Social media, the good and the unexceptional

When I heard that the website mashable was sponsoring the summer of social good and were going to do it though social media, I was intrigued. However, after finding out what their plan was, I was less than impressed. They are using twitter, facebook, blogs and the like to raise money for the humane society of the United States, Oxfam America, the world wildlife fund and the Lance Armstrong foundation. Now, as far as I know, all four groups are worthy organizations doing good work. My real issue is that they couldn't find anything more original to do with all this great 21st century technology than to beg for money online? Come on guys, is there any way to make social engaged people feel unvalued and disregarded faster than saying, "give us some money and leave doing good deeds to the professionals?"

I am much more impressed with the application being developed by The Extraordinaries that allows people to engage in on-demand volunteerism by mobile phone. Now that is using technology in a new and unique way. How often do you get to throw around fun terms like crowdsourcing and actually have it be relevant? If somebody is motivated to donate money by the summer of social good, that's fine, but I think it's more engaging and ultimately more useful to have applications like the one offered by The Extraordinaries. Then again, maybe I've just been solicited for charitable donations a few million times too many.

To wiki or not wiki

That is the question, or at least a question. Running in the circle of graduate students and university professors, I hear a lot about how bad wikepedia is and how little value it has as a resource. However, I recently got to hear some rather die hard music fans discuss wikipedia and they had a much different opinion of the site. In general, they were impressed with the depth of information available on the site, how fast errors get corrected and how potentially inaccurate information get the, "citation needed," tag to raise a red flag for viewers of the page.

So, why the discrepancy between the two points of view? I suppose you cold write it off as the difference between some ivory tower intellectual snobs on one hand and a bunch of uncritical fanboys on the other. I do not think it is that simple. The academics are looking for by lines and some form of accountability for the content they view online. The music fans are interested in finding out more about their favorite bands and getting a more complete picture of the people in those bands. The different goals lead to much different views of the value of wikipedia.

When all else fails, look to motive. The academics are looking to pad their CV and to secure positions in academia. Contributing to or using wikipedia is not going to help them in their quest. On the other side, looking to fanboys for motive is missing the point. Look to the bands they are following, they have a motive to get their image and music out there as much as possible. A wealth of online content could help them in that endeavor.

The mixed motive behind commercially oriented wikis like wookieepedia and other large wikis hosted by wikia.com may indeed be inadequate. There is a serious component that is just that there are people out there who love to discuss their hobbies. Be it marvel comics, recipes, genealogy or that massive time waster world of warcraft, some people just love to carry on about the things that occupy their spare time.

The idea behind wikis has been put to some good use to create collaborative history projects and school related wikis for various purposes. Also, some wikis have been set up for groups that are not great in number or media access, such as a neopagan wiki or a traditional witchcraft one. So with all this wiki rambling, is there any kind of conclusion I can draw from this? I would say that wikis can be used as a learning tool, a way for virtual communities to come together and for commercial properties to promote themselves. For a more serious version of wikipedia, check out citizendium. Personally, I think that wikis are good sources for information that you are curious about, but it really doesn't matter if the answer is right.

Summer reading

Okay, the days are getting longer, discussions of global warming have started heating up again and the under served students in public schools around the country are getting closer to the end of their 180 days of standardized test preparation. Those things can only mean that summer is here yet again. With summer comes the obligatory recommendations for summer reading. It is in that spirit that I offer up a couple of selections, something to relax with while on a summer vacation or while taking shelter from the oppressive heat, someplace air conditioned.

First up is The The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. For those of you who have been following this blog from it's initial entry, you know I wanted to call it candles in the dark, so clearly I found this book influential. If you happen upon a copy in a library or book store, I recommend turning right to chapter 12, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection. In this chapter Mr. Sagan presents a baloney detection kit filled with tools for skeptical thinking. Among these tools are definitions of "the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric." (Sagan, p. 212). Great stuff to keep i mind the next time you hear a politician talk. Sagan writes intelligently but also accessibly, so you don't need a degree in astrophysics to follow him.

