NotionsCapital: 2012 in Review

This blog was viewed about 140,000 times in 2012 by readers from 188 countries. Those remaining 7 countries don’t know what they’re missing.

In 2012 there were 454 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 2,693 posts. Most were illustrated with mashups from our Flickr file.

The busiest day of the year was March 6th with 2,654 views. The most popular post that day was a typically hard-hitting think piece, “Oreo Cookie Centennial.” Best ever? 48,132 views of “Congress Reaps Pizza Harvest“ on November 17, 2011. Total views of NotionsCapital.com since August 2007: 1,122,131.

Thanks folks!

(Stats from WordPress.com)

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The Digital Political Divide

“Research has confirmed that the Internet exerts a polarizing force on the electorate. In his 2011 book The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser writes about how search engines and social networks filter out dissenting opinions and offer users only what they want to see. Google and Yahoo draw on a user’s past search preferences when responding to queries, meaning that over time a liberal and a conservative might receive ideologically opposite search results having entered identical information. (Pariser recounts how a conservative entering the letters “BP” into Google received stock tips, whereas a liberal was linked to news stories on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.)

 Similar work by Cass Sunstein, the current Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, shows how the Internet creates “echo chambers” where users surround themselves only with the like-minded. This not only preserves partisanship—it exacerbates it. Sunstein found that pro-choice liberals become more pro-choice if they interact only with other liberals, and anti-abortion conservatives become more anti-abortion after surrounding themselves with other conservatives. The niche driven nature of the Internet is pushing us further and further apart.”

“Is the Internet Polarizing Politics?” Peter James Saalfield, big think

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Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-c4Z

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

NPR Sells Web Services to Stations

National Public Radio execs are on a road trip to demo web services to the network’s 268 affiliated U.S. radio stations. The roadshow is also an effort to calm stations upset by earlier indications that purchase of expensive digital services would be required of all affiliates. NPR recently bought the Public Interactive web services company from Public Radio International.

Total Information War

The U.S. military is determined to prevail on the cyber-psycho-cultural field of battle, winning hearts, minds, and Facebook friends with global information operations. In accordance with Pentagon planning document Joint Vision 2020 (Department of Defense, Joint Vision 2020 [aka DOD JV 2020], 2000), the U.S. military will not rest until it achieves information domain dominance with tactical tweets and barrages of blog posts. The Web has been weaponized, and social media militarized. Sign up now for a career in Information Operations (IO).

The Internet, Democracy, and Repression

Everybody knows that social media challenged or overthrew repressive regimes in North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Everyone knows that the Internet promotes Democracy, right? Not so fast, says Evgeny Morozov.

Mr. Morozov emphasizes that networked digital tools can be used to maintain political power as well as challenge it, and recently spoke to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) about this. The video of his complete lecture is here, but this short animated excerpt is easier to follow and more fun:

Blogging is Dead. Again.

 

“Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people — particularly the younger generation.

The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.”

–“Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter,” Verne G. Kopytoff, New York Times.

 Related: “Social Media and Young Adults,” Amanda Lenhart, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, and Kathryn Zickuhr, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

 Short link: http://bit.ly/hTRv3k

Image (“Anatomy of a Blogger, after Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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A GRAMMY® Award That Would Mean Something

Like the music recording awards show itself, most GRAMMY® nominations are tiresome, but one of tonight’s nominees stands out. It’s an ever-changing music video with singing by a dead man and drawings by two hundred thousand of his admirers across the globe. The video above is just a snapshot of The Johnny Cash Project. Go to the site itself for a richer experience. You can even become part of it by making a drawing. Learn more about the crowd-sourced production from some of its contributors after the jump.

Egypt Shuts Off The Internet

“Egypt may have turned off the Internet one phone call at a time,” Los Angeles Times

“Egypt cuts off internet access,” Charles Arthur, The Guardian

“How Egypt Turned Off the Internet,” Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo

“The Internet goes dark in Egypt,” Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet.com

“Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest,” BBC News

“Egypt’s Internet Blackout: Extreme Example of Just-in-time Blocking,” Masashi Crete-Nishihata and Jillian C. York, OpenNet Initiative

“Egypt: An Internet Black Hole,” Global Voices

“Egypt shutdown worst in Internet history: experts,” Katia Dolmadjian, AFP via Yahoo News

“In Egypt, should Internet access be an inalienable right?” Monica Hesse, Washington Post

“The Tweets Must Flow,” Twitter Blog

“Statement on Internet Shutdown in Egypt,” Global Network Initiative

“Egypt turns off internet, Lieberman wants same option for US,” Sean Bonner, BoingBoing

“Internet Security Savvy is Critical as Egyptian Government Blocks Websites, Arrests Activists in Response to Continued Protest,” Eva Galperin, EFF

“Egypt Cuts Off The Net. Net Fights Back,” Ben Rooney, Wall Street Journal

“6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes and 4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help,” Peter Eckersley, EFF

Short link: http://bit.ly/f4xE1B

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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State of the Blogosphere

Technorati’s annual State of the Blogosphere report begins here, but the Fast Company version is a faster read.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

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The iPad Gets Sticky

 

It seems like the iPad has been with us forever. Many early adopters have had one for weeks already, and couldn’t do … something-or-other without it.  The device has one slight design flaw, but engineers have finally found an elegant work-around: