JoelFoner.com

Bias and Discrimination – Where Are We Headed?

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This Tuesday, Aug 31 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Bias and Discrimination – Where Are We Headed?

Bias and discrimination get lots of focus in both general discussion and political arenas, and have for many years. Have we made substantive progress to date, and regardless of that answer, where are we headed? What is the likely trajectory of both public discourse and the “reality on the ground” for bias and discrimination? Are we headed for a world that demonstrates less bias and discrimination, or will they be presented in different and perhaps more disguised fashions (or both or neither)?

This week we will talk about the nature of bias and discrimination, how they are found and presented today, and where we think the public and private path leads going forward.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

Aug 9, 2010 – added links:
NY Time Op-Ed by Timothy Geithner “Welcome to the Recovery”
CS Monitor by Bill Bonner “Welcome to the Recovery? No, Mr. Geithner, the Twilight Zone.”
Human Capital League by Gautam Ghosh “10 Ways Work will Change over the Next Decade”

Why is the “Economic Recovery” of 2010 Jobless?

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This Tuesday, Aug 10th at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Why is the “Economic Recovery” of 2010 Jobless?

The “economic recovery” of 2010 has been good for Wall Street and the financial markets, and essentially non-existent for jobs, housing valuations, foreclosure and personal bankruptcy rates. Unlike recent recessions, where job recovery lagged, but could be measured in months, predictions suggest that a return to previous unemployment levels will likely take years.

Why is this recovery jobless in a long-term, persistent fashion that has not been seen for decades? Pointing at one symptom or cause at a time makes good press. It makes good politics. It is also a highly simplistic view of the problem .

What are the key trends and drivers for the jobless nature of this recovery? What part of the jobless nature of the recovery is due to offshoring, technology, global wage and cost inequity, politics, the behavior of financial institutions or are the key drivers elsewhere entirely?  Is the current state of the job market an indication of a very slow recovery, or of the start of a double-dip? Will the jobs lost be recovered, or is job recovery based on creation of new job markets (that themselves will not be supplanted by technology)?

Some commentary points to the elimination of middle class job opportunities as an outcome of current trends. If that is the case, will the restructuring stop there, or is this the start of a continuing erosion that will wipe out jobs at ever-higher levels of the work complexity and skills pyramid, until only a small fraction of careers are left?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

What is the Impact of Computers Making Discoveries?

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This Tuesday, June 8 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

What is the Impact of Computers Making Discoveries?

Science fiction abounds with stories of machines that are more intelligent, faster and understand things that humans do not yet understand. What if computing technology gets to the point where computers can figure things out, in essence making new discoveries, that we do not yet understand? How will this change society, our place in the world, and our understanding of sentience?

Recent results created by a system nicknamed the “Eureka Machine,” and a few others seem to have potentially put us on the path to this future. This system, with no programming to understand physics per-se, was fed movement data from two connected pendulums, and in a day returned the classic Netwonian formula for the laws of motion as “the one thing in common from all the movements it observed.” The system is now being used to explore other areas of science, and has already generated results that, while mathematically correct, are not yet understood by the scientists involved.

Another system nicknamed Adam is credited with completing the entire discovery process, including creating hypotheses and exploring them, on it’s own, for the first time.

While these are only early successes, those involved believe that they represent only the beginning of what these sorts of systems will ultimately be able to do. Where does this path lead?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

Parallels in Real and Virtual Community Development

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This Tuesday, May 11, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Parallels in Physical and Online Virtual Community Development

The development and character of communities in both physical and online environments are affected by a variety of design decisions. Some decisions affect whether the community “takes hold” as well as its growth rate, while others affect the character, level of engagement and social behavior of the community. How are community design and development decisions similar in physical and online environments, and how are they different? What can these design decisions accomplish, and what needs to be accomplished in other ways? What can physical and online/virtual community designers learn from each other?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

How Should We Deal with Cyber-Bullying?

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This Tuesday, May 4, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

How Should We Deal with Cyber-Bullying?

Bullying has become a consistent concern of school administrators, teachers and parents. What is the best preventive approach and response to cyber-bullying? This week, we’ll discuss how we should handle and respond to cyber-bullying.

On one end of the spectrum, a middle school principal recently sent a strongly worded email to parents directing them (not asking – directing) to remove their childrens’ social media accounts, to install monitoring tools, and to monitor their txt messages.

At the other extreme, some take the position that the genie is out of the bottle, and we should educate kids while not using direct control to manage their use of communications tools.

I wrote a post about a related topic in January “The Mobile Invisibility Cloak of Today’s Internet-Enabled Kids,” and when I heard about the principal’s email mentioned above I thought it might be  time for us to talk about this issue head-on.

Does technology create cyber-bullying? Will controlling technology stop it? What approach should we use to prevent cyber-bullying, and what should we do when it is discovered? Which strategies will instill the most useful skills and beliefs in our children for their future?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

Are We Engineering the Species that will Replace Us?

