As much as it pains me to say this: privacy is on its deathbed. I came to this sad realization recently when a stranger began leaving comments on photos I had uploaded to Instagram, the iPhone photo-sharing app.
After several comments — all of which were nice — I began wondering who this person was. Now the catch here is that she had used only a first name on her Instagram profile. You would think a first name online is enough to conceal your identity.
Trust me, it’s not.
So I set out, innocently and curiously, to figure who she was.
I knew this person lived in San Francisco, from her own photos. At first I tried Google, but a first name and city were not enough to narrow it down. Then I went to her photos and looked for people whom she had responded to in the comments. Eventually I found a conversation with someone clearly her friend. I easily found that person’s full name, went to the person’s Facebook friend list and searched for my commenter’s first name.
There it was: a full name. With that, I searched Google and before I knew it, I had this person’s phone number, home address and place of employment.
Creepy, right? I even had a link to a running app that she uses that showed the path of her morning run. This took all of 10 minutes.
Nearly everyone has done something like this. Often, you don’t even need a first name to find someone. Google, after all, has a feature that allows people to search with an actual image. No words or names required.
A friend who works in technology recently told me I would never be able to figure out her age online. She had gone to great lengths to hide it. It took me exactly two minutes. How? I found a photo on Facebook from her birthday party two years earlier. In the photo, on the corner of a table, sat a birthday cake that said “Happy Birthday,” and two candles that said “24.”
“We used to have privacy through obscurity online, so even if people had that information out there, the steps that it would take to aggregate it all were too great,” said Elizabeth Stark, a lecturer in law at Stanford who teaches about privacy on the Internet. “Previously you could have searched every photo on the Internet for a photo of Nick Bilton until you eventually found one, but that would take a lifetime. Now, facial recognition software can return more images about someone instantly.”
So who is at fault for this lack of privacy protection? Most people are oblivious. The companies won’t stop collecting information. And the government is slow to protect consumer privacy.
The Federal Trade Commission, set up to protect consumers, didn’t act until late last month when it cited Facebook for “unfair and deceptive” practices. This is great, but it is more than six years and 800 million users after Facebook began.
Maneesha Mithal, the associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s division of privacy and identity protection, acknowledged in a phone interview that technology had moved quicker than the government could act. The F.T.C.’s investigation of Facebook, she said, “has been a bit of a moving target.”
Ms. Stark of Stanford says she doesn’t believe that privacy is completely dead. She says people have learned from each privacy debacle. But the companies are not slowing down.
The tools that aggregate information are only getting smarter. The government isn’t getting faster. And Ms. Mithal said not much could be done about the damage already inflicted. “Our order only provides protection going forward,” she said. “The only real option to protect information going backwards would be to delete your Facebook account.”
When Facebook was founded in 2004, it began with a seemingly innocuous mission: to connect friends. Some seven years and800 million users later, the social network has taken over most aspects of our personal and professional lives, and is fast becoming the dominant communication platform of the future.
But this new world of ubiquitous connections has a dark side. In my last post, I noted that Facebook and social media are major contributors to career anxiety. After seeing some of the comments and reactions to the post, it's clear that Facebook in particular takes it a step further: It's actually making us miserable.
Facebook's explosive rate of growth and recent product releases, such as the prominent Newsticker, Top Stories on the newsfeed, and larger photos have all been focused on one goal: encouraging more sharing. As it turns out, it's precisely this hyper-sharing that is threatening our sense of happiness.
In writing Passion & Purpose, I monitored and observed how Facebook was impacting the lives of hundreds of young businesspeople. As I went about my research, it became clear that behind all the liking, commenting, sharing, and posting, there were strong hints of jealousy, anxiety, and, in one case, depression. Said one interviewee about a Facebook friend, "Although he's my best friend, I kind-of despise his updates." Said another "Now, Facebook IS my work day." As I dug deeper, I discovered disturbing by-products of Facebook's rapid ascension - three new, distressing ways in which the social media giant is fundamentally altering our daily sense of well-being in both our personal and work lives.
First, it's creating a den of comparison. Since our Facebook profiles are self-curated, users have a strong bias toward sharing positive milestones and avoid mentioning the more humdrum, negative parts of their lives. Accomplishments like, "Hey, I just got promoted!" or "Take a look at my new sports car," trump sharing the intricacies of our daily commute or a life-shattering divorce. This creates an online culture of competition and comparison. One interviewee even remarked, "I'm pretty competitive by nature, so when my close friends post good news, I always try and one-up them."
