The Rise of the Internet (Anti)-Intellectual? →

Highlights:

“…the need for public intellectuals, the role of academics in framing theories of new technologies and what the consequences are when we leave this discussion to be dominated by business folks.”

“…Jarvis’ book is part of a larger trend of so-called Internet Intellectuals or “gurus” who are not doing rigorous work but instead providing sound-bites aimed squarely at the business community.”

“Where is the Marshall McLuhan of social media? Why is it that Jeff Jarvis is setting the public conversation on publicity, Andrew Keen on amateurism, Tapscott and Williams on prosumption, Siva Vaidhyanathan on the impact of Google on society or Chris Anderson on abundance economies and “free”? To be clear, I think it is good that these folks hit on important topics in a catchy way. But they cannot be the whole picture, nor should they even be at the center. None of them provide a rigorous historical or theoretical treatment of their topics.”

“…maybe the blame for the Sesame Street level books that dominate tech-writing is that publishers simply are not allowing public intellectuals to publish their ideas?”

“…start a conversation over who gets to frame how new technologies are understood. Will it be a-historical, a-theoretical, non-rigorous business folks or can we inspire a new wave of technology-centered public intellectuals?”

More cute pull-quotes from thesis drafts

Howe’s seminal article, The Rise of Crowdsourcing, is accompanied by the tagline, “Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R&D.” According to this trendy formulation of a nascent revolution in production, the crowd is not a democratized, decentralized, horizontal network of people exercising bottom-up control over production; the crowd is instead a novel supply of cheap labour, to be sourced, harnessed, and exploited in the pursuit of profit. As result, ‘crowdsourcing’ limits our understandings of decentralized production, and limits the potential of Web 2.0, reducing each to an understanding of the crowd—which comprises roughly one billion people connected to the Internet—as a ‘new pool of cheap labor.’

Social media not so hot on the Hill →

Against ‘cyber-utopian’ rhetoric, politicians are saying that they become less efficient thanks to social media:

“It’s difficult because in House offices you have so few social media staffers that you wind up balancing responding with all the other demands on your time,” said one House Democratic staffer.

Staffers would only talk on background for this story because it involves the sensitive issue of communicating with constituents. The conclusions staffers drew in interviews were similar to findings in a new survey by the CMF. Surveyed staffers said Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Myspace are among the least useful forms of communication for gauging constituent views. Less than half, 42 percent, said social media had any influence on lawmakers.

Nearly two-thirds of the 250 staffers who participated said that e-mail and the Internet have reduced the quality of constituents’ messages. Only 51 percent said form e-mail messages had influence.

“The people that click ‘forward’ are the ones who don’t go to the polls,” said one House Democratic staffer. “People who come into the office to meet with you are the ones who go to the polls.”

When it comes to wielding influence, staffers said traditional mediums, such as office visits and personal letters, overwhelmingly beat all types of form e-mail and social media contact, according to the CMF study.

It raises the question: Are lawmakers putting too much time — or staff resources — into social media?

Reining in Crowdsourcing →

Since Jeff Howe coined the term, a number of self-proclaimed “crowdsourcing experts” sprung up online, each claiming to know enough about the model to provide expensive consulting services. A bunch of journalists also claimed to know what crowdsourcing really was, resulting in a slew of popular press articles that conflated the term with the likes of Wikipedia and other non-crowdsourcing processes.

For example, a recent BBC News magazine article conflated crowdsourcing with open source software product Linux. A 2007 ReadWriteWeb article wrongly labels Wikipedia and even Google as examples of crowdsourcing. And a 2009 Forbes article lumps Wikipedia and open source software together under the umbrella term of crowdsourcing in order to make a number of claims dismissing the power and potential of crowds to solve problems. This Forbes article is a great example of why we need boundaries on the term. If we don’t understand what crowdsourcing really is, how can we make judgments about its performance, its value to business, or its potential to facilitate the solving of pressing social and environmental problems?

Many people trade in the buzzword of crowdsourcing, but few actually know what they’re talking about. We have a decent collection of case studies, but otherwise there is relatively little empirical research that has been done on the crowdsourcing model. So-called business gurus and business journalists are quick to praise or dismiss crowdsourcing in business contexts, but rarely is the empirical research from innovation scholars cited. These gurus also claim to know what works and what doesn’t in terms of the design of crowdsourcing sites, yet few consult the literature on usability, design, and architecture from the computing disciplines. And many are quick to label crowdsourcing as exploitive or liberating for individuals in the crowd, but we know even less about how and why people participate in these labor arrangements. Why? Because few scholars have bothered to ask the crowd these kinds of questions.

Brabham is one of the few academics studying crowdsourcing, particularly the motivations of the crowd. I like to think a more serious study of crowdsourcing as exploitive is necessary too.

Are we Deluded in Thinking that the Internet Transforms Power Structures? →

“And this is where I think the important debate is: Is the internet as a technology subject to the same analysis as other technological developments? Can it largely be understood within the history and philosophy of technology, itself being shaped by the milieus into which it enters, determined by other forces, economics, politics, or human nature? or Is the internet a heterogenous technology? Is the internet so transformative a technology as to render prior means of understanding the philosopy of technology, if not useless at least making them outmoded? Does the internet act as a force transforming economics, politics, and human nature?”

Click through for Dave Parry’s excellent review of Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion.

Americans Say 'No Thanks' to Online Tracking, New Poll Finds →

No shit:

Most Americans do not want to be tracked by online advertisers, according to a new Gallup poll released Tuesday.

…

When asked if advertisers should be allowed to match ads to people’s specific interests based on other websites they’ve previously visited, a clear majority of 67% said no, compared with 30% who said yes.