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This Tuesday, Feb 9nd, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

NOTE: Since we’ll be watching some of the videos linked below at the start of the session, We Are The Network is scheduled for 90 minutes rather than an hour this week, to allow enough discussion time for a topic that will no doubt be … large.

Are We Engineering the Species that will Replace Us?

“It’s just science fiction!” We tell ourselves this little white lie about the movies we flock to. We think “wow, that’s cool, and pretty scary, but that could never happen.” The science fiction of the future is starting to happen closer and closer to home, and there are now some surprising signs that we may already have reached milestones on the road to engineering a cyborg (part human, part computer) species that will ultimately replace us.

You may think this is random paranoia, and feel free to say so on the way in, but I challenge you to say absolutely that we’re not on the path by the end… I’ve found it pretty hard to avoid the uncomfortable conclusion that “we will be Borg” sooner than any of us had expected.

In this session we’ll review some real working examples of technologies that would have seemed unbelievable five or ten years ago, and a compelling TED talk that maps out a potential roadmap for our future.

What does this mean for us? How will we get ready for these changes? Where will this head as it unfolds, and what will it mean for our society and humanity in general?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Three things to consider:

1) A science fiction movie trailer, one that we all probably presume is “way” in the future, and a quick explanation of a plot element of another related science fiction movie.

2) Real working engineering results, with proof videos that demonstrate significant pieces of functionality from the movie trailer

3) A compelling TED talk that ties the threads together in a way that will likely make you stop and think.

It’s a fun ride… ready? Here are the links: Read more…

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a PDF document “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” that describes changes to the rules of disclosure for advertising endorsements and testimonials. These guides update existing rules regarding advertising disclosure to incorporate social media and go into effect tomorrow, Dec 1, 2009. I hope that a brief overview of the Guides will be a useful reference.

Disclosures

I do not work for the Federal Trade Commission, have no connection to the organization to disclose, and since this article is not an endorsement in the first place, I guess I didn’t even need to say that, but… given the topic I figured it couldn’t hurt!

Actually, my important disclaimer is I wrote this post with my understanding of the rules, from reading source documents and walking through the “Guides” PDF document linked above. I am not a lawyer. Nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice. Nothing. At all. In the least. Did I remember to mention that I am not a lawyer?

I am hoping that an overview of the new disclosure rules will be helpful. Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve gotten wrong, right or anything else important that got missed!

Is Every Product or Service Description an Endorsement?

All descriptions of products and consumer experiences in “consumer-generated media” are not considered to be endorsements by the Commission. The Guides state that the rules apply to situations where, “viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered “sponsored” by the advertiser and thus an “advertising message.”

Why Self-Regulation Did Not Win

Some commenters suggested that the industry should be allowed to self-regulate. The Commission clearly disagreed with this position, stating Read more…

Final edit updated Nov 28, 2009 22:40

Random Connections

Some days I’ll be thinking about a topic, and suddenly an unexpected connection appears. That just happened as I was reading two posts, one about potential changes to PageRank and another about a new protocol that Google is pitching to speed up web page loads. The PageRank discussion seemed to be completely about the marketing impact of this change on search engine optimization strategies, while the protocol discussions were centered on technology and global standards issues. It seems that these two apparently separate things may be very tightly coupled indeed.

PageRank, Page Speed And Marketing Effects

PageRank is supposed to measure the authority of a page, to determine whether
it is “the best” trusted and primary resource to answer the user’s search query. It is hard to fathom how response speed has anything to do with authenticity, authority, correctness of data or trustworthiness. It seems to be much more strongly linked to the cash position of the person or organization who authored the page, and how much they have invested in having the right page design, hardware and network infrastructure (either their own or hosted) to provide fast response.

One quasi-altruistic reason for adding or emphasizing page load in the PageRank calculations may be to nudge the web community to think more about page load speed when designing sites. However Read more…

“The Age Of Professional Fake Authenticity”

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This Tuesday, Nov 24th, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

The Age Of Professional Fake Authenticity

Professional advertising and marketing organizations have taken to social media as the “new new thing” that will be their future business and income. An increasing number of “digital marketers” are acting as writers and content providers for their customers, ghost writing large numbers of blog posts, Twitter feeds and other public facing items that purport to be authentic creations of their clients.

It seems that a new level of this professional social media marketing is emerging, including services that intersperse small numbers of advertising messages, disguised as normal authentic messages, in the streams of normal people for profit. (One article describing this phenomenon is linked below).

My impetus to talk about this topic was a discussion I had this past week, with a person who had been an intern at an advertising and marketing firm. This person, as a condition of their internship, Read more…

Today at the MassDOT Developer Conference we got to talking about the goal of changing the image of buses and other mass transit to be the solution of choice for a wider spectrum of people.  Lost time is sometimes the reason that people will drive instead of taking public transportation.  It often takes longer to get to your goal using mass transit, and while en-route, you often can’t get much done, other than people watching or reading.

Then this little idea appeared…

Read more…