Social Media Helps Folks be - Big Surprise! - More Social

"Social Media Make You More Sociable, Study Says"
Hugh Collins, DailyFinance (November 24, 2010)

"Social media websites such as Facebook make people more sociable, researchers say.

"The findings contradict a widespread belief that online socializing is replacing in person contact as people shun the world beyond their computer screen.

" 'Our findings suggest that Facebook is not supplanting face-to-face interactions between friends, family and colleagues,' said S. Craig Watkins, an associate professor of radio, TV and film at the University of Texas.

" 'In fact, we believe there is sufficient evidence that social media afford opportunities for new expressions of friendship, intimacy and community, Watkins said, according to Reuters...."

The Lemming might be more surprised about the result of this research, if the Lemming didn't remember when chronic hand-wringers were bemoaning the death of social interaction - being caused by the telephone.

New technologies - the telephone, television, movable type, the Internet - seem to be scary. To some folks, anyway.

Let's look at what Reuters had to say:

"Facebook makes people more social: study"
Reuters, Edition: U.S. (November 23, 2010 )

"Contrary to common belief social media websites such as Facebook do not weaken personal ties, they strengthen them in unique ways for different age groups, according to a new study.

"The rapid spread of Facebook, which has more than 500 million users worldwide, has prompted concerns about its negative effects, but researchers at the University of Texas have reached a different conclusion....

"...The researchers questioned 900 college students and recent graduates about how and with whom they interact on Facebook.

"More than 60 percent of Facebook users said posting status updates was among the most popular activities, followed by 60 percent who wrote comments on their profile and 49 percent who posted messages and comments to friends.

"The researchers also found that although about the same number of men and women use Facebook, they do so in different ways.

" 'There is a noteworthy difference in orientation in how to use a tool like Facebook. We found that for women the content tends to be more affectionate, and (they) are especially interested in using it for connection,' said Watkins.

" 'For men, it's more functional,' he added.

"Watkins pointed out that, for example, women are more likely to post pictures of social gatherings with friends, while men are more likely to post pictures of hobbies, or post a political or pop-culture related link...."

What! Men and women aren't the same?! Looks like this isn't the eighties any more. And that's another topic. (July 30, 2009)

About online social media involving - of all things - social behavior. Well, like the Lemming said: this may not be quite as amazing as it may seem.

The Lemming also thinks that this is another case of 'what everybody knows' not necessarily being so.

So, does the Lemming thinks that social media will have no effect? That we'll just keep on being social with each other like we did in the nineties? Eighties? Seventies? Do I think Disco is coming back?

Hardly.

Teenagers in the Victorian age didn't spend time on the telephone. Not because they were repressed - the technology wasn't there. By the sixties, the teen with a phone semi-permanently attached to the ear was a feature on the cultural landscape. These days, it's texting.

Details, in the Lemming's opinion, change as technology makes it possible for folks to communicate with each other in new ways. The basics - communicating with friends, meeting new people, and expanding your circle of friends and acquaintances? The Lemming doesn't think that's going to change all that much, as long as we're dealing with human beings.

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Using Facebook Can (Hey! That's Cool!) Result in - Something"
  (September 8, 2010)
• "Twitter Safety Tips: You Probably Know This Already"
  (August 29, 2010)
• "How to Build Influence in Social Media: One Person's Ideas"
  (August 12, 2010)
• "Social Media and - Old Web Habits?!"
  (August 2, 2010)
• ""Multiple E-dentity Disorder" - Or, Welcome to the Real World"
  (July 3, 2010)

My take on technology and people:

• "Mirrors, Television, and MP3 Players"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (November 6, 2010)
• "The Web Rewires Your Brain: Ain't That Great?"
  (July 2, 2010)
• "Next-Generation Prosthetic Hand - and Intel Says Direct Neural Interface Brain Chips by 2020"
  (December 2, 2009)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  (November 14, 2009)
• "Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (October 29, 2009)

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A tip of the hat to Steveology, on Twitter, for the heads-up on the DailyFinance post.

