forget to think about the audiences they might draw, and instead create from their own passions and inspirations. This is slightly what makes it special in a culture so inundated with well-crafted brand messages from corporations and governments alike. Social media can allow the authenticity and connection that we sometimes feel are missing from our heavy-duty lives. Perhaps even more importantly, social media allows us to connect for a huge variety of reasons, in sometimes quite unexpected ways. One of my favorite things about the Internet is my ability to connect with friends I have collected all over the world. Im one of those people who moves rather a lot. A lot of us do. One of my grandmothers, born in 1904, moved to California in the 1920s and used to stay in touch with her Kansas relatives via long chain letters that were passed from person to person. Each person in the chain read the letters from everyone else, then added their own missive, and the whole process started again. I tried reading one or two of the letters as a teenager, but they were so full of small, relevant-only-to-thepeople-involved details that I quickly put them aside. Such is also the downside of social media. A recent meme in cyborg anthropology is a notion called ambient intimacy. It refers to a murky soup of connections that we all maintain without paying a whole lot of

explicit attention to any of them. Its just like scanning headlines in your favorite newspaper (digital or otherwise), like a background process of collecting small bits of information about peoples lives. Details that no one thinks to share outside of spouses and family are now a personal history viewable by a mish-mash of family, friends, colleagues, Internet friends, acquaintances and people that I might know. If only I could resolve their digital identity to a physical one. Out in the world I find that I notice when people are making eye contact with me, so accustomed am I that everyone walks with eyes cast down, focused on some kind of screen. This is not a judgment on technology, nor a denial of its potential I would lump these problems into the category of unintended consequences. Social media is sandbox software, a category that includes a range of experiences that are highly emergent in nature (think a video game like the Sims vs. games that explicitly guide the player through a narrative). There are connections and reconnections, supportive ideas and divisive ones. There are echo chambers of the self-selecting and selected-for-you varieties. Like a city, the Internet has good neighborhoods and bad ones, vandals and gadflies and crazies, and the most beautiful examples of community that many of us have seen. If we are all so connected, why dont I feel connected? I have been experimenting these last couple of years with not having a cell phone. Or at least, not having one that is consistently charged, or that I consistently check voicemail for. I am online a lot, I figure, and if people want to get in touch, it seems easy enough to do. And yet, so often I have this sense that friends and I are like ships passing in the night (as we often are, especially if many of your friends live in different time zones). Keeping up with where your friends are hanging out today is tricky Should I call them on the phone? What if theyre busy? What if I interrupt? A text? Can I explain what I need to in a text? IM? Theyre not on, or theyre invisible or busy so people wont bother them with IMs when theyre just checking their emails. Oh, right, no ones using email anymore I should check Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Quora. There I find a trail of digital foot-prints, but at the end of the road, no Im available icon. I book an appointment via email or voice mail, so that I can actually speak to my friend. Feel slightly like a cyber-stalker. Oh, well, I know a lot of people. Perhaps I can find someone else to help me think about the sticky situation I am pondering but where? How? Do I really want all the Quora, Facebook or LinkedIn people I connect with to know this little piece of consternation I am experiencing? When I was doing online game research, one or two

guild members used me as a personal advisor, despite us not knowing each other outside the context of a game and our avatars. In case youre wondering, it is uncommon that my various forays online result in physical meetings, unless there are specific goals (dating, couch surfing, conferences, networking) involved. I certainly dont invite random Internet people over, yet that is sometimes the feeling I have, that there are poor souls out there who just need some connection. I wish I could invite them for dinner, but we scarcely do that anymore. Is the world worse, or are our voices just louder?

Its very common in difficult times to for people to start believing that we are soon going somewhere very bad, perhaps in someones handbasket, perhaps down the slippery slope of simulated realities, or other grim possibilities our physical lives afford. I mentioned in an earlier post how shaken I was by the recent earthquakes in New Zealand. And now, a mere handful of weeks later, Japan also devastated. #PrayForJapan is a constant meme, as are the pleas connect to people in Japan who might have information about loved ones. We mourn together, because we have become one global consciousness. Or perhaps we always were, although slightly lacking the communication options that now make these interactions so easy and simultaneous. Whats the way forward?

It occurs to me that in our discussions about social media we need to be more aware of a few things. 1. These technologies still in their infancies (in current incarnations), though we have reached a certain temperamental pre-pubescence with other possibilities like e-mail and forums. We probably cant even begin to imagine the possibilities that will be available even just five years from now. 2. Even if we did know exactly what technologies will be available to us, it is impossible to predict exactly what people might do with it. This is the beauty of unintended consequences, when humans do things more wonderful and caring than we can possibly anticipate. That means were evolving, and thats a good thing. 3. One can be simultaneously techno-philial and skeptical about efforts to throw all of our eggs in one or two baskets. Lets imagine the future we want and work backwards from there. Sure, take some inspiration from Facebook or Twitter, but dont feel like you have to replicate them, or even use them, if you feel like your social and information needs are otherwise met. There will be more and better options coming soon enough. We should be crafting some collective visions, and keeping those commitments, recession economics or not. 4. We are reaching a point in our technological evolution where we need to make a massive shift. For many years passionate people have imagined and created incredible technologies that delight us and show promise of easing and expanding our lives. However there is a fundamental problem with this approach. Conceiving technologies and then trying to find audiences for them (build it and they will come) is slowly but surely falling away to approaches that understand people first, then build technologies that adapt to people, rather than demanding that we adapt to them. Because what happens is that in the technology-centric world, we develop dysfunctions to handle our dysfunctions, and that becomes a big mess of complexity very quickly. 5. Attention and clout are currencies of interaction. These things have not changed in several centuries. We will give attention to get attention (online or otherwise). In a data-driven world, our attention will be gathered willingly or otherwise, and we might even be able to monetize some of it, in an expert filtering type way. Information literacy will allow us to quickly scan for clout (what your social media stats or search engine rankings say about you) separate useful and not-useful, instead of floundering in information chaos. We do favors (building, writing, connecting, linking) with the fuzzy expectation that some kind of karma might pay it back or forward. We slightly dont care as we feel our cause (sometimes just growing the Internet) gaining momentum, and can tangibly see cause and effect in beautiful collective action.

William Shakespeare said that if anyone could look at the seeds of today and accurately predict the future, they should speak unto him. I have a prediction: there will be unintended consequences than we cant even begin to imagine. Some will stick, some will not. We just have to listen and watch. Something world-changing might be happening, but we wont know for a while yet. In the meantime, perhaps Prime Minister Edeno and others will get some peaceful sleep sometime soon, bolstered by the lullaby that is global love and solidarity. We connect because we can, we can because we connect. Guest Author: Lisa Galarneau Ph.D. is a User Experience Researcher (Virtualization) Volt at Microsoft Web: http://lgalarneau.webs.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lgalarneau Image by katypang Tags: adapt, Cell phone, Collective Visions, Connecting, downside, Facebook, Future,insights, LinkedIn, Massive Shift, MySpace, Passion, Possibilities, Quora, sandbox, Social Media, Technologies