Archive for the ‘sociology’ Category
Friday, December 14th, 2012
Initially inspired by The Future Project and its mission.
The Future project is a gargantuan effort to uproot maladies of our High Schools – most of them took birth during the last century of industrial revolution. An era dictated by punishing failures, questioning unconventional thinking and so on – that ultimately hamstrung many young minds to pursue their dreams and realize their passions.
“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”
- V. S. Naipaul
I believe the narrowness of our vision and lack of curiosity has been etched into our thinking due to our current education systems. As children we don’t limit our thinking to a particular niche. Its the so called “education” and societal forces snub our creativity and appetite for risk taking.
While most of the 20th century schooling & education system worked for that era, it might not work for the future generations for various reasons.
Here are some of the reasons why we need to think differently – fundamentally a revolutionary way – for the 21st century
Current Thinking Grew out of Age of Scarcity
19th & 20th centuries lived through the phase of finite resources, depression and focused on creating efficiencies to tap and acquire those finite resources.
To that end, majority of the schools & institutions worked with a blueprint to teach basic facts and knowledge to become efficient with the finite resources. For example, kids read their Textbooks, do well in their class, get good grades, graduate and that becomes a validation of their capabilities; then they go on to get a job based on that “qualification”.
When you manage for scarcity, you only need to think “out of box” to create efficiencies to tap into the scarce resources. You don’t need a revolutionary way of thinking.
Few innovators & thought leaders have created industrial complexes (thank you Seth Godin) around concepts & ideas that took birth in 19th century. These industrial complexes needed many widget makers to serve the markets and needs of the industries. Schools & Universities got funded to serve the job market for these industrial complexes.
Majority of masses didn’t need to be dreamers, thought leaders, innovators & high achievers to prosper and thrive. They just need to get through high school in early 20th century and in later part of the century, graduate from college to get a job and buy a house – the basic american dream.
In 20th century most of the revolutionary innovations such as railroads, airplanes, and industrial complexes have powered the opportunities. To that end, schools, educational institutions and organizations have structured to ride off of those innovations to create sustainable growth in the society via the “widget makers” otherwise known as college graduates, they churn out year after year.
Today with more and more graduates, 20th century industrial complexes don’t have enough jobs to serve growing job seekers. Of course automation also impacted demand side of mass work force.
With this kind of “good enough for a job” thinking, most of the schooling experience has become mundane, rote and insipid.
Not only that, over the years, schools and education systems have forgotten the real purpose of education & learning – more importantly ignored to convey that to their students.
Innovation Cycles of 20th Century have been already tapped in: Need Next Generation Engines that power the 21st Century.
The concept of tossing your graduation hat on the day of graduation ceremony symbolically meant that you are qualified for a job; 21st century is not about that.
In 21st century Wikipedia should replace Textbooks; Time spent towards teaching basic concepts, knowledge & facts should be replaced by powering creativity, passion & experimentation. Khan Academy and its clones can handle most of basic sciences, knowledge and facts.
If 20th century was about learning the facts & gaining knowledge, 21st century is about making something out of that knowledge. 20th century was able learning the history and 21st century should be about making your own history.
Jobs Economy is past! Creation Economy is the future
What’s unique about the 21st century is about nonexistent jobs economy and it took massive financial meltdown (2007 to 2011) caused by skullduggery of few greedy bankers to surface the inevitability. Many smart and well-qualified graduates realized that in a hurry. In cities such as NYC and SFO, this inability to find jobs let to the first wave of “mass” creation thinkers. Established entrepreneurs, high net worth individuals and thought leaders joined hands to create accelerators and incubators to feed off the supply created by job less economy.
For those young graduates who are already in search for jobs the choice was clear – either keep sending resumes via LinkedIn & Monster or go meet other smart people and create something on their own. Fortunately cost of experimentation has also gone down to help fuel this trend – at least in the technology and consumer Internet space.
When you educate a kid for a job that is currently available in the society today, that job no longer exists by the time kid graduates.
Maker & DIY projects are no longer left to handful of tinkers who are naturally passionate about such projects. Maker & creation revolution is already showing its signs of growth amongst those graduates who are not able to find the jobs. Tech, Health Care IT and Fin Tech incubators and accelerators are powering these jobs less graduates.
But, what about High Schools kids? Someone needs to sow the seeds of creativity; someone needs to ignite their passions; someone needs to rekindle their young minds.
Schools do a good job teaching basic sciences and skills – a basic hygiene – for living in a society. While these basic skills and knowledge is necessary, it is no longer sufficient if these young minds want to go become a future Rockefeller, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi. Also, 20th century survived with one of each, but 21st century needs many Rockefellers, many Martin Luther Kings, many Dalai Lamas and many Newtons.
Where is the ray of hope for our high school students?
The Future Project (TFP) might be the answer!
Its not easy …..but the revolution has to start somewhere by someone to make a dent and I see that ray of hope in this mission and few others. Efforts from CitizenSchools.Org & Teach for America and the like along with TFP will add fuel to this revolution.
Tags: Age of Abundance, Citizen Schools, Dreams, Education, High School, Motivators, Scarcity, Students, Teach For America, The Future Project, Youth
Posted in Abundance, Citizen Schools, College, Discipline, Education, Scarcity, Schools, sociology, Talent, Teach For America, The Future Project, Universities | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 11th, 2012
Inspired by a tweet by Vivek Wadhwa -
“What’s the shelf life of a techie? Just 15 years http://bit.ly/TRT8A5 — Good advice from India. Applies here also”
and by drawing on Dr. Clayton Christensen‘s work on disruptive innovation for companies/businesses, here are my thoughts.
This is article is spot on – without really qualifying the “5 years” as the period, a techie/developer has to evolve to the next stage of their career or risk being “irrelevant” in tech industry completely.
