“Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out.”

 Kurt Andersen: From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut?

The face of American culture used to change radically every decade or two, writes Kurt Andersen, but 1992 and 2012 look disturbingly alike.

 Out of Neal Stephenson’s Imagination Came a New Online World
The author Neal Stephenson’s reputation for prescience about the online world is well earned, even if he regards it lightly.

Here is Neal Stephenson’s piece for the World Policy Institute, in which he describes his Hieroglyph theory: Innovation Starvation | World Policy Institute

I don’t have scientific evidence to back this up, but in my gut I know it’s true. I have recently initiated a new habit when I spend 1-2 hours every afternoon doing yoga, cooking and/or reading physical books. I’ve found that this time away from screens helps me feel less stressed at the end of the day. I’ve also banned electronic devices from the bedroom because I think the screens may make insomnia even worse. I know I usually sleep worse when I work on my laptop late at night.

Whenever I go on vacation, I refrain from taking my laptop or other electronic devices with me. A week or a long weekend spent in exile from electronic devices is a real vacation, in my opinion.

Of course, not everyone may be able to handle the immersion in their own thoughts for any period of time, as this commenter on the NYT article points out:

This is exactly backward. The gadgets don’t interfere with mental functions. People who find mental work hard fill their time with external stimuli.

Portable radios and TVs, iPods and their imitators, cellphones, audio books, smartphones, and now tablet computers are bread and circuses, filling the voids in minds that can’t deal with complex abstractions or data that might undermine carefully constructed worlds.

[via Your Brain on Computers - Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime - NYTimes.com.]

I don’t have much to say about content mills, except that once I identify one, I avoid it with extreme prejudice. I also noticed that when you google the term content mill, the first result, “What Is a Content Mill,” comes from a well-known content mill. Irony in action.

Anyway, it appears a backlash is a-brewin’. People want this crap out of their search results. Yeah, me too. Anyhoo, here are some good links on the subject for further reading:

The Search Engine Backlash Against ‘Content Mills’ (MIT Technology Review)
Google, Content Farms & Why This May Be Blekko’s Moment (Search Engine Land)
MediaShift’s Guide to Content Farms (PBS)
Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried and How Google Can Combat Content Farms (ReadWriteWeb)
Content farms v. curating farmers (BuzzMachine)
Content dust bowls (Magellan Media)
The Future of Media Isn’t Free Content, It’s Cheap Content (Metafilter)

The only way you can guarantee online privacy is to avoid free services, including all social networks, altogether. But you need an email account, for instance. Well, there are many alternatives to the free email services. Your ISP, who you are paying to provide Internet service to you, will probably give you one. Or you can pay for an email account with a hosting company. The point is, when you pay for a service, then you have a right to expect a higher level of privacy, as agreed upon between you and the company. (Many people use a free email account for public transactions, like online purchases, and keep a private email account for, well, private communications.)

If you do decide to get a free email account or sign up with a social network, then you should accept right off the bat that you will be giving up some privacy. That is the deal with the devil you make in exchange for free access to these networks. You will no longer have total control over information about you and that you generate. It is best to know this and accept this from the start.

Personally, I like the openness that social networks have brought. I think it fosters communication, collaboration, sharing and understanding of our differences, but that is the idealist in me. Yes, there is a negative side, but that is true of anything with value. I think social networks help us express who we are, and feel okay with who we are.

But if you are going to use these services, and privacy is of some importance to you, then you need to become savvy about how they work. When you sign up for a service, you need to be willing to explore, play with settings, try things and see what happens, and learn what the service is doing and why. This means extra work, but as I said, it is not in these companies’ interest to protect your privacy, so you can’t expect it of them. It only took me five minutes of playing with Google Buzz to figure out that my followers were listed on my public profile and to turn that off. That was well before all the privacy warnings came out.

I have some sympathy for people whose email contacts were exposed by Buzz, because this was not an expected outcome. But only to a point. Because you had to participate in that exposure. You had to set up a free Gmail account. You had to turn on Buzz. You had to create a public Google Profile. You had to accept the list of followers/following presented to you by Buzz without making any changes to remove those who were not acceptable to you. At each point, you could stop and ask yourself what the privacy implications of this are. At the very least, you could wait a few days for the issues to surface. It was only a few hours before many news outlets on the web were posting about Buzz’s privacy issues and the fixes for them.

I think this is a good learning moment for all of us. By all means, play in the social networking playground. But remember that these free services still have a cost. Just like in the real world, online the only one you can count on to take care of yourself is you.

Google’s response to the privacy concerns and instructions for protecting your privacy when using Buzz. And Google may offer Buzz independently from Gmail.

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I don’t think the Times has a choice in the matter. The Times is one of the highest quality sources available to us for accurate news and information and informed opinion, and quality costs money. Investigating, reporting, writing and editing are all professions that deserve compensation, and it is not realistic to expect the Times to fully support itself through advertising. I place more faith in subscription-supported content anyway.

The online version of the newspaper brings a lot of value that you don’t get from the paper itself, such as up-to-the-minute analysis of breaking news, specialized blogs and photo essays. The Times is all over Twitter, keeping me informed as stuff happens. This all requires extra effort, and online advertising just isn’t as lucrative as subscription advertising is, which has a known “eyeball” number and demographics.