Comparing ourselves to others is a key driver of unhappiness. Tom DeLong, author of Flying Without a Net, even describes a "Comparing Trap." He writes, "No matter how successful we are and how many goals we achieve, this trap causes us to recalibrate our accomplishments and reset the bar for how we define success."And as we judge the entirety of our own lives against the top 1% of our friends' lives, we're setting impossible standards for ourselves, making us more miserable than ever.
Second, it's fragmenting our time. Not surprisingly, Facebook's "horizontal" strategy encourages users to log in more frequently from different devices. My interviewees regularly accessed Facebook from the office, at home through their iPads, and while out shopping on their smartphones. This means that hundreds of millions of people are less "present" where they are. Sketching out a mind-numbing presentation for the board meeting? Perhaps it's time to reply to your messages. Stuck in traffic? It's time to browse your newsfeed. Recounted one interviewee, "I almost got hit by a car while using Facebook crossing the street."
Leaving the risk of real physical harm aside, the issue with this constant "tabbing" between real-life tasks and Facebook is what economists and psychologists call "switching costs," the loss in productivity associated with changing from one task to another. Famed author Dr. Srikumar Rao attributes mindfulness over multitasking as one of his ten steps to happiness at work. He argues that constant distractions lead to late and poor-quality output, negatively impacting our sense of self-worth.
Last, there's a decline of close relationships. Gone are the days where Facebook merely complemented our real-life relationships. Now, Facebook is actually winning share of our core, off-line interactions. One participant summed it up simply: "We Facebook chat instead of meeting up. It's easier."
As Facebook adds new features such as video chat, it is fast becoming a viable substitute for meetings, relationship building, and even family get-togethers. But each time a Facebook interaction replaces a richer form of communication - such as an in-person meeting, a long phone call, or even a date at a restaurant - people miss opportunities to interact more deeply than Facebook could ever accommodate. As Facebook continues to add new features to help us connect more efficiently online, the battle to maintain off-line relationships will become even more difficult, which will impact their overall quality, especially in the long-run. Facebook is negatively affecting what psychology Professor Jeffrey Parker refers to as "the closeness properties of friendship."
So, what should we do to avoid these three traps? Recognizing that "quitting" Facebook altogether is unrealistic, we can still take measures to alter our usage patterns and strengthen our real-world relationships. Some useful tactics I've seen include blocking out designated time for Facebook, rather than visiting intermittently throughout the day; selectively trimming Facebook friends lists to avoid undesirable ex-partners and gossipy coworkers; and investing more time in building off-line relationships. The particularly courageous choose to delete Facebook from their smartphones and iPads, and log off the platform entirely for long stretches of time.
Is Facebook making you miserable? What other tips can you share?
This post was originally published in the Harvard Business Review. You can keep up with the author, Daniel Gulati, via Twitter.
Just three Republican candidates have declared that they believe in the scientific basis for evolution
Michael
Bloomberg, mayor of New York, does not often hide his views. When he
recently addressed an international economic forum at Columbia
University, on the seemingly “dull” topic of science and politicians,
however, his words were incendiary, even by his standards.
“We have presidential candidates who don’t believe in science!” he
lamented, referring to the current field of people jostling to become
Republican candidate for the 2012 elections. “I mean, just think about
it, can you imagine a company of any size in the world where the CEO
said, ‘oh I don’t believe in science’ and that person surviving to the
end of that day? Are you kidding me? It’s mind-boggling!”
It
is a comment that many observers might echo, particularly among the
ranks of American scientists. For while Bloomberg did not specify whom
he considers to be “mind-boggling”, the list of targets is long. Thus
far, just three of the eight potential Republican candidates have
positively declared that they believe in the scientific basis for
evolution. The rest have either hedged, or – like Rick Perry – claimed
that evolution is just “a theory that is out there... [but] it’s got
some gaps in it”. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann, another contender, has
actively called for creationism to be taught too, since she has similar
doubts about the evolutionary science.
Newt Gingrich has cast doubt on the virtues of stem cell research,
Herman Cain has questioned whether there is any scientific evidence
behind homosexuality, and most of the candidates have queried climate change.