Note: In this post I am treating Language & Technology as one and the same even they are not. Both languages and technologies go through similar cycles;
If you take a slice of the talent pool at starting of this 5+5+5 cycle, and study how their careers are evolving in the next 15 years, one will find many interesting trends that validate some of my assumptions I published in this post.
At the start of cycle, qualifications for entering and picking a new technology or programming language is much lower and new graduates are willing to jump in for few reasons. There is less competition, less compensation and less expectation of quality.
Forces impact Coder / Developer’s ability to enter, learn & thrive coding languages and technologies
During the middle of the cycle, once the technology/programming language starts to mature, more and more people enter the foray, comp inflation creeps in and higher barriers for new entrants to enter into the space as early adopters become incumbents and experts. This is the hardest phase/cycle for fresh graduates and inexperienced professionals to enter in the cycle. So, either they struggle to get into the current coding cycle or try to look out for a technology cycle that is just about to start or completely abandon the developer world and pursue managerial & other adjacent careers.
Professionals who are in the 3rd phase of their current cycle (10 to 15 years), will inadvertently become irrelevant to enter into the new cycle either in Phase 1 or Phase 2 for various reasons. To enter in Phase 1, its too beneath their compensation expectation or visibility. Also, their age, family and financial constraints create additional barriers for them. To enter Phase 2 of the new cycle, these people have to compete with incumbents who entered in Phase 1 of this new cycle. So the challenge for people who are in Phase 3 of their career is they either have to either be at Executive level who can leverage their financial and social capital to continue to generate value for themselves or fall of the cliff to go into other verticals like real estate investments, venture capital, advisory services, etc.
So, for each individual, the best choice to enter into a particular Tech Cycle is not only based on timing but also their individual constraints – age, financial expectations, burn rate, social/family pressures and fundamental aptitude to be good at programming/technology leadership. So, it is a very subjective decision for each of us to enter, stay, thrive or stay away in any particular tech cycle.
Entry Level Candidates:
While it is tempting to enter into maturing technologies (cycle 2/phase 2) as there are many opportunities and also attractive compensation trends, it is best for them to enter into brand new technology cycles/new entrants. This allows for them to dictate the future of the emerging technologies; also make them incumbents when these new entrant coding languages/technologies become mature/established technologies. There is also huge risk for new grads to bet on unproven technologies and coding languages. If they end up entering into unproven coding languages that don’t take off, they not only are stuck in their career path but also missed out on other proven & successful languages/technologies (Phase 1 technologies) but also current mature languages/opportunities (Phase 2 technologies) where despite competition and compensation pressure opportunities still exists.
Mid Level Candidates:
Ideal situation for coders/developers is to become incumbents in a coding language by the time that language is in its cycle 2/phase 2 of its existence. They are able to command higher compensation despite high competition from entry level candidates. People who have natural aptitude for coding and programmering could try to hedge in the current Cycle 2 programming language as well as keep a close eye on newer languages that are in their cycle 1. In the language that is in cycle 2, assuming they have gained expertise, mid level candidates can thrive and command higher compensation and visibility.
Experienced Level Candidates:
These candidates have the greatest potential or greatest risk based on their expertise, knowledge and visibility in a particular coding language or technology. If these individuals grew with the language from its cycle 1, their potential to thrive is huge. If not, there is a risk of these professionals becoming irrelevant.
Tags: Business Anthropology, Careers, disruption, Irrelevant, Linkedin, Recruiting, Talent, Tech Careers, Technology Anthropology
Posted in Analytics, Anthropology, Coders, Coding Languages, Competition, Developers, Disruption, Disruptive Forces, Information Age, Innovation, Market Research, Research, sociology, Talent, Tech Careers | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
As many of the active LinkedIn users are aware, LinkedIn’s latest feature – social endorsement of “Skills & Expertise” – is in later stage of its beta release and growing like rapid fire in the past few weeks. What’s interesting is LinkedIn brought social validation by your network to this feature they started testing since Feb of 2012 – a social proof for your skills and expertise.
After studying this feature for a few days, I decided to do few social experiments & surveys and my past few weeks of results have been nothing short of eye openers – with respect to user behaviors. While my data set is only limited to my own network, I am quite certain these results would be very akin to majority of LinkedIn users.
While most people endorse as a social convention – “you scratch my back and I scratch your back” – very much similar to how most of us used LinkedIn Recommendations, unlike LinkedIn “Recommendations”, skill endorsements can be removed any time you want after you endorse.
Similar to tweenage kids, I am already seeing immature behavior – where people endorse skills and delete the endorsements if you don’t endorse them back or if you don’t endorse them as many as they endorsed you.
Also, from a sheer value standpoint, an individual’s recommendation for you will always be more valuable than that individual’s endorsement, even though in the long run, # of credible endorsements speak a lot about you than recommendations.
Here are some of my thoughts and conclusions around this social experiment -
- Reciprocity seems like an unspoken rule – This seems to be an overwhelming expectation – with my own direct experience as well as with people I spoke with regarding endorsements. Times when people solicit you to endorse them in return for their endorsements and other times they straight up harras you. This is very much akin to some of the spammers in the world of Twitter – You follow me and I will follow you.
- When it comes to Endorsements, huge egos are at play – I have purposely ignored to see what would happen if I didn’t “endorse back” someone who deserves some endorsements. To my surprise, their original endorsements have been removed after few days! This is a big shocker for me.
- Mutual friends & partiality in endorsements don’t get along – When you rate two peers inconsistently on skills they both pride themselves (like endorse Product manager to only one even though both of them are equally good and skilled at Product management), you start a pissing contest – most of the time without any straight confrontation.
- That’s not a skill I am proud off – re-endorse me! – Thanks to LinkedIn’s auto recommendation of skills based on your profile, most of the people I spoke to were unhappy about some of the skills that were automatically chosen for them. I heard one person contemplating to contact all the people who endorsed him on a particular skill to re-endorse for some other more relevant skill. Another wished he could change the skill text without losing the endorsements for that skill.
