Review of a new book about the Turing Test, which Nick Carr discusses briefly at the end of The Shallows. The author Brian Christianson sets out to win the Turing Test.

SXSW-i 2011 "didn't feel blindly focused on discovering the killer app. Tech didn't feel like an end unto itself -- rather, it was about processing data with a purpose; data for a greater good." Librarians were a big part of the conversation at this year's festival

I think there's a special topics course on curation of information/data in the fall!

Worst news: The New York Times rolled out a plan on Thursday to begin charging the most frequent users of its Web site $15 a month in a bet that readers would pay for news they have grown accustomed to getting free.

You get 20 articles free per month. You can get unlimited articles directed through social media. It's $15/month for web access. I wonder if there's a student price?

update: I found in the comments section a comment from a NYTimes spokesperson who said that it will be free for students. I haven't been able to find that in the subscription section.

This article discusses SXSW-Interactive, the technology portion of the festival. This is the festival where Twitter was first launched in 2007. Theme so far: the blurring of real life and online life is happening. Other topics discussed: web 3.0, asymmetry of privacy, biomimicry (designing technology to mimic nature), work/life balance. Clay Shirky also gave a presentation on social media and revolution: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/12/sxsw-2011-clay-shirky-social-media

Note: this is a rumor, but it's interesting if this service will be lauched: "With Circles, I believe that Google will attempt to accomplish something critics from the blogosphere, academia, SXSW 2010 keynoter danah boyd, privacy watchdogs and others have all called on the social networking world to do: to allow our online communication to respect the same boundaries that our offline social lives do."

nothing has been announced yet. it is interesting that google is so visited and has so many users, but has yet to effectively incorporate social networking... i.e. buzz and wave had huge hyped, but it quickly burned away.

Changing view in anthropology attributes social cooperation/social learning and tools (first as weapons) as characteristics that set humans apart from other primates. See also http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/science/11kin.html

"the dating site had been used over the past couple of weeks as a clandestine location to exchange information and words of encouragement regarding the citizen uprisings in Libya."

This is a nice feature by the NY Times on what is going on in the mideast. I like how they combine a regularly updated summary written by the Times next to a live twitter feed of what is happening in each country. It's a nice combining of citizen and traditional journalism.

interesting demographic info on users of top social networking sites

A nice summary of the concept as it relates to style and functionality. Fashion was one of the first industries to capitalize on it, and as certain products such as computers do not noticeably improve, companies have to use style, rather than functionality, to sell them.

Young people are leaving blogs to run twitter and fb pages.... unique page views for blogger are down domestically (although up internationally). Tumblr & wordpress use remains consistent. Does anyone agree that blogger still feels like it's stuck in 2003 with its look, feel and usage?

This refers to how less restrained people feel on the internet v. real life. This might seem more related to internet identity, but it can have huge effects on civil community on the internet too. I thought of this when I read "One important social rule was built into the software that the WELL lives inside: Nobody is anonymous. Everybody is required to attach their real userid to their postings" (Rheingold, Chapter 1).

Author finds that young people do care about privacy, but are more concerned with social privacy, rather than institutional privacy. "Contrary to much of the rhetoric in the debate around online privacy, the use of Facebook is not necessarily a choice free of coercion, nor are the reasons for sharing information on the site simply about self-obsession or exhibitionism." Rather it is a dominate expression of online identity and a way to communicate with peers. This is following one of the important points of Wesch - that there is no opting out of new media once the community starts to participate.

Argues that Terms of service (TOS) agreements have implications for the political and legal structures under which our virtual selves will function. Also, the Wall Street Journal has actually been running fantastic series of investigative reports on this topic, called "what they know": http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html

There's so many examples of info on the internet being considered as "evidence." This was struck me as really surprising. There was another piece about insurance companies doing similar tactics in the LA Times this week: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-evidence-20110125,0,4304729.story

A repository for activities, people, and opportunities related to the field of Social Informatics. It includes foundational documents of the field and a complete bibliography of Kling's work