Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher

Well maybe it should be “Twitter and strong opinions” but this post was inspired by watching Twitter during the political conventions. And also by something I Twittered upsetting a friend. It was a strong political opinion I guess you could say. But it all started me thinking.

Many of the people I follow on Twitter are, well, I guess you could say far to my left politically. They loved everything that was said at the Democratic convention and hated pretty much everything that has been said so far during the Republican convention. The feelings were the other way around for the few right wing people I follow. But the tone of the left leaning people really upset me. It seemed so very nasty. I suspect it wasn’t meant that way. Well maybe it was. But the point is I don’t really know. As little context and other clues that we have in email and blog posts there is even less in Twitter. There is that whole 140 character limitation.

Politics, like religion, is of course a particularly emotional and polarizing thing. It can be highly nuanced as well but nuance does not translate well to Twitter. What makes it worse in Twitter is that people easily forget who is reading. Most of the people following me probably don’t know me that well. I definitely don’t know many of the people I am following very well either. Many of them I have never met in person and know strictly from blogs and Twitter. In some cases only Twitter. Do I want to judge these people with only Twitter as a source of information? I think not. I’m pretty sure I don’t want them judging me with only that context either!

I’ve decided to avoid as much as possible making political or religious comments on Twitter in the future. Twitter is no instant messaging to an individual – it is a sort of micro blog. Good (read smart) bloggers are careful about what they blog and how they say things. Even still it is easy to get into trouble. But Twitter is I think more risky if only because you have less time/space to include context and make things clear. With Twitter I think you also have of an opportunity to clarify things, to make things right.

I’m not sure how much people are aware of the risk. Do the people I followed last night know that they presented a very negative image that influenced me against their favored party and candidate? Probably not. I imagine they think they presented “truth” that should be convincing to people who disagree with them. That is the other reason I want to hold back – I see more possibility of turning people away in 140 characters than convincing them of anything.

And somehow I keep thinking of that old proverb “it is better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt.” How soon will it be before someone loses their job over something they say in Twitter?

I’m a Preacher’s Kid. That means different things to different people but for many of us who are actually in the role one of the things it means is that if we do something wrong it is likely that our parents, particularly the preacher in the family, who will pay the most serious price. Yes I know people who have lost their jobs because of things their children did. And still more who found life very difficult for the same reason. To some extent the same is true of people in other public positions. Teachers, political officials being the most common. I would argue that they don’t usually have it as bad as preachers do though.

This week of course a lot of people are out to get Sarah Palin because of actions her daughter has done. The Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant. Gasp horror! Lots of people are suggesting, if not outright saying, that this shows that Palin should not be Vice President. As a PK I’ve heard all this before. And it upsets me quite a bit. The girl is 17. Kids of 17 make mistakes like that all the time. Kids from all walks of life make it. Blaming the mother or some how suggesting that having a daughter who makes a common mistake is somehow not fit for public office is outrageous. It is unreasonable to hold parents personally responsible for their children's mistakes.

Being a parent and being the son of someone whose profession brought extra-ordinary attention to things I did the unfairness of this is blatant to me. It is completely unfair to both mother and daughter. They are both under enough stress as it is. This helps no one. I really feel for the girl by the way. At 17 no one should be under national scrutiny for something like this. Oh but it is because of who her mother is some say. So what? It is still unfair to the girl. This is and should be a private family matter. Her parents are being supportive of her. Good for them. Praise them and hold them as a positive example that should be emulated. She’s keeping the baby, again with support from family, which is yet another positive thing. If you are going to bring it up then the morally right thing to do is to accentuate the positive. Caring family following through on stated pro-life belief by supporting mother and child to be. Isn’t that what we want? As it is the media we are seeing and the critics we are reading seem to be aimed at stigmatizing unwed mothers more than they already are and extending the “shame” and “failure” on to parents. I fail to see the good in that!