So, how can LinkedIn make these endorsements more credible and experience less controversial/painful? While it is too soon to conclude where the crowd sourced endorsements could go for LinkedIn, here are some recommendations -
- Endorsements are not same as Follow! – People should not be endorsing others and then remove them the next day. If they are not sure about endorsing someone, they should not endorse to begin with.
- If you insist on leaving “undo” feature, then at least insist on getting rational feedback on why someone wants to undo their endorsement just a few days after they endorsed that person.
- For Credibility, lets focus on Quality than Quantity- LinkedIn can make these endorsements more credibility by offering rich data around individual endorsements and individual motives behind endorsements. Such as -
- Displaying # of endorsements given vs # of endorsements got will give you some understanding of the value of endorsements.
- Publish like an Endorsement Gradient that is calculated based on – # of endorsements given by those who did not get an endorsement vs # of endorsements given by those who got an endorsement.
- Maybe an infographic about who (as in relationship – professional or personal) actually endorsed to learn why they endorsed – if all your endorsements are coming from your family members or close friends who never worked with you, then we know how valuable your endorsements are.
- Percentile the endorsements by skill or overall – When you crowd source people to endorse, some kind of percentile for individual skill endorsements or total endorsements – based on industry, education qualification, # of years of experience, etc – would be very useful.
- Educate your users that endorsements are not social convention! – This is very important. When someone on the street says hello to you, you say hello back to them – that is social convention. Endorsements should not be social convention. Period! Educate your users with proper “coach marks” and alerts.
As per LinkedIn users, to create more credibility for your endorsements, stick to following principles -
- Tell your endorsors to only endorse if they feel strongly about it. You do the same.
- Tell your endorsors that you will not be reciprocating them back. Reiterate that endorsements should not fit social convention. If they try to obligate you, be polite and say that you don’t know enough about them on that particular skill to endorse.
As per endorsing me, take a wild guess!
@Vsistla
Tags: Facebook, Linkedin, Online Communities, Skill, Skills & Expertise, Social network, Twitter
Posted in Anthropology, Attention, Crowd Sourcing, Customers, Endorsements, Follow, Gamification, Influencer, Innovation, Linkedin, Motivators, Professional Connections, Psychology, Relationships, Social Capital, social networks, sociology, Twitter, User Behavior Data, Wisdom of crowd | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2012
Value attribution is a basic innate human behavioral tenet that superimposes characteristics and qualities of an individual or thing when we are assessing the “objective” value of the individual or thing. In other words we tend to stick with the “perceived value” of a thing or individual over its “objective value”. Our perceptions from our own culture, past experiences, diagnostic biases take over and trump our ability to assess based on the real objective values.
Value attribution phenomenon was demonstrated by Joshua Bell – one of the finest violinists and Washington Post in 2010 in Washington D.C. at a Subway station where over a 1000 people walked by without paying attention when Joshua Bell – one of the best known violinists in the world played for over 45 mins on his $3.5 Million worth violin – at a busy Subway stations in D.C. Metro.
Value attribution is all around us – every time you try to interact with someone who is more accomplished than you or in a different social strata …..some of this is very much reflected in our Zombie relationships we have built around us via social networks.
Our media industry also plays into “value attribution”. We see this in typical headlines and trade journals as well – where if someone famous or accomplished gives a sound bite, that gets more visibility and credibility than someone who is nobody although both of them concluded the same thing. Specifically when I was a research analyst early 2000s anything I said was picked up as a quote and listed here and here but no one cares two hoots even if I had said something more profound via my blogs or otherwise without such a credible “qualification”.
How is “value attribution” related to startups, entrepreneurs and investors?
Well, let me tell you that its spread intravenously through out the entire industry – for worse.
Entrepreneurs:
Whether you are a first time entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur, you do face negative and positive biases respectively that adversely affect you, regardless of the bias.
For first time entrepreneurs, most investors – angels and VCs alike have a negative bias for the inexperienced and lack of credibility. The mentality is if you didn’t do this before why would we invest in you and take a bigger risk.
Where as for a seasoned or more than once entrepreneur – angels & VCs – especially those who have already invested or saw the entrepreneur execute in the past – give a positive bias – and are lot more inclined to invest. Most investors are ignorant of the fact that success is not fungible and every startup would have similar as well as unique challenges. Millions of investor dollars go in the gutter because of positive bias towards serial entrepreneurs.
Investors:
For one of my previous startups, many investors have told me that they would only invest in entrepreneurs with whom they have worked in the past.
While taking the “known devil is better than the unknown god” approach works in most cases, I am willing to bet that statistically investors might lose “more” on startups that they have not invested but should have than the startups they have invested based on the “value attributions”.
Investors – angels as well as VCs alike give higher weight towards existing relationships, past experiences & emotionally charged biases when they deal with known entrepreneurs. On the flip side, they go the other extreme when they deal with first time entrepreneurs with perceived biases.
Investor or entrepreneur or just about anyone – approach all your interactions with people (strangers or friends) around you as if its a privilege for you to interact with them!
Especially first time entrepreneurs should create interesting avenues and opportunities to overshadow “value attribution” that they will inevitably face when they want to build their startup and do fund raising. There is no check list I can provide but will tell you that its your mind set and perspective that will help you overcome this dogma.
Tags: Business, Entrepreneur, Investor, Joshua Bell, Relationships, Startup company, Subway, Value Attribution, Washington D.C, Washington Post
Posted in Angel Investor, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Influencer, Innovation, Investing, Investors, Psychology, Relationships, sociology, Startup, Value Attribution, Venture Capitalist | No Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Recently someone told me that they don’t read any emails coming from Linkedin and suggested me to contact them directly via their emails instead through Linkedin messaging.
That got me thinking about the connections and friends we have built in the past half a dozen or so years – via Linkedin & Facebook.
