Eric Blue's Blog

OK, I'm going to take a short break from my posts on productivity, creativity, mind mapping, and using technology to enhance learning. You can call this an uninformed rant if you like, but I seriously can't comprehend all the buzz that is surrounding the "MicroBlogging phenomenon". No doubt, many of you are aware of Twitter. For those of you that have been hiding under a rock, or are not plugged into the blogosphere as of late, Twitter essentially takes blogging to another extreme and lets users broadcast at any given moment exactly what they're doing. Here's a concise description from Twitter's website:

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

I've always been a little bit hesitant to adopt the latest technology craze du jour, but I've been circulating these thoughts internally for some time. And, it wasn't until this week that I read a few posts that had me really question whether this is uber-hype or a case of me just refusing to get with the times. Case in point.... 2 recent articles illustrate the microblogging buzz:

1. How Twitter Could Be Worth A Billion in a Year
2. Indent.ca - Another microblogging service that just recently hit the del.icio.us popular list

My premise for my argument/rant is this: Aren't we already to the point where we've reached information overload and communication saturation? Of all people, I'm probably one of the biggest technology evangelists, technophiles, and all around geeks out there. However, in the last year I finally reached a point of realization that there is just too much noise in the wild, wonderful, world wide web.

I'm what you would call a "connected person". I love the fact that you can use technology to enable communication, find people with common interests, and make long-lasting connections. I've met some of my greatest friends and acquaintances through the PC. My passion for using technology to enable communication drove me to develop one of the first web-based chat applications on the web (Lucid Chat).

I've been connected to the net since '94. In fact, I've been involved since the BBS days back in '88. Yes, I'm a member of most of the major social networking sites out there, love using Linked.in, use del.icio.us at least a dozen times a day, and am constantly hunting for the latest and greatest blog posts. I also have accumulated at least 250+ RSS subscriptions to some pretty cool blogs. At this point... the information overload bubble sort of reached critical mass.

I finally realized that I just can't *possibly* keep up with the amount of information out there. I've started to take a more pragmatic and realistic approach to simplifying my focus and attention on my most critical sources of information. Do I still subscribe to most of my RSS feeds? Yes, however I've significantly decreased how frequently I read the feeds, and only tackle at least a half dozen of my favorite feeds at a time.

I have email. I have social bookmarks. I have a multitude of social network sites that keep me connected with others. I have instant messaging. I have RSS feeds. Do I really need a microblogging service that keeps me up to date on what friends (and strangers) are doing at any given second? I'm not sure on this one.

I actually really want to like Twitter. I want to embrace it and jump on the latest technology bandwagon. However, I just can't get away from the feeling that we've reached the apex of the golden age of communication, and are now on the downward trend of turning valuable information into useless "datababble" (yes, I just made that term up). Enter the age of Information Entropy.

Please help me understand what I'm missing here.

Posted by EricB at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

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Today I happened to open up my RSS reader as I normally do and proceeded to read one of the more interesting Blogs I follow: Tim Boucher's Pop Occulture. The latest article definitely caught my eye: Mel Gibson: Passion of the Terrorist (http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/08/01/mel-gibson-passion-of-the-terrorist/). In a nutshell, the article had cited a credible source (BBC News) and reported that Mel Gibson had been charged with financing known Muslim extremist groups. I was honestly skeptical at first, but after I clicked on the BBC link and saw the story I was convinced.

At the end of the work day I decided to dig in a little further and check for the latest update on some other news sites and found nothing! I checked CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Google News top stories and there was no reference to this story. I decided to go back to Tim's site and found out that this was a "hoax" after all. I think there are a few lessons to be learned here:

1) Don't trust everything you read on the Internet.
2) If you cite a source make sure it's credible. In Tim's defense, this article looked very much like the real thing. I was fooled.
3) Contributing members of the Internet ecosystem who publish content that is considered news (e.g. anybody with a blog) should have a degree of accountability. Common sense, maturity, and a general sense of decency go a long way.

It turns out that the link to the BBC article was in fact a fake domain: bbclosangeles.com (Bullshit Broadcasting Confederation). The original link:

http://www.bbclosangeles.com/BBCNEWS_Mel_Gibson_Arrested_On_Terrorism.htm

was forged to look identical to the BBC UK site, and it passed as authentic to many people. In hindsight the domain name should have given it away, but given the short attention span of most news readers (namely me) bouncing from story to story, looking at the domain name of the news site is usually not the primary concern.

Free speech, satire, and sometimes convincing hoaxes are one thing. But posts that are borderline malicious, and libelous in nature are irresponsible. I certainly don't excuse the statements that Mel made during his arrest
, but I think posting false stories that he has ties to terrorism, and trying to pass them off as authentic is going too far. If Mel was sitting in the same room as the person that posted the hoax story while it was being typed, would he have the guts to go through with publishing the post?

I'd like to think that I have as much of a sense of humor as anybody. I absolutely love irony, satire, and absurdity. I can't get enough of the Simpsons, South Park, The Family Guy (Giggity, giggity giggity!), and Futurama. But, I question why somebody thinks a story of this nature is funny. I wasn't really laughing or awe struck when I discovered the ironic twist that this story was a lie. If you go to http://bbclosangeles.com/blog/, you'll see that the guy responsible for the site, Mike Hess, have given a number of "reasons" why he posted the article.

I can't profess to know the real motive of why this article was posted, or what other type of content usually ends up on bbclosangeles.com. But, i do find it very odd that this domain name was registered on July 30th, 2006: only 2 days before the Mel Gibson article was posted). Either this is going to be the first of a potentially long series of hoaxes that are planned, or this domain was registered for the sole purpose of trying to discredit Mel Gibson even further, and fool the general public.

At the very least I think Mike Hess owes Mel Gibson a sincere public apology.... regardless if the original intentions were good or ill-willed. According to Hess' blog:

"People think I meant Mel Gibson harm or ill intent, I didn't. Hell, I'd go have a beer and joke with him about it (as long as he didn't go driving afterwards, btw Mel, if you are reading this, I wouldn't mind having your autograph..."

If you like somebody enough to want their autograph, then I doubt the best way to do this is by publicly humiliating and enraging them. I am absolutely in favor of making the public more aware of where they get their information from and to be cautious of the credibility of news sources. But, education by trickery is not the way to go. Use common sense: don't trick people, don't backtrack by making your actions seem noble if you've tricked people, and try to invest your time and energy towards more constructive efforts. Peace.

Posted by EricB at 05:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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