Second, I recommend Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer. You might imagine that the publisher of Skeptic magazine would be a little shrill and possibly confrontational but that is not the case. Mr. Shermer comes across as a person who seeks to understand why people believe the things they do and to seek the truth whenever possible. I think one of the more profound things you can take away from his book is that skepticism is a method, not a belief. If you turn to chapter 3 of the book, How Thinking Goes Wrong: Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us to Believe Weird Things, you might be reminded of chapter 12 from Carl Sagan's book. They both cover similar material but do it in sufficiently different ways that I think both are worth a read.

I think that a couple of books about science, skepticism, and critical thinking are in order this summer. After all, this is the first summer since the eight year mini-dark ages that the United States had to endure. You remember, when science was scorned and sidelined, intellectuals were laughed at and dismissed, and religious fundamentalist ran wild in the streets, burning copies of The Origin Of Species and frightening the children. In short, it's time to take to heart the words of J-Bone in Johnny Mnemonic when he said, "Snatch back your brain, zombie, snatch it back and hold it!"

Ken Rand (1946-2009)

About a month ago, I was looking through some second hand books and saw a copy of Star Trek Strange New Worlds II which, I remembered, had a story by my friend, Ken Rand. Flipping through the volume, I saw his story, "I Am Klingon," on page 107 and knew I had to add the book to my steadily growing library. The find also left me wondering how Ken was doing, I knew his health had been in decline for a while. Shortly thereafter, I got the sad news that Ken had passed away on the 21st of April.
I first met Ken in Logan, Utah at CON2it, the short lived spin off of the CONduit sci-fi convention. As Ken would later recall, "You, me and the other dozen people who were there had a good time." While there were slightly more than a dozen people in attendance, it still was a rather small gathering. It was there that I first had the opportunity to hear Ken talk about the craft of writing and I purchased a copy of his book, "The 10% Solution: Self-editing for the Modern Writer." He was kind enough to autograph if for me, "Stan - I hope this helps - at least 10%!"
Ken's hope did pan out. After reading the book, I got all inspired and started writing. One of the stories that came out of that fit of inspiration was, "Drug Runner," it ended up winning the Weber State writing contest in the fiction category and got published in volume 19 of the university's literary magazine, Metaphor.
At CONduit 11, somebody was kind enough to get several copies of Metaphor and put them on the, "Freebie table," with a note mentioning my story and that I was a convention member. Right in the middle of a writing panel that guest of honor, Alan Dean Foster, was conducting, Ken saw me in the audience and, rather spontaneously, blurted out, "I read your story, it was really good." It took Mr. Foster a bit to get the discussion back on track. After the panel I got the chance to talk to Ken and tell him how much his book had helped my writing.
We continued to run into each other at conventions and even a meeting of the USS Ticonderoga Star Trek fan club. I like to think that he took some pride in his contribution to my success as a writer. One of our more interesting meetings was at the second Anime Banzai convention, when they packed the student union building of the Salt Lake Community College to the gills with over a thousand fans dressed up like characters from Naruto and Inuyasha among many, many others. Ken got a table in the dealer's room right nest to the manga guest of honor, Amy Reeder Hadley, so he got a lot of foot traffic and interest in his books. We both commented on the size of the convention, who knew it was going to double in size from it's first year? Not to mention the age of the attendees, if I remember the numbers right the mean average age of the people going to the first con was 16.5, making me more than double the average and Ken . . . somewhat more than that.
While my writing is better for having met Ken, I think that my life has been richer for the times I got to share Ken's company. Ken was a friend and a mentor, he was an original character with a great personality, he will be missed and he will be remembered. For those of you who didn't have the chance to know Ken, I recommend you go out and read, "Fairy Brewhaha At The Lucky Nickel Saloon," it should put a smile on your face.

(Photo Credit: CC from Nihonjoe)

The zombies of science education

While digging around for articles on how science is taught in schools, I found this article: "State of Utah Taps FreshBrain to Ready High School Students for Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math." First of all, did nobody in public relations stop and point out that the choice of words makes it sound like the state is preparing it's youth to be fed to a bunch of zombies? Actually, that might not be such a bad conceptualization for what they do want to do, turn out high school and college graduates with fresh brains that the zombified corporate structure can suck dry to try and fuel their bottom lines. You could imagine that the name fresh brain had to come after a long night of watching John Carpenter movies.