Lemming Tracks: 000 "Sorry, Wrong Number"

The Lemming's household got a phone call from a 000-000-something number. I picked up - got a very quickly spoken "sorry wrong number" from a woman's voice, and the line went dead. The speed with which the voice came on, and then hung up - noiselessly - made me suspect that it's a variation on robocalls.

Checking online, I found the usual 'CIA conspiracy' stuff.

Also this interesting tidbit:

"[Phish] 000-000-1111
Broadband DSLReports.com (October 17, 2010)

"Hi:

I have been getting calls from 000-000-1111. A female voice says "Sorry Wrong Number" and the call is terminated.

After a lot of searching I found this:

"Whois Output for: infolietuva.net

"This domain name has expired and is suspended pending renewal.

"Domain Name Owner:
Roland's International Co.
104 W Chestnut St, Suite 270
Hinsdale, IL 60521
US

"Administrative Contact:
WebMaster, WebMaster
Roland's International Co.
104 W Chestnut St, Suite 270
Hinsdale, IL 60521, US
Phone: 1-000-000-1111 <<----- NOTE
Email: MAIL@ROLANDSINTERNATIONAL.COM...."

As I said, interesting.

My own guess, for what it's worth, is that these 000 calls are being done automatically by someone with flexible ethics, and the hope of selling a list of working telephone numbers to some equally dubious outfit.

If this is so, we can expect quite a few spam telephone calls in the near future. 'Do not call' lists or no.

Robocall Lawsuit: These are the People Who Have Been Annoying You

"Behind a Massive Robocall Scam, Four Human Faces"
FOXNews (June 15, 2009)

" You answer the phone, and it's a recorded message:

" 'By now you should have received your written note regarding your vehicle warranty expiring. This call is to give you a final opportunity to extend coverage before it is too late. Press '1' now to speak to a warranty specialist regarding your options on your vehicle.'

"Upon pressing '1,' you are transferred to a 'warranty specialist' who lies to you, telling you he is affiliated with an automobile dealer or manufacturer and that your warranty is up. And before long, you may have agreed to put $450 down on an extended service contract that costs up to $3,000, the balance to be paid in monthly payments.

"Or maybe you hang up — only to be called again. And again. Because more than a billion of these automatically dialed 'robocalls' have been sent to cell phones, government offices and even 911 operators...."

They're not just annoying: they're illegal.

And, it looks like only four people are behind them. Sure, there are the flunkies picking up the phones and technicians maintaining the equipment: but just a few people running the show:

• Christopher D. Cowart
  • 47
  • Fort Lauderdale, Florida
  • Owns Transcontinental Warranty, a Delaware company based in Fort Lauderdale
• James A. Dunne
  • 36
  • Daytona Beach, Florida
  • Owns Florida-based Voice Touch with his wife, Maureen
• Maureen E. Dunne, nee Maureen Geisen
  • James Dunne's wife
  • "Little information can be found pertaining to her."
• Damian P. Kohlfeld
  • 35
  • Valparaiso, Indiana
  • Owns Network Foundations, which is based in Chicago, Illinois
    (FOXNews)

Once more, those three companies are:

• Transcontinental Warranty
• Voice Touch
• Network Foundations

There's a civil lawsuit going on, involving the Federal Trade Commission.

I don't mean to sound vindictive, but I hope those companies go under, their employees find an honest way to make a buck, and the four people running the show sanctioned so that they can't do any more damage.

There's more than annoyance here.

911 lines and the people who operate them are there to saving lives and deal with emergencies. When robocallers tie up the lines, they can't. I hope nobody's died as a result of the wunderkinds' greed: but we may never know.

And, there's the productivity lost while people answer the phone and discover that it's another robocall. For example, I'm running a tiny business in my home. I hang up at the word "warranty," but that takes a few seconds. I can't simply ignore the phone, and all those seconds wasted add up. Multiply that by whatever power of ten is involved, and you've got a huge amount of wasted time.