There is a reason why I try to contact my Linkedin contacts via Linkedin messaging – the fear that the person will not even recognize my email if I send a direct email. At least if I send it via Linkedin, they can quickly look at my background and at least realize that I am part of their Linkedin contacts. That’s travesty but that’s true.
Why did we come to where we are today …….
Linkedin was one of the first social networks I embraced despite joining many others that came before that. Like me, most of the first wave of Linkedin users were very eager to connect and link with others – on just the criteria of being on the same network. It was the “in” thing for all of us – professionals and students like.
While people who are already Linkedin users were lot more cautious when accepting friend requests via Facebook, most of the users who are new to social networks were lot more accepting towards Facebook requests. Similar behavior persisted on Linkedin as well from first time social network users.
At a broad level, most of the connections have fallen into one of these categories -
- Connected with people you knew in real world until that point - emotional connections.
- Connected with anyone you met at a networking event or party – in hopes of a job or date or some short term incentive - opportunistic connections.
- Connected with anyone who are contacts by situation – like your college acquaintances, your current girl friend’s/boy friend’s friends, etc – situational connections.
- Connected due to obligations – your friends friends, your office colleagues, your boss etc – obligatory connections.
This overly complacent behavioral patterns led to couple of scenarios -
1. Even thought you are connected to people on Linkedin and Facebook – you are not emotionally connected with them – even as casual acquaintances.
2. Due to emotionless connections – over the years – with growing & changing socio, economic, cultural & geographical parities (fact of life) between the so called “friends/contacts”, these so called friends turned short of fiends.
Due to the above reasons – our situational, obligatory & opportunistic connections have turned into sour puss within our existing connections. Now its too late – so, some of us have deliberately removed such contacts from our networks and others have left them like old pair of sneakers – neither useful nor do we have the heart to part with them. These are Zombie relationships – you cannot get rid of them and you cannot ignore them either.
- One of those Zombies for my contacts!
This blog is inspired by two new startups I recently ran into – Mingle (http://www.mingle.com) and Pearescope (http://www.Pearescope.com). Founders in both the startsup are solving a very important aspect of social networking & relationships. Certainly check them out.
Tags: Facebook, Incentive, Linkedin, Online Communities, Social network, User
Posted in Anthropology, anti-social, Facebook, Innovation, Linkedin, Network, social networks, sociology | 4 Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Every time we stumble upon a new concept, we extrapolate its use cases across everything we can imagine only to realize that it doesn’t work in every instance! While some other times, we bring those use cases to market much sooner than the market is ready for them. Whether it is the most advanced hard disk drive – Kitty Hawk- from HP in early 1990s, or video streaming in the mid 1990s or online adv supported dot.com ventures in late 1990s, we have left a trail of such untimely ventures in the past.
Welcome to Social TV!Social TV is in its infancy and its good to understand the rules of Social TV based on current market conditions, limitations and end user’s expectations. These rules might not be relevant once the market matures with a different ecosystem than the early days of Social TV.
I define Social TV is an interactive television viewing experience with one or more individuals who are not co-located.
These groups of viewers can not only interact with each other via Television but also with any other devices. In case of certain genre shows such as reality TV or live competition, active social TV viewers can easily influence others in their voting/sentiment.
TV watching has been a fairly lonely experience until now. With connected TVs hitting over 40 million sales by the end of 2011, it doesn’t have to be a only experience. That was also one of the reasons why more youth are spending majority of their time Online rather than watching TV – despite good quality and compelling content.
- When you are in the theater
Social TV is akin to going to movies with a bunch of your friends without Shhing …..and turning off your cell phones while watching.
At least a “pinch hit” substitute for going to movies.
That said, these are the basic rules of Social TV.
- Social TV is not for everyone – Social TV is a very interactive and passive experience unlike traditional TV viewing. Most of us are accustomed to this passive experience and might not take to Social TV experience as some of the younger generations might. So, there will be some significant parity between how each generation approaches Social TV. Industry should be mindful of such generational parities in building their Social TV platforms.
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- Social TV is not for every type of content/show/movie – Just the way not all types of content evokes similar/same reaction and engagement, Social TV is not for every time of content. Social TV is ideal for content that is inherently debatable, passionate with high emotions and opinionated.
- Social TV is most compelling when it gives a strong enough reason for the audience to change their viewing patterns and behavior! – Social TV is not just about chatting and interacting with other viewers. Social TV should be able to change the user behavior – at its fundamental level. For example- People who are fans of a show who watch the show in “time shift mode” should find compelling reasons to watch the show “live” along with thousands and millions of other fans. That would dictate the success of Social TV.
- Social TV with well-thought through privacy options is very critical. Privacy will be one of the cornerstones of Social TV. Your entertainment viewing options would have profound impact on who wants to be your friend and how close they want to maintain their friends with you. Social TV adds another source of information – about you – to your friends. Your reputation, persona, personality, priorities, values and principles get re-evaluated in the eyes of the world. So, privacy becomes that much more important.
- Social TV should be non intrusive – should not spoil the experience of watching the show or movie. Done right, Social TV should not negatively impact the viewing experience. If anything, it should enhance it.
- Social TV gets interesting when there are two or more sides/teams/parties – aka – Sports is the most apt genre for Social TV. Yes – Social TV thrives when there are sides, teams, emotions and passions. Sports content is most suitable for Social TV interactions.
- Social TV is not just socializing while watching TV ….its also bringing TV to social networks and online communities. Social TV brings conversations from online/web to your living room. Your Online communities enter your living room.
- Conversation is the engine between social TV – content is just a topic at hand! That’s correct – Social TV enables the conversations, heated and passionate debates in real time instead of waiting until the Water Cooler moment the next day morning.
- Image by dennis -Nothing to talk at Water Coolers – via Flickr
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- Social TV thrives on the principle that we often look to others when we make media consumption decisions. We are less hardwired about these decisions than life changing/serious decisions
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- We are heavily influenced by the people in our physical space than remote. So, your social interactions vary based on who and how many are around you while watching TV. You might interact lot more with your remote buddies when you are watching TV alone versus with someone in the room. As George Custanza from Seinfeld would say, the “World’s Could Collide” that might lead to interesting scenarios - based on type of conversations and your company in the living room.
