Facebook and Twitter as marshmallow dispensers

I’ve previously written about a fascinating marshmallow experiment here and here. To set the stage, keep in mind that marshmallows are the equivalent of crack cocaine for young children. In the experiment, numerous four-year olds were each left alone with a marshmallow and told that they could eat it if they wanted. They were also told that if they could wait until the experimenter returned (which would happen 15 minutes later), they could have two marshmallows. Only about 30% of the children had the discipline to wait for the experimenter to return. When the psychologists followed up on these children fourteen years later, they found some startling things. Those four-year-olds who exerted the willpower to wait for two marshmallows scored an average of more than 200 points higher on the SAT than those who couldn’t wait. Those who could wait also show themselves to be more cooperative, more able to work under pressure and more self-reliant. In sum, they were dramatically more able to achieve their goals than those who couldn’t wait. Which leads me to this thought: Are Internet social sites the cyber-equivalent of marshmallow dispensers? Since reading of the marshmallow experiment, I have repeatedly thought of inability of many people to resist spending hours on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I also think of those who burn long hours on MySpace and those who are non-stop texters. Perhaps Internet news junkies belong in the same category. I don’t know the exact numbers, but there are numerous folks who aren’t getting nearly enough important things done in their lives (things THEY consider to be important) who are spending immense numbers of hours chatting and gossiping. I personally know some of these people. If these were retired people without any daily obligations, it would be one thing. Many of them, however, are blowing countless chances to make significant progress on goals that they themselves have set.

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Compassionate Fangs

Last week I received my DVD of Dreams With Sharp Teeth, the new documentary about Harlan Ellison. I've watched it a couple of times now, thoroughly enjoying it. Neil Gaiman makes the observation in the film that Ellison has been engaged in a great big piece of performance art called "Harlan Ellison" and I think he's spot on. Harlan---he is one of the only writers who ever worked in the realm of fantastic literature to be known almost immediately by his first name---is very much part and parcel of his work. You don't get the one without the other. Which is not to say the work doesn't stand on its own. It does, very much so. No doubt there are many people who have read the occasional Ellison story and found it...well, however they found it. Anything, I imagine, but trivial. If they then go on to become fans of the stories, eventually they will become aware of the person, mainly by virtue of the extensive introductions Harlan writes to just about everything he does, secondarily by the stories told by those who know, or think they know, something about him, either through personal experience or by word of mouth. He's fascinating to watch. Sometimes it's like watching a tornado form. Harlan was born in 1934, which makes him 75 now. This seems incredible to me, sobering even. He will always seem to me to be about 40, even though I have seen him now for years with white hair and other attributes of age. The voice has gotten a bit rougher, but he's just as sharp as ever. I have been in his actual presence on two occasions. In 1986 he showed up in Atlanta at the world SF convention that year and I have a couple of autographed books as a result. He dominated a good part of one day for us. The second time was in 1999 or so, at a small convention called ReaderCon in Massachussetts, where he was guest of honor. On that occasion I had lunch with him and few others and that lunch remains memorable, because I got to see the man when he isn't On. That is, it was before the convention began and he was, so to speak, "off duty" and was more relaxed, less hyperbolic. And it was a great pleasure. It is easy to see why people are drawn to him. He is something of a contradiction.

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Who I Am Is No One Else’s Business

As this just happened, I thought I'd come right home and write about it. I just had one of those customer service incidents that sends me over the moon. I walked into a store to find something. I was in a frame of mind to buy. I found the something and asked the sales person "How much is that?" Back at her desk, she sat down, I sat down, and I expected her to punch up the price on her computer and tell me. Instead: "What's you name?" "Private individual," I replied, a bit nonplussed. "I need a name for the quote," she said. "You have to have it?" "Yes." "Have a nice day." And I walked out. Now, this was perhaps petty of me. What, after all, is the big deal? She needed to punch a name into her computer to open the dialogue box to ask for the price. Here's the big deal: IT'S NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS WHO I AM UNTIL I DECIDE TO BUY FROM YOU! This is a persistent and infuriating condition in our present society that causes me no end of irritation because so few people think it is a problem that I end up looking like a weirdo because I choose not to hand out private information for free. It has crept up on us. Decades ago, when chain stores began compiling mailing lists by which they could send updates and sale notices to their client base. Then they discovered they could sell those lists to other concerns for marketing. Now we have a plague of telemarketers, junk mail, spam, and cold calls and a new social category with which to look askance at people who would prefer not to play. Like me. In itself, it is an innocent enough thing. But it is offensive, and what offends me the most is my fellow citizens failing to see how it is offensive and how it on a deep level adds to our current crisis. Look: if telemarketing didn't work, no one would do it. A certain percentage of those unwanted calls actually hook somebody into buying something. Direct mail campaigns have an expected positive return rate of two percent. That is considered normal response and constitutes grounds to continue the practice. Economies of scale work that way. So if only two to five percent of the public respond favorably to the intrusions of these uninvited pests, they have reason to persist. I think it might be fair to say that people with money and education don't respond as readily as poorer, less educated folks who are always on the lookout for bargains---and often find bargains they don't understand and probably end up costing them too much, like sub prime mortgages. We are too free with our personal information. Maybe you or you or you find nothing wrong with always giving out your phone number or your zip code or even your name and address when asked, in Pavlovian response to the ringing bell behind the counter, but what has happened is that we have made available a vast pool of data that makes it easy to be imposed upon and that has aided and abetted a consumer culture that has gotten out of hand. And made those of us who choose not to participate in this look like some form of misanthropic libertarian goofballs. How hard is this? If I choose to buy from someone, then I have agreed to have a relationship, however tenuous, with them. Unless I pay cash, they are entitled to know with whom they are dealing. But if I'm not buying, they have no right to know who I am. And I can't know if I'm going to buy if I don't know how much the object in question is. Trying to establish the buying relationship in advance of MY decision to buy is...rude. I have walked out of many stores when confronted with a request for personal information. I've had a few shouting matches with managers over it. In some instances, the unfortunate salesperson is as much a victim, because some software programs these days have as a necessary prerequisite for accessing the system the entry of all this data. The corporation won't even let the employee make the call whether it's worth irritating someone over collecting all this information. Concerns and worries over Big Brother have a certain validity, but it is largely unremarked that the foundation of such a system will not be imposed on us---rather we will hand the powers that be what they ask for because we can't muster up enough sense of ourselves to say, consistently, "None of your damn business!" There. I feel better. I needed to get that out. This rant has been brought to you by Consumer Culture LTD.

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Why you shouldn’t read important speeches

Liz Coleman, the President of Bennington College, has some terrific ideas about reforming liberal arts education. She presented them at TED in February 2009. Many people will never appreciate Coleman's ideas, however, because she presented them in a long paper filled with redundant and sesquipedalian (!*) terms. To top it off, she chose to read her speech in monotone rather than speaking from her heart. Coleman's decision to read her speech rather than presenting it with spontaneous enthusiasm undercuts the very message of her paper. She violated a basic rule of speech-making: Don't bore your audience with good content deficiently presented. Why can't the highly educated C0leman see this conspicuous problem with her own delivery? Why can't she understand that many people (even the smart sorts of people who attend TED lectures, have lots of trouble paying attention to liberal arts college presidents who read pedantic speeches? For starters, she needs to keep in mind that the Internet audience is not a captive audience motivated by the pursuit of grades. Yes, ordinary Americans need to become more disciplined at being attentive audiences. They need to learn to persevere when difficult ideas are presented, even when those ideas aren't sugar-coated. On the other hand, academics (Coleman is one example of many) really need to get out of their ivory towers and learn to talk to real people without sounding condescending. One suggestion: Coleman should study Barack Obama, who often knows his material well enough to talk off-the-cuff. He has also learned to present pre-written presentations in a fresh, spontaneous-sounding way. I'm not suggesting that everyone can deliver ideas like Obama, but all us can take the time study the various techniques he often uses. Before getting to work studying her new technique, Coleman should carefully watch her TED presentation and ask herself whether her delivery would even keep her own interest. She should ask what so many academics should ask: was her speech designed primarily to move her audience or was it (perhaps subconsciously) designed to show off her own vocabulary and intellectual superiority, amply laced with uppity intonation? If there is even an unintentional hint of these, she's lost her audience. --

*sesquipedalian 1. given to using long words. 2. (of a word) containing many syllables.

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