Internet content has been free for so long that we users have come to think that we’re somehow entitled to have it all for free. I think this is the source of much of the anger directed at the Times for their entirely reasonable decision. If what the Times produces is worth our support, then we should kick in, though. It is not fair to ask the thousands of professionals who work there to not be paid fairly for their efforts. None of us would accept that, so why should they?

What we have to consider is the value that the New York Times and other members of the press offer us. If we value a trustworthy source of information about the activities of government, corporations and other institutions that affect our everyday lives, then we need to make sure that they stay accessible, unbiased and thoroughly vetted. It doesn’t seem too much to ask to kick in something to support those values.

If you don’t value those things, then broadcast TV news is still free, last time I checked.

A New York Times columnist breaks down the metered subscription proposal. My husband also has some thoughtful things to say on this. Go to MetaFilter for a variety of other opinions, mostly negative.

Here’s how the New York Times brings value online:

• Lens, the photojournalism blog with its daily news in pictures feature.
• The Room for Debate blog provides a running commentary on the news; reactions to this week’s Supreme Court decision were posted within 1 hour of the news breaking.
• The Bits blog makes sense out of what’s happening in technology (also on Twitter).
• If you like cooking, Mark Bittman’s blog Bitten is a must-read (also on Twitter).
• The NYT Twitter feeds and lists follow everything from Washington policy to the World Series.

Social search is a big step forward in personalizing search, and thus making it much more relevant to the searcher. With social search enabled, when you search Google, along with the top results, you will see any relevant information from your social network’s public web postings. For instance, I search for “New York City.” Following the New York Google Maps, official homepages, Wikipedia entry on NYC, etc., I might also see my husband’s review of a hotel he recently stayed at in the city or my friend’s New York photos on Picasa or my colleague’s post about a professional conference there. Which is all stuff I’m very likely to be interested in, because it’s coming from people I actually know.

How does Google know? It all goes back to your Google Profile — and you should go set one up immediately, if you haven’t already. Tell Google what your public blogs, Flickr page, YouTube channel, et al are, and Google will mine those sources for search results for your social network. Tell Google what your Twitter and FriendFeed names are, and it will add your followers to your social network for searching, along with your contacts in your Friends, Family and Coworkers groups and the blogs you subscribe to on Google Reader.

Read more about Social Search from Google’s official blog. Join the Google Social Search experiment. Once you join, you can see the Social results by:

1. clicking “Show options…” next to Web at the top of the Google Search Results, and
2. clicking “Social” in the left nav bar under “All Results”.

You can then burrow down to individual people. Google will show their matches, as well as how you’re connected to them.

Social search is currently in the experimental phase on Google Labs, but it is a really exciting development, with a lot of potential to make Googling even more relevant, personal and timely. And of course, it is yet one more step in Google’s inevitable takeover of the world and future status as the employer/benefactor of all humans. You’ve got to admit, though, it’s still very cool.

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• Google stalks your social circle (theregister.co.uk)
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I have had a peripheral involvement in OPEN as it has developed, contributing ideas and writing when needed, and I have watched it grow from a germ of an idea with interest. Of course, I do think there will be some natural synergies between the project I am heavily involved in, developing open source HR information systems for managing data about health workers, and the goals of OPEN. I am looking forward to seeing how that all shapes up.

OPEN is all over the web, so if you want to learn more, here are some ways to do so:

• OPEN website
• OPEN on Facebook Causes
• OPEN on MySpace
• YouTube channel
• Follow OPEN on Twitter

A couple of days ago, I posted a review of the new iGoogle, which I mostly liked except for a few bugs, and I got a lot of response. (A lot of response for this humble blog, anyway.) All of the commenters completely disagreed with me.

But I noticed something else in common with all the comments: frustration. I don’t think that frustration stems from the new iGoogle so much as the way Google rolled out the changes and the lack of options Google gives its users.

For one thing, Google makes it nearly impossible to give feedback or request support on their free services. Their official blog doesn’t even take comments. My husband has been trying to make a relatively simple change to his Gmail, and not only does Google not allow the change, but they provide no way for him to get in touch with them to request the change or ask for help.

Well, Google is a free service. They don’t have to offer support.

I think that’s wrong. I use several free Web tools that offer excellent support. WordPress.com always responds in a timely and helpful way to my support emails. Hiveminder provides an option for reporting bugs or requesting features right on their interface. I have tweeted about problems I’m having with a software program and gotten an unexpected response from the software developers who are monitoring Twitter. Similarly, I have blogged about free tools, and the developers, who are obviously keeping on top of the blogs, have come by and commented.

Why doesn’t Google do this? Is it just too big? One of the reasons I blogged about iGoogle was because I had found a couple of pretty serious bugs, and I had no other outlet for reporting them.

People are pretty ticked off with Google for the changes made to iGoogle. The changes were made suddenly, without notice. There is no choice between old style and new style. And there is no way to let Google know directly how you feel. No wonder there is so much frustration.

I know Google is a monolith, but I think there is an opportunity here for a company that offers free services comparable to Google’s quality and is in touch with — and actually listens to — its users. Right now, the sense I get is that Google completely discounts its users — at least, its non-paying users — and that won’t cut it on today’s web. No company can afford to ignore any of their customers.

Google may think they’re too big to care about the users of its free services. I think they’ll fiind out they’re wrong.

Please keep the conversation going, and tell me what you think in the comments.

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