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- People care deeply about how they look to others! Social TV is no different – if users don’t have appropriate tools to control how they are perceived by others, Social TV will die. Humans self-censor and we cannot live without it ….
- Social TV is most suited for Sporting Events, Live Events and Reality Television – Based on above rules and scenarios, I feel Social TV is most suited for Sporting, Live and Reality TV Content - in that order.
Tags: Arts, Conversations, Interactive, Interactive television, Privacy, Reality Television, Seinfeld, Social network, Social TV, Sports Content, Streaming media, Television
Posted in Apple TV, Apps, Attention, Broadcasters, Customers, Facebook, Home, Influencer, Information Age, Innovation, Internet, iTV, Over the top, Privacy, Real Time, Reputation, Social Capital, Social Grooming, social networks, Social TV, sociology, Twitter, virtual world | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
2nd generation Social Network – Facebook (I consider Friendster to be first generation) is acquiring a tiny little start up which only tracks what you are doing at this moment ….. I wonder if this is FB’s way to hedge against growing popularity of Twitter by building some in house tools and resources in case Twitter becomes too hard to deal with …..or a precursor to launching their own micro blogging feature that is not so tightly intertwined with FB site?
Regardless – activity and stream have become such an important aspect of online and virtual communities – proving that being in the know and sharing are such important aspects of your existence! Gone are the days when you call or visit someone to find out what they are up to, I guess!!!!!
http://blog.hotpotato.com/post/982892868/weve-moved-to-facebook
http://hotpotato.com/
Tags: Hot Potato, Microblogging, Status
Posted in Attention, Facebook, Information Age, Internet, Reputation, Social Capital, Social Grooming, social networks, sociology, Twitter | No Comments »
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
If you have not checked out ChatRoulette, check it out …but very cautiously ….. and make sure it is not during business hours over your corporate network. For those of you who want to just read about it, ChatRoulette is a Web Application – that combines the boring chat and Webcam experience with “chance” i.e roulette ….. what’s so great about it? If you throw such an App in the wild with millions of people, what comes out of that is nothing short of the world itself …….for now, its all smut but that’s only the start!
ChatRoulette was created by a Russian teenage over a weekend has become the latest breading ground for people to interact with complete and total strangers …….this is Social Networking 2.0 in my view.
Here is how it works – in its current instantiation – You open ChatRoulette.com in your browser and it will ask your permission to use your Webcam and microphone. As soon as you accept, you “spin” the wheel to see who is out there to chat or interact with you. Once the system finds a partner, you have an option to interact with that person or disconnect and spin again. As Forrest Gump’s mom would say, its a box of chocolates …. you never know what you are going to get ….except that in the case of ChatRt, you most certainly can guess what you might run into!
Some of non scientific analysis by Casey Neistat is shown in the image here.
Agreed that most of what you see in ChatRoulette is smut and desperation …… but that will ultimately be over shadowed by interesting and innovative applications …….either out of ChatRoulette or some copy cat down the line …..
So, with that said, here is my top 5 enhancement list to ChatRoulette concept …..
5. Just the way you have Seeders and Leechers in the world of P2P, identify users based on what they want to do – contribute, just watch, listen, chat, and so forth. This way, user can select the type of their audience.
4. Create lead generation and brand marketing channels – a very powerful application. If I am looking to buy a brand new TV, I want to sign into the Electronics Channel and consume messages about the latest TV and maybe interact with the customer service and brand representatives – a good source of revenue for ChatRoulette.
3. Ability for users to bookmark certain contributors – for an added premium. This gets into another source of revenue for ChatRoulette. Contributors get compensated by their regular audience and ChatRoulette makes a % of that exchange. For such paid audience, the odds of getting the bookmarked contributor will be increased.
2. Currently ChatRt brings the content from its audience to its audience – why not add some automated sources of content – potentially from libraries of interesting video and audio content cataloged over the years? Contributors could plug in their hundreds of hours of content from Youtube and Podcasts and the likes into the mix.
1. Create “specific” channels and let people sign in with proper credentials to contribute to the ecosystem. This way, people with various objectives get to spin the wheel and interact with what they are looking for; in short vertically integrated roulette’s ……for the masses! Auctions (ebay is so 1990s), live shows (Broadway is so 20th century) and so on …..With some “on demand” elements to ChatRt, many industries such as recruiting, dating, shopping, cooking, and entertainment might go through massive disruptions in the near future !
Happy interaction gambling!
-Vamsi
Opinions expressed are my own and not of my employer!
Tags: branding, Chat, Facebook, Internet, Marketing, Roulette, video, webcam
Posted in Ads, Analytics, Automation, Convergence, Entrepreneurship, Facebook, Google, Information Age, Internet, Social Capital, social networks, sociology, virtual world, Web 2.0, Web 2.0, Widgets | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 15th, 2010
SpellingBee – A tradition that started somewhere around 1875 as fun and friendly exercise is becoming irrelevant in the information age by the minute. I got that realization when my 9 year old nephew didn’t have to know the exact spelling to a word while typing his school home work in Microsoft Word.
So, is the SpellingBee
heading into a Web …..biting the dust?
Over the decades until 1980s, with heavy use of Typewriters and less intelligent early computers, spelling accurately carried its cache. In the age we live in with teens spending 80% to 90% of their writing either on a computer or on a cell phone/text, how relevant is Spelling for the next generations? I proved my case if you know these acronyms – LOL, JK, TC, TXT or these emoticons – 
, 
and so forth …..
Unlike the title suggests, the issue at hand is much larger than Irrelevant SpellingBee …..
Over the years, in the civilized world, we have dropped few habits and picked up some newer ones -
For example …..