This does seem to draw attention to a problem with how science and engineering are pitched to students. It always sounds like some kind of late night infomercial shrieking, "Do you want to make more money?" Most unfortunate channel surfers who stumble upon such a claim would presume it is some form of scam and continue on their survey of their 500 channels. By the same logic, is it no surprise that students in public schools have a rather tepid reaction to some one promising them fortune and glory if they just jump through this series of science and math flaming hoops.

I believe that you have to change the focus from the, "Hey little girl, want some candy,' approach of promising fat future paychecks to something completely different. Present science and math as interesting and relevant ways of understanding the world, show engineering as a creative and effective way of addressing problems. Depicting the aspects of, what the state of Utah would call STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math that are dynamic, innovative, interesting, engaging and showing the passions of the people involved in those fields would draw more people to them than would be interested in the lucrative aspects of these fields.

Unfortunately, I seem to be about 180 degrees from where this state is going with USTAR, the Utah Science Technology and Research initiative. In describing this initiative they state, "This initiative focuses on leveraging the proven success of Utah's research universities in creating and commercializing innovative technologies to generate more technology-based start-up firms, higher paying jobs, and additional business activity leading to a state-wide expansion of the Utah's tax base. " One is reminded of the Ice Cube lyrics from back in the NWA days;

"To a kid lookin' up ta me

Life ain't nothin but bitches and money."

That's right, made the leap from USTAR bureaucratic jargon to the lyrics from "Gansta Gansta," if the shoe fits. . .

To sum it all up, science, math and engineering should be taught because they have value in and of themselves, not for their ability to produce lucrative cogs for corporate machines. Also, get away from treating students like human capital, schools should serve their students not the business sector, the last thing you want is people not being able to tell the difference between public school policy and gangsta rap.

Science yes, but to what end?

Alright, this has been a pretty pro-science blog and that is more or less by design. Science and technology have brought lots of great things into our modern lives. I really don't want to imagine a world without indoor plumbing and vaccinations to name just a couple. Above and beyond just practical applications, scientific reasoning has increased by leaps and bounds humanity's understanding of the world.

It is not 100% positive though, most technologies are a mixed blessing. Let's take for example, our friend the airplane, in just over a century of flight, it has really transformed the way people from technologically advanced countries think of distance. It can also really be a help, loaded full of relief supplies and personnel, it can speed up the recovery from natural disasters and the like. On the down side, the same airplanes could be filled with soldiers to invade a country or hijacked by fundamentalist chuckle heads and smashed into buildings. To take an example from more recent headlines, an airplane could seal a hundred or more people in a flying aluminum can with a carrier of swine flu and deposit all those people several hundred miles from where started to distribute the virus to a whole different geographic region. The point I am trying to make is that science and technology too often taken into our lives without critically analyzing the full effects down the line.

Another point to make here is that science if great, science as the obedient lapdog of business and industry, not so good. If you want to go into medicine, great but try and model your career more after Jonas Salk than after the team of pill pushing ninnies who brought you Cialis. If you want to be an engineer, look to the people who designed the H2 and H3 Hummers as a cautionary tale, not as role models.

Continuing with the polemic rant, next up is the scientific world view. While it is certainly preferable to the world view that produced the Spanish Inquisition (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition) the scientific world view does have a disturbing habit if devaluing any other way of knowing. Forget all your traditional lore, historical place knowledge and things like that, all that stuff is devoid of value unless it can be quantitatively verified by somebody in a white lab coat with a clip board and advanced degrees from a properly accredited institution. Of course, a lot of this is more a problem with how science is done in modern society than with the idea of a scientific understanding of the world. If you stop and think about it, it an expert comes forth and says do X, a scientific society would look at their research, try and reproduce their experiments and then, maybe, if they came up with similar findings, they would go along with X. That is not what happens most of the time. More often the expert is taken at their word because the social institutions of science and technology are losing their ability to be self critical.

In conclusion, be skeptical of new technology, don't trust a businessman further than you can throw them, and be sure to tell the next expert you are confronted by that they are full of bologna.

April Fool's day aside

I thought I would take a break for serious blogging and present some silly, "What ifs," with the help of Xtranormal. Yes, I do take fully responsibility for the content. First up, what if Sara Palin went on vacation to Australia:



Next, what if George W. went on the talk show circuit and discussed women's reproductive rights:



Finally, what if a fast food restaurant adopted AIG style management:



Back to serious blogging in the near future.