Jacob Kramer-Duffield thinks

It’s been a busy fall for me offline. My continuing work with the Bot2.0 project was a big focus, as was research on Facebook and Flickr use patterns. The former resulted in a poster at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, which you can get here [PDF], and also in a presentation I gave at the ASIS&T annual meeting, filling in for Jane Greenberg – that’s available here [PPT]. The latter two streams of research resulted, so far, in posters with Fred Stutzman and Carolyn Hank, respectively, at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Columbus, OH at the end of October. We’re continuing further analysis of the data – some good stuff there – and I’ll probably be talking more about that in the coming months. For now, here’s the poster [PDF] me and Carolyn put together – lots of fun and some interesting findings so far. Myself and Fred will probably get around to putting together a better-looking version of the poster data up at some point.

All of these updates and a few others have been logged over at static me, including an up-to-date CV, if you’re into that sort of thing.

As semester five rapidly draws to a close here in North Carolina (it started?), I find myself getting frighteningly close to thinking I might know what I’m talking about, a bit. And also aware that it’s a pretty small slice of the whole thing, but that that’s okay. Unless it’s not. That tension will, I’m pretty sure, describe the next 18 months or so of my life (current target/guess for how long the next several steps of the process will/should/might take). May or may not inspire me to get around to updating here more often; for more banal day-to-day observations check here.

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This summer I’m going to be involved in a lot of media production while on the Digital Natives team at the Berkman Center, but not a lot of it is going to be routed (directly) through here. So, a short roundup of where you can find me:

• Digital Natives blog, here, along with fellow-interns John Randall and Nikki Leon
• Berkman interns blog, here, along with the rest of the (large) gang [my first post here]
• And, as usual, I’m on Twitter, writing about food, and listening to music

Hopefully, I won’t get too bored of myself. There seems to be a lot of me out there.

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A phrase that every student of information science becomes acquainted with quickly is “Vannevar Bush’s classic article “As We May Think,”…” followed by some discourse on the evolution of information science/the Internet/technology/etc. Bush’s article is a classic for a reason – published in 1945 in The Atlantic, it provided a conceptual and operational framework for “a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

While framed in the context of contemporary technologies – it was essentially an enormous desk with many drawers for storage of, and screens for display of, microfilm, microphone for voice notes, keyboard and levers for manipulation – the process Bush describes is unmistakable as the exact one which has emerged with the combination of desktop computing and the Internet. Bush notes as much in saying, “All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.”

I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about memexes lately, due to a project on which I’ve begun working, the goal of which is to rethink approaches to instruction and learning (in this particular case) by engaging students in spaces of social media, by meeting them where they are (literally and figuratively). In our early meetings we’ve settled on an approach that emphasizes not some single device as a memex, or on a black box of software to manage these informational relations, but rather an process that first identifies needed capacities and then utilizes current best-available offerings for them.

In this particular case, we will be heavily using many of the big name-brands in social media: Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, and perhaps one or two other. In part this is because these services just work, but another contributing factor is, of course, the fact that many students are already “there.” The key underlying consideration is how to most seamlessly integrate the various streams of data between and within different services, and different students – “the process of tying two items together,” itself the underlying principle of the Internet.

This same theme came up earlier this morning in a conversation with Paul Jones about Web2.0 generally, and why an information science approach understands questions that computer scientists find beside the point. As he noted, AJAX is nothing special – it’s the understanding of the associative human elements of online communications that make Web2.0 approaches interesting and useful. Computers and the Internet are at a point of working, reliably – now it’s a matter of figuring out people.

And that, ultimately, is going to be the pivot point of any memex approach (which is to say, any PIM approach)- not a single magical AI repository that tells us who we are and what we want, but a flexible suite of applications, places, and most crucially, ways of connecting with other people, that can help us adapt to our own changing circumstances and needs.

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One of the main bugaboos I’ve developed since ensconcing myself in academia is the drawing of overly-broad conclusions based on ungeneralizable samples or populations. This is often the fault of researchers themselves, but I’ve been unsurprised to learn (given my scepticism of media generally, from a previous life) that it’s perhaps even more often the fault of reporters or media outlets who either don’t care about placing research in its proper, provisional context, or who simply don’t understand that an N=20 self-report survey isn’t sufficient basis for making sweeping conclusions about human nature.

Of course, media reports often don’t bother to use actual data in the first place, “some have reported” being a pretty easy standard to satisfy, so perhaps I’m picking nits here.

But why blog if I’m not going to pick nits? So it was that I greeted James Fallows’ dismantling of some, er, questionable research on Internet usage patterns by Chinese vs. American teens.