During the early days of Automobile, drivers mentally calculated the distance they were traveling and made sure there is a gas station (near by) or have enough gas for their trip. Today, we get an alert in our dash board when we have 1/4th tank.
We used to manage our circadian rhythms to wake ourselves in the morning and now depend on Alarm clocks.
I used to remember all the phone numbers of my friends and family. Today, I need to look up my address book even for my own number, sometimes.
While driving I don’t have to remember which way I go to my destination. My GPS takes me where ever I want and brings me back home.
This generation has lesser physical activities than the previous generation – as part of their day to day routine.
We live an age of abundance and automation. We can get away giving less work for our brain to get through our day than ever before. While some of us are making use of that unused brain power for more complex thinking where as most of us relish the opportunity not to use the brain power at all.
The issue is not how much of memory or brain power we use but how we use it and what are the long term physiological and biological implications of that change. For example, what part of our brain or memory do we use when we remember and retrieve phone numbers and directions? Would that activity be replaced with something else to keep those parts of the brain active and sharp? In the book Think Smart author Richard Restak suggests that all parts our brain need regular exercise to avoid neurological and other ailments at later stages of our life.
Just the way current generation Gyms and Workout franchises have made their way to get us into shape, should we have clinics and gyms for training and keeping our brain and its parts active?
to
to
Just the way Physical labor (where you get paid for physical activities) replaced by Gyms (where you pay to get physical activities) in the desktop age, are we to see businesses where we pay to use our brain and keep our memory sharp in the near future?
I think governments, universities and educational institutions should collaborate with citizens to refine and redefine school curriculum based changing market needs – on a 3 to 5 year basis.
I will leave with you a fascinating talk by Ken Robinson who talks about a complete overhaul of our current education system at TED Conference.
—–
@Vsistla
Opinions expressed are mine own
Tags: Automation, Brain, Education, Information, Innovation, Internet, Memory, Neocortex, School, Students, TED, Universities
Posted in Analytics, Anthropology, Attention, Automation, Brain, Focus, Information Age, Innovation, Internet, Memory, Neocortex, physiology, Research, School, sociology, TED, Universities | No Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Are humans programmed to take chance ….multitask ……even when the chance could be fatal?
Why does the government need to give you a ticket if you choose not put a seat belt despite the unequivocal benefits of putting on the belt? Is the cost of ticket a bigger deterrent than actual benefit of putting seat belts; past three decades linked 60% of the fatalities to lack of seat belt.
With more technologically wired we get, we continue to take chance and live on the edge. Living on the edge doesn’t have to mean skydiving or deep sea explorations. People texting while driving the Avenues of Americas during rush hour could amount for one.
VS
I would take a wild guess that the early Neanderthals had to divide their attention between only two things as long as one of them is to protect themselves from getting mauled by a wild beast. Multitasking has been the norm for the homo sapiens for ever …..so, what’s new?
Jeff Hawkins in “On Intelligence” says that we process information through our sensory hierarchies and based on the information, neocortex predicts what comes next. Our predictions are based on our prior experiences. That is the reasons we have heightened sense of attention when we do something for the first time and once we know the drill, we start to rely on our neocortex predictions.
So, this means that humans tend to rely more on their prediction capabilities based on prior experiences and that dependency grows with increase in experience, familiarity and knowledge. The cab driver on 6th avenue is able to multitask more efficiently than young college student driving in NYC for the first time.
Get this – what happens when our perceptual predictions fail? Accidents happen in case of driving while texting …..
Has anyone tabulated an algorithm for calculating an average human’s attention to task at hand based on surrounding factors and activities being multitasked?
Assuming all humans have similar prediction systems in their brain, what would be the attention “factor” for someone texting while jaywalking in NYC?
NOTE to governments and legal systems – if you want to save lives, laws, tickets and fines won’t do – its the neocortex, damn it!
Regardless of built in prediction systems in our head, what motivates us to take the chance? What came first – neocortex prediction system or our need (and in some cases want) to take chance and multitask? Despite oodles of research and conclusive studies on benefits of focusing 100% on the task at hand than multitasking, we continue to multitask in risky situations as well. Check out this talk about Winifred Gallagher on Rapt Attention.
Despite such research and proven benefits of attention and focus, we are programmed to multitask.
I did a poll last week on what some of the most intelligent folks – aka – my linkedin contacts think about fatal multitasking. Amazing most people concluded that this propensity has more to do with our social obligations and just because technology allows us to do rather than any ingrain human tendencies. Not surprisingly though, more men responded that it was a social contract than women, where as more women discarded this behavior as a side serving of technological evolution.
So, instead of focusing creating legal and monitory deterrents, I would say lets focus on technological innovation to support our neocortex prediction system to multitask. May be 100,000 years from now, our neocortex prediction system might be lot more accurate in calculating the odds of a drunk driver while you are texting on the road or of an unsuspected pedestrian while you are driving and updating your Facebook status.
Tags: Attention, chance, DNA, Driving, Facebook, Fatal, Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins, Multitask, Neocortex, Prediction, Rapt, Risk, sms, Winifred Gallagher
Posted in Analytics, Anthropology, Attention, Brain, DNA, Facebook, Fatal, Focus, Jaywalking, Memory, Multitask, Neocortex, sociology, Texting while driving | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 26th, 2009
In geek speak, I am saying that Dunbar # has less to do with # of Social Network Connection one might have to generate meaningful relationships ….
When I read Seth Godin’s blog about Dunbar number this morning, it got me thinking ……
Seth’s blog
Dunbar postulated that the typical human being can only have 150 friends. One hundred fifty people in the tribe. After that, we just aren’t cognitively organized to handle and track new people easily. That’s why, without external forces, human tribes tend to split in two after they reach this size. It’s why WL Gore limits the size of their offices to 150 (when they grow, they build a whole new building).
Facebook and Twitter and blogs fly in the face of Dunbar’s number. They put hundreds or thousands of friendlies in front of us, people we would have lost touch with (why? because of Dunbar!) except that they keep digitally reappearing.