There is yet another lever that this all offends me. Most of the people who are bringing this up and pointing fingers and suggesting it reflects poorly on the parents are the same people who think that cheating on one’s wife should not be an issue. They are the ones who say that single parent families should not be thought of as a bad thing but as an  example of female empowerment. They are the same people who will forgive all sorts of failings in their own candidates but nothing at all in the candidates they oppose. I’d be happy to discuss the issues with people who honestly believe that this issue should rule Palin out. All the have to do is first show they are non-partisan in their objections by stating out that there is more than enough similar reasons to rule Hilary Clinton and Bill out for any future high political office. After all using ones position of power to get a young White House intern to have sex is at least as bad as a hormonal teen getting pregnant with someone she plans to marry. And a wife trying to cover it up is at least as bad as a mother being willing to support a pregnant unwed mother.

Oh I’m not one who believes that Bill’s sexual dalliances rule him out for public office. Alec Baldwin (noted left wing extremist) convinced me of that in a letter to the editor years ago. Anything I’d forgive someone I like I should and would be willing to forgive in people I don’t like.

Well of course the good old days were not that great in many ways but in other ways I miss them. I’m talking about the early days of computers – say 30 years ago or so. Back then computers lived in locked air conditioned rooms with raised floors. They were only loosely connected (networked) if at all. The only people who could get close to them were highly trained professionals. “Regular people”, if they used a computer at all did so through a tightly controlled access. They were mostly limited to specific applications with functionality that was limited to what they needed to do as defined by others.

Users pretty much could not mess up the computer. They didn’t have access to the tools or the privileges to do so. Tech support was easy. Companies had people who could answer questions about the software which was limited. If there was a hardware problem there was a hardware contract that brought in someone to fix or replace it. Data was all backed up at a central place. Oh it was a simple era.

For those of us who could program it was a very cool time. We were special people. And we didn’t have to spend our weekends helping friends and family with their computer problems. If we got a call in the late at night or on the weekend from someone with a computer program it meant we were going to get more money in our pay check. Not only that but the person on the other end of the call was at least something of an expert – someone who spoke your language. Some times I miss those days.

Oh in my heart I know that it is great that my Dad can use his laptop to send email to his kids and grand kids. It’s wonderful that he can write his sermons using a word processor. Sending him pictures over the Internet means he gets to see pictures of his grand children more often and more easily. I love getting pictures from my son while he is still in New Zealand snowboarding. It’s pretty cool that I can keep track of non-tech friends and family via Facebook. Being able to Twitter with people all over the world is pretty amazing and I’d miss it if it went away. Like wise the ability to share information via blogs or discuss local politics using threaded discussion forums opens the world to more people.  So I wouldn’t go back to the old way. Well most days I wouldn’t. :-) But some days … well some days I miss the simplicity and the feeling of being special because of computer knowledge and access.

So I have learned a few things about women over the years. One of them is about “would you like to …” You see women will ask a man “would you like to” and follow it with something no man in history has ever wanted to do of his own free will. Now when a man asks “would you like to” he is asking if doing the said thing will make the person more happy than not doing it. For example “would you like some food?” Or perhaps “would you like to go to the baseball game.” If one answers “no” that is fine. It was a real question.

A woman uses that sort of question the way a man asks “would you please do me a favor and …” In other words the ask is for something the askee wants the asker to do that they may or may not want to do.

I learned rather quickly that when a woman asks a question like this she really expects a “yes” answer regardless of the request. At first I thought that meant they wanted a man to lie. In other words, the wanted the man to say “yes I would like to do that” no matter how distasteful the task was. Well I was half right.

They do want the man to say “yes” but they don’t want it to be a lie. They want to man to actually want to do the thing. Really! Now that can be hard for a guy to understand. We don’t really want to lie but we do get asked to do things we really would rather not do. So to learn to live with myself I decided that a woman was really asking a different question. “Would you like to change the litter box?” translates to “Do you love me enough to change the litter box?” Now that question I can honestly answer (to my wife anyway) “Why yes I do!”

