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We enclose silence - unknown possibility - at our own risk. Jonathan Zittrain demonstrates in his recent work on generativity that the value of systems often comes from unknown uses - the Apple II became succesful when Visicalc, the first spreadsheet, was written for the platform. If you want generative uses for a technology, Zittrain warns that you need to be careful what you lock down. Lewis also cites a case in which cell biologists patented a particular series of amino acids. They had no idea their purpose, but “purifying and describing gives you a right to own.” A later set of researchers speculated that these aminos bloc the growth of cancer cells - on publishing their research, the first researchers sued them for many millions of dollars. This can very effectively prevent exloratory science, he argues. “When we enclose wilderness, we begin to give property rights in areas where we have yet to understand what’s happening.” An enclosure of silence affects the human self and the world we inhabit. How do you become a creative actor in this world? How do you beat the bounds of this commons?

All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites. Yet, time and time again, I hear problematic assumptions so let me start with some claims: Not all social networks are the same. You cannot assume network transitivity. You cannot assume that properties that hold for one network apply to other networks. To address this, I want to begin by mapping out three distinct ways of modeling a social network. These are not the only ways of modeling a social network, but they are three common ways that are often collapsed in public discourse.

Sociological "personal" networks. Sociologists have been working hard to measure people's personal networks and much of the theory of social networks stems from analysis done on these networks.

Most sociological theory stems from analyses of these personal networks. Social capital, weak ties, homophily, ... all of those theories you've heard about are based on personal networks. Given that these are typically measured by eliciting people's understandings of certain categories (e.g., "friend"), there's a strong overlap between everyday language around social networks and the categories being measured.

Do you shoot video with your cell phone, digital camera, or other handheld device? Then the chances are good that you have shaky, dark, noisy, pixilated, or blurry videos. Less-than-ideal videos that obscure your life’s best, captured moments.But those moments don’t have to be lost to common video problems any more. vReveal has the advanced enhancement technology and “one click” touch-up tools that make it easy to dramatically improve the quality of flawed videos

Certainly, there is a powerful new force developing here. Citizens who previously had little voice in public are using cheap Web tools to tell the world about the drama that has unfolded since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election. The government succeeded last week in exerting control over Internet use and text-messaging, but Twitter has proven nearly impossible to block. The most common search topic on Twitter for days has been "#iranelection" -- the "hashtag" for discussions about Iran -- and international media outlets are relying on information and images disseminated by ordinary citizens via Twitter feeds. Yet for all its promise, there are sharp limits on what Twitter and other Web tools such as Facebook and blogs can do for citizens in authoritarian societies. The 140 characters allowed in a tweet do not represent the end of politics as we know it -- and at times can even play into the hands of hard-line regimes. No amount of Twittering is going to force Iranian leaders to change course, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, made clear during Friday prayers with his stern rebuke of the protesters. In Iran, as elsewhere, true revolution can only happen offline.