I am not qualified to comment on Dunbar’s reasoning with respect to human “neocortex” limitations to maintain social relationship, but I feel Dunbar was trying to say something else and has less to do with number of (useful and productive) social connections one might have in the 21st century. Somehow his core research on tribal formations and groups got dragged into the current generation social networking paradigms.
Going along with the assumption that Dunbar’s # can be used in the context of current generation Social Networking ……. here are my thoughts.
According to Wikipedia, Dunbar got to this number with this kind of research/analysis, amongst others …
Dunbar’s surveys of village and tribe sizes also appeared to approximate this predicted value, including 150 as the estimated size of a neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline’s sub-specialization; 150 as the basic unit size of professional armies in Roman antiquity and in modern times since the 16th century; and notions of appropriate company size.
Regardless of whether an individual is able to build a cohesive relationship with all the 500+ Linkedin or Facebook connections or not, lets analyze Dunbar’s analysis.
1. 150 is the mean number concluded based on historic tribal group sizes – from the hunter-gatherer societies.
That is fundamentally a flawed argument – because the limitations, challenges and ways of life are so different between the hunter-gatherer society and the 21st century.
- In that era people got out of their beds (realistically patches of grass in their caves) for survival and sustenance and current generation human to grow up the Maslow’s pyramid.
2. Dunbar is talking about 150 as the size for the groups to have incentive to “remain together”.
- Current generation social networkers are not planning to “remain together” when they add their friends. Eschewing the real motivations and reasons for someone to “add” new friends(maybe in another blog), I am certain it is not to “remain together”.
3. Dunbar concludes that 42% of an individuals time is spent towards social grooming and nearly all the people in these tribes are physically close.
- While being physically close was a must in the tribal era, but it is not necessary in the 21st century to build and maintain value add relationships. Thanks to technological innovation, social grooming should not take 50% of your day’s activity.
4. Dunbar does conclude that “language” as one of the tools for early humans to do social grooming. In fact he concludes that because of language, humans have a bigger Dunbar number than primates. This again proves my point that – on top of language, we have many other tools – that let us build “valuable” social relationships – albeit virtual – potentially increasing the Dunbar limit of 150.
PS: Please note that above data points about Dunbar are taken from Wikipedia.
PS: I have not read Dunbar’s book – Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language.
Disclaimer – Opinions expressed are my own and not of my employer.
Tags: Anthropology, Dunbar, Facebook, Groups, Linkedin, social networks, Tribes, Twitter
Posted in Anthropology, anti-social, Dunbar, Facebook, Influencer, Linkedin, Social Grooming, social networks, sociology, Tribes, Twitter, virtual world | No Comments »
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
Few days back I went to NYPL Live with my friend Caroline Waxler to listen to Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey & Steven Johnson (Twitter’s 35th rank).
Shepard with his Obama photo remix has ignited an age old debate between creative artists and bureaucrats.
While the focus of the session was on remix of music, video and art, I realized that we live in an age of remix!
Most of the religious that sprung up in the past millennium have their origins from older religious. As Thomas Friedman put it, with the world becoming flat, different races, religious and cultures are remixing and creating their own versions.
Royal chariot remixed into a farmer’s cart centuries ago …….
Science, awareness and opportunities are bulldozing the age old dogmatic barriers of the hierarchical societies.
Seal and Heidi Klum are remixing; 
Taye Diggs and Idina Mendel are remixing; Eva Longoria and Tony Parker are remixing;
Tiger Woods has remixed twice.
Remix has been part of our DNA since the advent of primordial soup – only now, we kicked it up a few notches.
In 2008 two bloggers Robin and Danielle ran contests for Recipe Remixes – and many people flooded them with their morphed up remixed recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Arfi, an Indonesian living in New Zealand has created remix Crepes. 
Remixing is part of our evolution! Remix is innovation!Remix is normal![polldaddy poll=1412116]
Out of every 50 twits I get, 10% are retwits with a twist of their – again a remix!
Viral videos in a completely different context is a type of its own remix.
Can you think of any other interesting remixes?Remixes that have influenced the society, culture and religion?
For example -
+
=
AutoRisk – a remix of Scooter + Rikshaw
Tags: art, Heidi Klum, Lawrence Lessig, music, obama, remix, Retwits, Seal, Shepard Fairey, Steven Johnson, Thomas Friedman, Tiger Woods, Twitter
Posted in Influencer, sociology, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
When you go to a networking event or get together and you run into someone you know and they snub you for NO apparent reason – what would you do? Would you confront them right then and there to make peace or would you 
keep it to yourself even if it bothered you or reason out that there might be a valid justification for that person’s behavior and move on? Most of us end up choosing the later – keep that to ourselves and move on even if it bothered us to some extent.
Recently someone removed themselves from my Linkedin contact list. I realized that when I wanted to drop a note to say hi and see what that person is up to. Removing someone from your network – after accepting them once – on Linkedin or Facebook is as good as snubbing someone at a party or get 
together in our real world. Should we follow a similar physical world protocol and move on or should we try to find out and then decide – either to make peace or move on?
While our response to such situations might vary based on the circumstances – ex girlfriend, disgruntled subordinate, rude neighbor, etc – we tend to be lot more audacious in the virtual world.
Last fifteen years in the virtual world showed that people show less inhibition than in the real life. For example, more people blog or write on the web than actually go to a podium and deliver a speech about the same topic. More people upload their silly videos than act silly on a stage or in public.
Virtual world is also lot less intrusive than the physical world. For example we can accept complete strangers as our friends or contacts in the online world where as complete opposite in the real world. One of the main reasons why Burger King’s campaign for a free whopper for every 10 deleted friends on Facebook took off so quickly (until Facebook pulled that out) is because of this laissez faire mentality in the virtual world.