That way I don’t have to lie and my wife is happy because I change the litter box. It’s the difference between a literal question and an idiomatic interpretation. I pass this bit of wisdom off to you guys who are not yet married or who are recently married.

There is only so much time in the day and frankly I don’t always make the best use of it anyway. So there are some Web 2.0 tools I just don’t use. Mostly because I just don’t see enough value in them for the time they would take. I could be wrong about some of them and maybe I just don’t “get” them. But here is my list.

Second Life – Yes I have an account and I’ve wandered around it. The idea of lectures online is one I understand but since I use tools like LiveMeeting on a regular basis I don’t see the added value of Second Life. Well there is that free price but still.

Delicio.us I just don’t get tagging. I’m sure there is value here and perhaps one day someone will sit me down and demo lots of good stuff but for now I don’t have time. When I find stuff I really like I blog about it.

FriendFeed Yes I know that Robert Scoble is raving about it and I’m sure it is wonderful for him. But what would it replace and is the change worth it? I have no time to really dig into it and frankly I’d need a better explanation of why I should drop something else to replace it with this. My needs are different from Robert’s.

Flickr – Sounds really cool but I don’t take all that many pictures. And when I do I either email them to a few people, post them on Facebook (rarely), add them to my personal home page or even add them to my Space here. I do have an account and perhaps one day I’ll give it a real go but right now it seems like a great tool for other people. For people who are “in to” photography.

Now I do use Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and I blog. And I read a lot of blogs. So I’m not a complete Luddite. But really there is only so much time in the day and I am trying to have something of a life outside of cyberspace. And there is this day job that seems to take a lot of time as well.

So anyway, I am open to hearing from people who think I should re prioritize some of my time and pick up one of more of the above. Or suggest something else I am ignoring.

A bunch of years ago I worked with (as in supported some of their computer activity) with Avon Products.  The way they worked back then was to come out with a new product/sales catalog every two weeks. They started working on each catalog a year and a half in advance. The first step was to figure out what products to sell and what prices to sell them at. The next step was to have people developed and create those products at that price point. Yes, you got it. They didn’t start with what products they had but what products they wanted to sell. That pretty much defines a marketing driven company to me.

The product driven company starts with people who develop products deciding what to create and then having the marketing people figure out how to sell them. Most computer/software companies seem to be in this category.

I’m not convinced that one way is better than the other but they are different. In the first case if the products do not sell it is fairly reasonable to blame the marketing people. After all they made the decisions of what products AND how to sell them. Unless the development process fails to live up to what marketing asked for they are, if not blameless, less responsible. On the other hand in product driven companies there is often a lot of finger pointing when a product fails. Since product developers usually run the company in a product driven company and we know how self confident those people can be (I’m in that category and guilty of thinking I know best on occasion) it is easy to blame the marketing people. “We have the best product and they are not selling it right!”

I’m not sure this is always fair though. Years ago when I worked for Digital Equipment they came out with a technically great PC called the Rainbow 100. I loved mine. But the market didn’t because it was not 100% compatible with the IBM PC that was out and which was the thought leader in the market. I remember a technical person and a marketing person arguing about it. The technical person said “You guys would be just as happy if we resold IBM PCs under the Digital name.: The marketing person replied “Yes, that we should sell and make money on.” The technical person just could not get that customers would prefer a product he “knew” to be “inferior.” We see this all the time though when the market picks one product as being better and the people who developed it just don’t understand (VHS v. Beta anyone).

I think that in the long term a company needs a balance. Marketing and product people have to work together. But in the long run I think if a company is going to lose the balance in one direction or another the marketing driven company may be more long lasting and even more profitable. On the other hand the product driven company may be the way to really drive innovation and the state of the art.

