“You want students to close their machines and pay attention? Put them in a smaller seminar where their presence actually registers and matters, and be engaging enough—or, in my case, ask enough questions cold—that students aren’t tempted to stick their faces in their machines in the first place.”
“What matters to us, awash in petabytes of data, is not necessarily having actually consumed this content firsthand but simply knowing that it exists — and having a position on it, being able to engage in the chatter about it. We come perilously close to performing a pastiche of knowledgeability that is really a new … Continue reading “We’re All Faking It, Based On Twitter And Facebook”
Co-adapter and -director Robert Icke: “[Orwell] thought that we would be reporting on ourselves, which is now obviously very true with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and the fact that our phones now know exactly where we are … We are all completely self-reporting, which prompted us to switch round the words ‘Big Brother is watching … Continue reading “A Stage ‘1984’ For The WikiLeaks-Facebook-NSA Era”
“Although Facebook is an excellent tool for staying in touch with acquaintances, there are serious disadvantages of using it, such as envy, lowered life satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and dampened mood.”
“When the website suggests that you be tagged in a photo, what it actually does is compare a pre-created quantified dataset of your face to the newly uploaded image and measures how closely you match the identifiable subjects. Facebook keeps individual face templates in its databases to use over and over again.”
What once was a level playing field is now skewed by algorithms that favor the “haves” over the “have nots.” While it makes good business sense for Facebook, making artists, businesses and brands pay to “promote” content has taken some of the sheen off the Facebook experience.
Check out the hard numbers: “The number of wall posts climbs and climbs—until it tumbles when things become official.”
“In an attempt to liberate Facebook from ‘photos of lunch,’ that circa-2009 shorthand for all things annoying and self-promotional on the Internet, Facebook ‘occupiers’ are actually engaging in the exact same behavior — posting self-indulgent poems or images to show off how sophisticated they are.”
The forecast of Facebook’s impending doom was made by comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of online social networks. Scientists argue that, like bubonic plague, Facebook will eventually die out.
“A number of studies have found people feel worse after scrolling Facebook – more envious, lonely, even angry. In one German study, people were particularly unhappy after viewing vacation photos. They were also more envious when browsing Facebook instead of actively using it by posting comments and photos of themselves.”