The Economist.com takes at face value a silly speech by Barry Diller*, based on a silly survey, and draws silly sky-is-falling conclusions.

The headline on the Economist.com item was: “America’s emobyte** deficit: China’s youth surpass their American rivals online.” The story opened with a quote from Diller:

“THE Chinese people seem to be way ahead of Americans in living a digital life,” said Barry Diller, an American media mogul, last week in a speech to students in Beijing…[Diller’s data] revealed that in this arena as in so much else, China is surging ahead..

They “seem” to be way ahead? I suppose, in the same sense in which I “seem” to be way taller than Yao Ming. Both of these seem true only if you ignore the actual facts.

Which, as far as media goes, doesn’t tend to be the Economist‘s gig (centre-right and all, but mostly pretty reality-based). And once you take a look at the survey itself (really, just a press release from Barry Diller’s consultancy filtered through something called “PR Newswire” and then posted on CNN Money’s website – nice placement if you can get it), you can see why. Among other things, there’s this:

While the U.S. sample is representative of America’s youth, the Chinese sample is necessarily weighted toward the young elite. Only about 10 percent of the Chinese population is online, largely young, urban and educated males. All Chinese respondents had a monthly household income of at least RMB 1,500. (See appendix for more demographic data.)

That’s… problematic. As Jim notes, “this takes us back to blaming who ever swallowed the survey.” And that’d be the Economist reporter. But they’re swallowing something that’s already “out there” – vouched for by CNN, injected into respectable media discourse through PR Newswire, which describes its services as follows:

Whether your news has to go around the corner or around the globe, PR Newswire serves all of your information distribution needs. PR Newswire is the world leader in the electronic delivery of news releases and information directly from companies, institutions and agencies to the media, financial community and consumers.

Presumably, they aren’t doing this for charity. So what’s going on here? As anyone who’s worked in the PR-political-media-corporate food system could tell you, it’s pretty obvious: this story was “placed.” For those unfamiliar with the concept, that means “bought.” As mentioned in the “lede” of the “article,”

Millions of young Chinese are embracing the Internet as a discreet space for their thoughts and emotions, according to a survey of Chinese and American youth released today by IAC, which operates businesses in sectors being transformed by the Internet, and JWT, the fourth largest advertising agency network in the world.

This was a survey designed by a business technology firm – IAC – and an ad firm – JWT – and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that one or both of these firms might have some sort of financial interest in a more widespread acceptance of of the narrative(s) they’re pushing, yes, even if they’re not really true. Shocking, I know.

I’m not so naïve as to be surprised by this sort of thing. For better or (mostly) worse, it’s the way our discourse works these days. But I’ve got a stake in this particular game, and if I’m so lucky as to do research that gets published in, say, JCMC, I’d like people to read it – scrutinize it – and if it withstands their examination, maybe agree with some of the conclusions I’ve reached. So it kind of chaps my hide that conclusions from poorly-wrought surveys, corporately funded for a particular-result, are able to make their way into wide circulation despite not being, you know… true. Or even pointing in some direction like truth.

This particular survey purported to show American teens “falling behind” their Chinese counterparts because, among other things, “almost five times as many Chinese as American respondents said they have a parallel life online (61 percent vs. 13 percent). And while fewer than half of the 1,079 American respondents agreed that “I live some of my life online” (42 percent), a sizable majority of the 1,104 Chinese respondents agreed with the statement (86 percent).” What this really should have said is “almost five times as many [upper-middle-to-upper-class, mostly male] Chinese as American respondents etc…”, but even leaving aside questions of generalizability, the survey totally dodges a fairly obvious (to me) alternate interpretation of the American results: American teens aren’t living “parallel” lives online, but rather ICT tools – including but not limited to the Internet (and including also mobile phones and mobile social apps) – are being utilized as an increasingly seamless part of their everyday social existences. Put into simpler terms, imagine asking a 14-year-old American, “Do you use MySpace/Facebook, IM, and your cell phone to stay in touch with your friends and live your life?” – and the look of withering contempt accompanying the “Well, duh” response (or perhaps simply a gaped-mouth, disbelieving stare at your incredible, dense lameness) such a question would inspire.

Of course, as researchers we need to quantify that response, even if we “know” it’s true. But that’s the point of research – getting a sense of what the world is like, then running studies to prove or disprove our operating theory. I claim no special nobility for academic research – we all have agendas, driven often by ego, desire for success in its many forms, and so on. But a business tech firm and an ad firm with pre-existing interests and goals designing “research” to “prove” that their product(s) are needed is the other end of the spectrum, here.

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