A lot of discussion on Twitter and edu blogs about this news article. The short version is that a school board has banned teachers from communicating with students via social networking sites. Frankly that seems over the top to me. I do agree that teachers need to be careful about the nature and tones of their communication with students. But if you are going to ban any sort of communication I’d think you’d want to ban communication that doesn’t leave a trail rather than communication that does leave a trail. But no one is going to ban person to person voice communication are they? :-)

My own policy back in the day was to save all email correspondence with students for at least a year after they graduated. Anything they sent me and any thing I sent them. I usually recorded IM conversations as well though not always. I would probably have been better to save it all. I never needed to use these records but it was good to know I had them.

Facebook and MySpace were not issues 5-6 years ago but they are today. My policy with regards to Facebook today is that I accept friend invitations but do not send them to students. I know others who turn down invitations until after graduation. I can understand that but I’m not sure that is what I would do. Lots of students today use the message feature of Facebook more than regular email. I can see value to that. I would however be very careful about leaving comments and Wall Posts. Those I might even completely avoid. I hope it goes without saying that teachers, anyone really, should be very careful about what they post on the Internet and especially where students may see it.

Kathleen Weaver brings up text messaging in her blog. Is texting any different from a voice telephone conversation? On one hand there is more accountability since anything you receive as a text can be shown to other people. There is a trail. That should, in theory, be a good thing. Well unless one texts something stupid. Although the short nature of text messages may mean that some messages are too open to interpretation. But we do expect teachers to be smart about things don’t we?

Kathleen also brings up Twitter. I hadn’t thought much about that. I wouldn’t have a problem with students following me on Twitter but I can see why a teacher would want to avoid following a student. On one hand there is such a thing as too much information. :-) But more importantly I think there is a good reason to let students have some space away from teachers and parents as long as they are being responsible. I never want to be the scary stalker teacher/old man.

In general I think that school boards should avoid making black and white policy decisions about these web 2.0 and social networking tools. Clearly they should not make rules about things they don’t understand and for many of them  that means social networking sites. But how often does not understanding something prevent anyone from making rules about it?

Another thing that Robert talked about in his post on tech blogging failing is that comment systems are pretty poor these days. I don’t think that is a tech blogging problem as much as it is a general blogging problem. I’ve had to sign in and enter a CAPCHA just to leave a comment on a blog that is going to moderate the comment before it appears. Talk about a pain. I have to be really motivated to leave a comment at some blogs. Often I just don’t bother. Other times I decide that if I am going to work that hard I might as well write a complete blog post and link to the original blog. That is probably not completely bad but really how often does one have time for that “solution.”

Of course the reason for those barriers is bad behavior. Spam comments are a regular problem for most bloggers. As painful as it is to leave comments here (sorry abut that) I still get a lot of spam comments. It is a pain to delete them but I do because I worry about the consequences of not doing so. It would be a lot worse if it were easier to leave comments.

The other problem with comments is people who only leave negative comments. Oh I don’t mean people who disagree with the blogger. I mean the people who are just plain disagreeable. Flames, profanity, name calling, and all sorts of things that add nothing to the conversation. Its hard to blame bloggers who get fed up enough to turn off comments completely. Comments could be the best part about blogging but all too often they are the worst part. Its a sad state of affairs.

Every so often Robert Scoble gets a bit melancholy and writes a long, some what rambling post. Frankly these are the posts  I wait for because these are some of the most interesting insightful posts he writes. Today he wrote about how he believes that tech blogging has failed their readership. When Robert started blogging it was all about sharing the latest cool things in technology. I think that for Robert that is still the big thing but for a lot of others there is more (or perhaps less depending on your point of few) to it.

Somewhere along the line people realized that besides fun there was some amount of fame and fortune. Well perhaps the fortune is relative but at least there was/is money to be made in tech blogging. For a blogger to get the fame and fortune (or at least make some money and get tech attention) one needs a lot of readers, access to the best events (product announcements, conferences, tech parties) and a constantly growing amount of attention. One needs to scoop other tech bloggers which sometimes means blogging about things that are not completely vetted for reliability. It means getting the attention of the main stream media which means getting into the business of tech as well as the products.