A Federal Trade Commission press release (link below) tells a bit about how the operation works.

More:

• "FTC Files Suit to Stop Illegal Robocalls Pushing Vehicle “Warranty” Extensions"
  Federal Trade Commission (May 14, 2009)

Nokia Makes a Wiggly Phone

"The New Nokia 888 Can Change Shapes On The Fly"
The Hottest Gadgets (August 26, 2008)

"Nokia is planning to change the way we think of mobile phones. Their new phone will come in the form of a device that will roll up and mimic a bracelet, bend over and clip to your pocket, wake you up in the morning, form to fit your face when you use it as a phone and more. So far Nokia's calling this cell phone a personal mobile communication device. To me it looks like a revolution in the way you look at a gadget...."

Okay. This is cool. And, I think, practical. One of the illustrations shows the phone worn as a bracelet - and having a screen display that could hold more than a sentence or two.

Impressive.

Why "Hello," and Mark Twain About Telephone Conversations

Why do Americans and other English-speakers say "hello" when they answer the telephone?

We apparently don't know why, but we're pretty sure about who started the custom.

Online:

• "Re: Hello
  The Phrase Finder (October 3, 2002)
  • "...Surprisingly enough, 'hello' didn't become a truly common greeting until the mid 1860s...."
• "Mark Twain Satirizes 'A Telephonic Conversation' "
  History Matters
  • "...Alexander Graham Bell first exhibited his telephone at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, but many people were initially dubious about the utility of Bell's invention. Nevertheless, by the mid-1890s, about 300,000 phones were in use and by World War I, the number reached 10.5 million. Learning to use this new device, Americans wondered what to say to start a telephone conversation. Bell's choice for an initial greeting was 'Ahoy.' Others argued for more formal greetings like 'What is wanted?' or 'Are you there?' In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison, the famous inventor who developed the first practical telephone transmitter, solved the problem by introducing 'Hello!' as the standard English telephone greeting...."
  • A bit after that, History Matters does get around to Mark Twain's essay.

Beware Textwalking and the Thumbs of Death!

No, really. This is one of the Lemming's serious posts.

Textwalking, walking while texting, can be dangerous. So can texting and riding a horse or cooking noodles. The problem is that reading and sending text messages takes your attention, and eyes, off where you are, onto that little screen in your hand.

When people text and walk, Sometimes they run into things. And, sometimes things run into them.

• "ER docs: Don't text and walk, skate _ or cook"
  NPR, from Associated Press (July 30, 2008)
  • "CHICAGO July 30, 2008, 03:31 pm ET · The warning came too late for Barack Obama's adviser: Don't walk and text at the same time.
  • "Obama aide Valerie Jarrett fell off a Chicago curb several weeks ago while her thumbs were flying on her Blackberry.
  • " 'I didn't see the sidewalk and I twisted my ankle,' Jarrett said. 'It was a nice wake-up call for me to be a lot more careful in the future, because I clearly wasn't paying attention and I should have.'..."
• "Letting fingers do the texting can be a real pain"
  Houston Chronicle (July 30, 2008)
  "Doctors: Distracted pedestrians, bicyclists, and even skateboarders, can suffer injuries"
  • "The road rash on his left elbow was the mark of multi-tasking gone awry. With a phone in hand and a skateboard underfoot, 15-year-old Kenny Kitchen said he didn't see the bump in the sidewalk that tipped him down the stairs earlier this week. He was text messaging.
  • "He shrugs off the scrape on his elbow.
  • " 'It was nothing,' he said Wednesday afternoon, taking a break from skateboarding with three buddies in downtown Houston...."
• This is the important part of this post:
  "Injury Prevention"
  American College of Emergency Physicians Foundation (undated)
  "Text Messaging: Emergency Physicians Express Safety Concerns As Kids Go Back To School"
  • "'Plain old common sense' advised; don't text while walking, driving, rollerblading
  • "The nation's youngsters will soon be headed back to school and making new friends in new classes, as well as catching up with old buddies – activities that these days typically spark a flurry of text-messaging, especially among teens and young adults. But the nation's emergency physicians say they are seeing a dangerous trend that can go hand-in-hand with texting: a rise in injuries and deaths related to sending text messages at inappropriate times, such as while walking, driving, biking or rollerblading...."

