In the Fens.
On this day…
… in 1991, President George Bush Snr. declared that “Kuwait is liberated, Iraq’s army is defeated,” and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight.
Primates on Facebook
Nice piece in this week’s Economist about groupings on social networks.
Primatologists call at least some of the things that happen on social networks “grooming”. In the wild, grooming is time-consuming and here computerisation certainly helps. But keeping track of who to groom—and why—demands quite a bit of mental computation. You need to remember who is allied with, hostile to, or lusts after whom, and act accordingly. Several years ago, therefore, Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist who now works at Oxford University, concluded that the cognitive power of the brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. Extrapolating from the brain sizes and social networks of apes, Dr Dunbar suggested that the size of the human brain allows stable networks of about 148. Rounded to 150, this has become famous as “the Dunbar number”.
And guess what?
The Economist asked Cameron Marlow, the “in-house sociologist” at Facebook, to crunch some numbers. Dr Marlow found that the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120, consistent with Dr Dunbar’s hypothesis, and that women tend to have somewhat more than men. But the range is large, and some people have networks numbering more than 500, so the hypothesis cannot yet be regarded as proven.
What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group.
Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.
What mainly goes up, therefore, is not the core network but the number of casual contacts that people track more passively. This corroborates Dr Marsden’s ideas about core networks, since even those Facebook users with the most friends communicate only with a relatively small number of them.
Krugman despairs of Obama
Watching Alasdair Darling and Gordon Brown fumbling around with the banks is a profoundly depressing experience. it’s clear that they haven’t the faintest idea what they’re doing — they’re completely out of their depth. (And the Irish government, btw, is off the planet). But I console myself by thinking that Obama & Co probably know what they’re doing. Not so, says Paul Krugman.
Obama and Geithner say things like,
“If you underestimate the problem; if you do too little, too late; if you don’t move aggressively enough; if you are not open and honest in trying to assess the true cost of this; then you will face a deeper, long lasting crisis.”
But what they’re actually doing is underestimating the problem, doing too little too late, and not being open and honest in trying to assess the true cost. The actual plan seems to be to keep the banks semi-alive by implicitly guaranteeing their liabilities and dribbling in money as necessary, all the while proclaiming that they’re adequately capitalized — and hope that things turn up. It’s Japan all over again.
And the result will probably be a deeper, long-lasting crisis.
Our great hop forward
As some readers know, I’m a co-founder (with Quentin) of Camvine, the company that is going to be the eBay of pixels. (Well, maybe the iTunes of digital signage might be more accurate.) Anyway, what we’ve done is create a system which makes it easy to put digital information on screens anywhere — and to manage those screens from anywhere over the Net. (You can even manage your screens from your iPhone.) We have three ace developers working round the clock on this in Cambridge and they’ve produced elegant, slick and highly functional software. But look what happens when we turn our backs.
More info on Michael’s Blog.
New Labour (re)discovers Open Source?
Maybe it’s the downturn, but this statement by Tom Watson, the UK Minister for Digital Engagement is interesting.
Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades: it has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations; it has shown how giant corporations themselves, and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work; and from its IT base the Open Source movement has given leadership to new thinking about intellectual property rights and the availability of information for re–use by others.
This Government has long had the policy, last formally articulated in 2004, that it should seek to use Open Source where it gave the best value for money to the taxpayer in delivering public services. While we have always respected the long-held beliefs of those who think that governments should favour Open Source on principle, we have always taken the view that the main test should be what is best value for the taxpayer.
Over the past five years many government departments have shown that Open Source can be best for the taxpayer – in our web services, in the NHS and in other vital public services.
But we need to increase the pace…
The literary merry-go-round
I’m reading Elizabeth Bowen’s letters (scrupulously edited by Victoria Glendinning) and came on this passage from a letter dated 30th September 1959:
“I’m quite sorry to be going back to London tomorrow. Next weekend, that is, Saturday, I’m going to stay the weekend with Cyril Connolly… I must discover whom he’s living with now, before I get there. — I don’t know whether he’s again settled down with Barbara since George Weidenfeld traded her back to him.”
At this stage there’s a footnote. It reads:
“Barbara Skelton married Cyril Connolly in 1950. He divorced her in 1956 citing the publisher George Weidenfeld as co-respondent. She married Weidenfeld in 1956, and he divorced her in 1961 citing Cyril Connolly as co-respondent.”
This is the same Cyril Connolly who famously observed (in Enemies of Promise) that “there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”
Thou shalt smoke here
Digital nomads
Two laptops at least, I’d say!
Gud 4 da kids
Phew! Just seen this BBC NEWS report.
Text speak, rather than harming literacy, could have a positive effect on the way children interact with language, says a study.
Researchers from Coventry University studied 88 children aged between 10 and 12 to understand the impact of text messaging on their language skills.
They found that the use of so-called “textisms” could be having a positive impact on reading development.
The study is published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
“Children’s use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but it may be contributing to reading development”, the authors wrote in the report.