A slight diversion for a minute. One would think that for a blogger only online attention means anything – links, comments, traffic from Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc. At one time that was true but in recent years, as the media discovered blogs and blogging, it seems to have become more and more important to have some main stream media attention to build up credibility and to attract readers who are not themselves serious blog readers/writers. It’s easier for a blogger to get that CxO interview or industry party invitation if they have been quoted in Fortune or Newsweek or the New York Times. Showing off all the new tech toys may get one in the news but being known for knowledgeable about the latest inside news about the business side of tech seems to be a more reliable way to get MSM attention.

 So today we have a lot more people who are as excited about the Fame, fortune, and yes still the fun of tech blogging who are all competing for attention. If they lose their audience they loss it all. If they gain audience they gain in all areas. The stress on some of these people must be intense. That no doubt leads to some of the problems Robert talks about.

I see all this as growing pains. In time it may settle out. The people who really care about the business side will focus more and more on business and the people who just care about the tech will focus on the tech. Chances are good that some of the blogosphere will become part of the main stream media. OH I don’t mean they will move into print, radio or TV as much as I mean that the MSM will move into the Internet and impose some rigor in reporting on bloggers. Access to larger tech companies may start to require some additional credibility and partnership between bloggers and MSM with the rigor that means. Also as blogging becomes more of a real business some sort of corporate structure to support a blogger is necessary so the blogger can focus on the work and not where the money is coming from. The partnership between FastCompany and Scoble may be a model for that. Robert doesn’t need the credibility as much as he probably needs a good corporate structure to support him. In fact Robert helps FastCompany in the Internet where it is not as well known as the big media names. Win win there. Different relationships will have different balances though.

The other thing that is going to settle down is this hopping from one “shiny object” to another. One of the frustrating things for me lately has been Robert blogging less and using other tools. I don’t want to follow him from one shiny object to another. My life is too busy to do that. I like blogs and read a lot of them. I have a Facebook page and while I enjoy it I don’t have time to be there every day so I only use it occasionally. I like Twitter but I keep my use there light. I Twitter a couple of times a day and I follow a reasonable number of people. But I’m not moving to FriendFeed. My social computing time is full and since I am not going to drop something right now I am not going to add something right now. Could that change? Sure. it took me over a year to decide to try Twitter and when I did the time in Facebook dropped.

But what is going to happen is that some people will focus on Twitter, others on Facebook, still others on other “shiny objects.” Those people who want to stay with those objects will get supported by people with a more narrow focus. Lots of us will still follow the Scoble’s of the world to find out about the next shiny object but we’ll not automatically follow them around. We need people with short attention spans to be the early adopters, tell us about new things, and in a sense create the culture around the new things so we feel at home when we move there (if in fact we ever do). The early adopters will have to be patient with use when we don’t see the same value or get as excited as they do though. Sometimes we late adopters may completely skip whole fads. Hopefully that will not hurt too many feelings. :-)

The only way tech blogging will really fail the rest of us though is if the A-list bloggers stop looking through the long tail for shiny items. A Guy Kawasaki can launch something like alltop.com and it will get picked up by the A-list right away. But an Aaron White and friends who launch something like http://icantdeci.de/ (which is fun even if not “important”) and its not as likely to get picked up. There are probably a lot of serious and important things getting announced all the time that are getting the same lack of attention. The long tail is getting really long and it is harder to keep up all the time. Not sure how to fix that problem.

Well tech bloggers are doing their thing. Are they failing the rest of us? I think that is a little harsh. There is a phase that things are going though. It will all be fine in time as long as they all remember to blog about things that are fun and interesting and not worry too much about being relevant. :-)