“There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.” – Eugene Ionesco, playwright People hate the Facebook Timeline. While many of Facebook’s most prominent changes over the years have caused a lot of hand wringing, none of them have caused as visceral a response as the Timeline. [...]
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Google Decides to Kill Privacy
January 26, 2012
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Remember when Google adopted “Don’t Be Evil” as its unofficial motto? You’ll find that little ditty at a yard sale next to a Bay City Rollers album and a skinny leather tie decorated like a piano. Because this week Google announced it was drastically changing its privacy policy and the side of sharing – and [...]
Read moreGetting Rational on SOPA
January 25, 2012
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The debate on the Stop Online Piracy Act (known as SOPA) has jumped the shark. SOPA and its companion bill Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) were both shelved recently by Congress and the Senate after a frenzied protest by dozens of websites and Internet companies including Google, Wikipedia and Facebook. The goal of the bills [...]
Read moreThere’s No Such Thing As Quiet Time
December 8, 2011
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Jack hammers are rattling in the background. A loud jarring noise that vibrates my windows and makes it difficult for me to focus on writing a presentation. Another distraction is a world filled with distractions. So it was a happy coincidence that as I was reading the New York Times this morning, I came upon [...]
Read moreInvasion of the Privacy Snatchers
October 25, 2011
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There is a new technology TV commercial airing that unfolds this way: A family is gathered together for a holiday The “uncle” is playing a music-themed video game that requires him to dance in a funny way The niece and nephew secretly film him with a mobile phone and quickly loaded the video onto [...]
Read moreThe Big Question is Now: How Much to Share
September 26, 2011
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Think of Charles Dickens and his seminal novel “David Copperfield.” This is what Facebook is striving to become for all of us. Dickens’ novel follows David Copperfield from birth to adulthood and chronicles the trials and tribulations of a young gentleman in early Victorian England. His works, his love, his marriage – his life. [...]
Read more Is Extreme Economics Infecting Social Media?
September 21, 2011
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In her fascinating book “The Watchman’s Rattle,” Rebecca Costa talks about a super meme known as “extreme economics.” For those unfamiliar with the concept of memes (rhythms with “seems”) they are units of cultural transmission or imitation and like real genes they compete for survival, some winning and others dying out. They also evolve with [...]
Read moreLess Phone, More Quiet
August 23, 2011
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Yesterday, sitting on my front stoop, enjoying the fade of the day, a jogger ran by. I heard him coming before I actually saw him because he was jabbering on his mobile phone. Headset on, huffing and puffing, engaged in a long and detailed conversation. He gestured to me with a head nod without breaking [...]
Read moreThe Demise of Nice
June 21, 2011
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Corporations more concerned with profits than employees. Sports teams that want to win even if it means cheating. Popular culture filled with braggadocio. Self-centered co-workers. Snarky comments permeating blog posts and tweets. What happened to being nice? Incivility seems to be permeating all aspects of our society, according to a new survey by Weber Shandwick. [...]
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HighTalk by George F. Snell III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at hightalk.net.
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