Now the question is – will these habits or behavior in the virtual world influence our physical world? If so, in what way and how? Can we drop our inhibitions and be more audacious in the real world?
On the flip side …..
Over time will we start to emulate our real world behavior in the virtual world? Will the virtual world start to become as intrusive as the physical world in the future?
Thoughts on Ideation
What if social networking sites – LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace provide more options for people to communicate their emotions and true intentions?For example, I don’t want to connect/be friends with you anymore because we don’t have anything in common or you spam too much or don’t like your content or links, you are marrying my ex love, etc, etc.
It would be a good research area to investigate if the virtual mores are influencing our real life interactions and if so in a positive or negative way.
Posted in anti-social, Network, sociology, virtual world | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 19th, 2009
People are constantly influenced by their surrounding and other people around them in their decision making. This is the fact of life for many centuries. Call it osmosis or institutionalization or mores of a society (stone age to modern civilization), people do not make their decisions in isolation – no matter how important or trivial the decisions are.
My first car in America was VW Fox – my friend Matt Guernsey helped me in making a decision to buy it – at a Seven Eleven shop in Pontiac, Michigan for $2000. Until that point, I never heard of Volkswagen.
[polldaddy poll=1288778]
My father and mother have influenced me to take up engineering and technology right from my 6th grade and that led me to become an engineer. The three universities I applied for my Masters were chosen based on three personal connections I had in those universities.
We all have forced and inadvertent influencer’s in our lives. Over the centuries, the art of influencing has moved from inadvertent methods to forced and intentional techniques. Mass market outlets such as televisions, newspapers, banner posters and radio have used influencer’s to sway our decision making in a particular direction.
How does inadvertent influencing happen? – I guess as the name sounds, you get influenced by someone who you look up to and try to emulate them or follow in similar paths.
Am sure Columbus or Vasco da Gama were influenced by someone in their society to take up sailing/exploration to distant lands. I am sure Shakespeare was influenced by his distant uncle or a contemporary poet. Most of musician’s kids gets influenced by their parents to take up music and dance.
[polldaddy poll=1288741]
Then, what about forced or intentional influencing? For lack of better, this is equivalent to constant brain washing – directly or indirectly. Through mass media outlets, leveraging celebrity and experts to influence has been the biggest side serving of 19th and 20th century technological innovations.
There are common characteristics for these two influencers – these two are very unstructured. Both of them leverage emotional capital while the earlier version has higher personal touch to it.
Enter Structured Influencing ……
With the advent of Internet, Web and infinite sources of information, data and access, we are moving towards structured and impersonal influencing ……one has access to oodles of statistics, metrics, reviews, and information to make their decisions – via the web – no matter how trivial or crucial the decision is. Whether you shop at Amazon or Netflix or watch at YouTube or Hulu or plan your evening via Yelp or CitySearch – collective knowledge and experience can suggest you the best options based on wisdom of crowds.
Out goes the personal touch and emotional capital in influencing ….how bad or good is this? What are the long term sociological implications of impersonal influencing?
Ideation and Opportunities of Improvement -
While there is lot of information on the web, its time to qualify that for better decision making. Reviews on Amazon or Netflix or Youtube are good but who is rating or keeping track of the reviewers and the quality of reviews they offer?
Reviews have rating and ranking but I have not seen reviewers with similar yard stick. Filtering the reviews by the quality/rating/ranking of the reviewers is also very important.
Tags: Rating, Review
Posted in Influencer, Metadata, social networks, sociology, Web, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Monday, December 8th, 2008
A month ago I was visiting Korea and Taiwan on business with some of my colleagues. I was sitting in a cab with my colleague Adam Powers heading to our hotel. It was a 45 min ride back to the hotel. As soon as we got back into the cab, we pulled out our Blackberries to check our emails followed by our voice mails. Then we both joked about the fact that we are so hooked onto our “email” clients and went back to our Blackberries. I checked by Facebook account to update my status to make sure all my virtual friends and contacts know where I am, responded to few of my MySpace buddies and posted few comments to Twitter. Congratulated a contact in Italy on his first born, posted a comment to one other friend regarding his obsession with Heather Lockear and scanned recently uploaded photos on my Flickr account. Before we knew we were at the hotel. 45 mins went by without me knowing anything more about Adam or his interests or his latest projects or his weekend plans. We conversed for less than a minute in those 45 minutes. In the “pre-Blackberry” era we would have talked up a storm.
Have we become “anti-social” in our physical life where as “super social” over electronic communication?
What are the sociological implications of a society that is tethered to be electronically social but not so plugged in with the surroundings?
What are the physiological implications – especially our eyes, ears and other sense organs with gadgets plugged into our ears and glued to our eyes?
We are so oblivious to our surroundings – in public places – trains, buses, etc – we have become completely irrelevant to the person sitting next to us. Days are gone when you can eves drop on the conversations to either quench your gossip curiosity or use that to build a new friendship or join in the conversation or help them with something – because you are so busy listening into your iPod and playing solitaire on your iPhone.
Seeds for Ideation …..
The way I see, there are few questions that are yet to be answered – in turn lead us to some innovation.
1. Physiological implications of getting plugged in electronically – on our sense organs.What can be done to mitigate them in the long run?
2. Sociological implications of being anti-social in the physical world.
If we put aside physiological implications, I feel the sociological angle could be tackle much easily with the help of same technology that brought us to this juncture.
Innovate on head phones that let you capture noise from the surroundings, filter/distill the relevant information into your ear drums. This could be a feature that you could set on or off. For example, you could customize the headphones to capture words such as your name, bomb, or your mother tongue and so forth.
Come up with applications that run on your mobile phone that tell you if any0ne in your address book is also on the same train in the same compartment using LBS/GPS/Bluetooth technologies.
The goal should be to use the same technology to fulfill use cases in public spaces that were prevalent in the pre-cell phone/blackberry era.
Posted in anti-social, blackberry, Innovation, physiology, Product Evolution, social networks, sociology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