Some of the emergency room patients just tripped over something or ran into a sign. Then there are those like the young woman in Chicago, who was on the phone when she stepped into the street. Odds are good that she saw the pickup that hit her, since she dropped her phone on the spot, but landed over 20 feet away. She died in the emergency room.

"Hello. You are talking to a machine...."

"Answer Machine Messages "
begent.org

"Looking for some smart message to put on your telephone answering machine?
Here are some real examples ............."

Good for a chuckle, at least. There are quite a few messages here.

Wooden Mobile Phone - No Kidding

""
Fast World (undated)

"One Russian man builds new cases for mobile phones from apple tree
wood. He fully disassembles the new devices and carve a piece-of-art
wooden cases for them, each small part gets its own wooden case - the
antenna, the sim-card, the battery...."

A half-dozen photos show what this remarkable technology-in-art phone looks like.

Better Ideas From Japan: Meow Lingual Cat Translator

"Chat with your cat"
Shiny Shiny - A girl's guide to gadgets (March 29, 2008)

"If you are having communication problems with your cat the Japanese have got the answer. On sale now is the Meow Lingual Cat Translator from Takara, a device that turns all those miaows into human speech."

It's for real. Photo and description.

(Thanks to my oldest daughter, for bringing this to my attention.)

More ideas - good, dubious, and strange - at "Better Ideas From ... "

Telephone Menus: I Think This is a Joke, But You Never Know

" Hello, Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline." plus "Another version"

Enjoy.

Vandals and Data Lines

"Vandals strike 6 more high-speed data sites in the Twin Cities"

The damage has been minimal, this time. "In the span of four days last week, vandals knocked out landline and wireless phone and data service to thousands in St. Paul and Minneapolis."

On the other hand, a small bunch of thugs disrupted the flow of information in part of a small city without too much trouble. That's a concern for anyone who uses the telephone - or the Internet.

Customer Service: Tech Support Frustration isn't all on One Side

"A good reason to bang your head on the table!" "This is the REAL reason why I pity people who are working in the Customer Service line. Boleh mati wor!!!!" (1)

The conversation transcripts read like a blooper reel of tech support calls.

This post has two things going for it, as far as I'm concerned:

1. It's funny!
2. As a one-time customer service and technical support worker, it's good to see that I wasn't the only one getting challenging calls

One of my favorites from this post is:

"Customer: I have a huge problem. A friend has placed a screensaver on my computer, but every time I move the mouse, it disappears !"

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(1) About "Boleh mati wor:" the phrase may be Maylay for "I could die laughing." Or, in could mean something entirely different. Two of the three words show up in "Dr Bhanot's Malay-English Cyber-Dictionary," and two words there, ketawa and tawa, have mean "laugh" (and "laughter," for ketawa) - so "wor" just might have something to do with the "...awa" part of those words. If I'm wrong, and you understand Malay, please treat my attempt at understanding with maaf.

Fifty Years after Sputnik, Satellites are Everywhere

"What's your Sputnik moment?" is a very good look at what's happened in the last fifty years.

The author, Chris Rowan, points out that in the sixties New Zealand was on the other side of the world, as far as people back in England were concerned. Well, they still are, actually: the point is that communication was effectively limited to mail, and that could take weeks to months.

I remember Sputnik, and lived through the explosion of information technology: If you did, to, this post is a good review.

If you didn't, you really ought to read it: and learn how much a few few tin cans being launched into space changed the world.

The Death of Communication Media!!!

You'll have to read "The Death of Blogging, E-Mail, Newspapers, and Telephones" to learn what communication medium actually has disappeared recently.

It's also worth reading as an anodyne for the nearly-constant background of "(fill-in-the-blank) is Dying!" predictions by "experts."

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