Indeed, whenever any candidate has defended evidence-based science,
they have suffered a backlash: witness the travails of Mitt Romney.
In some senses, this is not surprising. A recent survey by the
National Science Foundation found that 45 per cent of Americans support
evolution (barely more than those who actively reject it). There is
similar scepticism about climate change.
The views that Bloomberg considers “mind-boggling” are not outliers,
or not outside the coastal areas such as New York, where he resides.
But common or not, the spread of this sentiment is leaving many
American scientists alarmed. Last month, New Scientist magazine warned
in an editorial that science is now under unprecedented intellectual
attack in America. “When candidates for the highest office in the land
appear to spurn reason, embrace anecdote over scientific evidence, and
even portray scientists as the perpetrators of a massive hoax, there is
reason to worry,” it thundered. Some 40,000 scientists have now joined a
lobby group called Science Debate, which was founded four years ago
with the aim of getting more scientific voices into the political arena.
“There is an entire generation of students today who have been taught
that there is no objective truth – who think that science is just
another opinion,” says Shawn Lawrence Otto, co-founder of Science
Debate, who told me that the “situation today is much worse than in
2008”.
This is paradoxical. Historically, science has commanded respect in
America. It was Abraham Lincoln, after all, who founded the National
Academy of Sciences, and during the cold war, there was heavy investment
in science, as America reeled from its “Sputnik moment” (or fears that
it was being outflanked by the USSR). Innovation continues to be
worshipped, particularly when it produces entrepreneurial companies and
clever gadgets (think Apple’s iPad).
Nothing causes more fear among American politicians than the idea
that America is “falling behind” countries such as China in science. And
another recent survey by the National Science Foundation shows that
more than half of Americans consider scientists to have a “prestigious”
profession, a higher rating than bankers, doctors, politicians and
priests. Only firefighters command more respect.
Why? Some observers might be tempted to blame this paradox on the
rise of the religious right: while the craft of science might be
respected, its conclusions are not. Others point to powerful commercial
concerns (such as oil companies), who have a vested interest in twisting
debate, and attacking science they dislike. Another line of thinking
blames the polarisation of the media and political class: when there is
an emphasis on partisan shrieking, there is less room for reasoned
debate.
But Otto of Science Debate likes to blame another factor: the impact
of social sciences. Since the 1960s, he argues, society has been marked
by a growing sense of cultural relativism, epitomised by anthropology.
And as post-modernist ideas spread, this has undermined the demand for
scientific evidence. Today, any idea can be promoted as worthy,
irrespective of facts – and tolerated in the name of “fairness”.
I suspect that this overstates anthropology: the discipline has been
somewhat introverted and has little political power. But leaving aside
that quibble, it is hard to disagree with Otto’s basic point – that in
today’s political climate there is far too little evidence-based,
reasoned debate. In that spirit it is worth noting that Otto himself is
now urging scientists not to shun the Republican Party. On the contrary,
“I am encouraging them to join”, to influence the debate, he says. It
would be nice to think – or hope – it could make a difference. Maybe
Bloomberg could donate some cash.
Data caps on your broadband, while in principle sound troublesome, are at least understandable. Bandwidth is a limited resource and we all have to share it, and presumably if we all were maxing our connections out all the time, we’d tax the system beyond its capacity. But who uses the most bandwidth and when is a more practical thing to investigate, as knowing that could prevent congestion at peak hours and so on.
Some studies and theories have suggested that so-called bandwidth or data hogs, in other words people who use the entirety of the product they paid for, aren’t really a great source of congestion, and the data caps intended to prevent such users from maxing out all the time aren’t an effective countermeasure.
The guys at Diffraction Analysis examined data from “a mid-size company from North America” that was interested in understanding its consumers’ use patterns. Good for them, by the way. The data they submitted was bandwidth consumption throughout the day, with five-minute granularity. The study’s aim was to determine whether a small subset of users (the hogs) could indeed affect the quality of others’ service, and whether caps were an effective deterrent.
The conclusions, briefly stated, were that while heavy users do in fact consume far more data in aggregate than the average (288GB vs. 9.6GB in this study), their contribution to congestion during peak hours, and when the network is at 75% of its capacity or above, is in fact not much greater than the average user.
What the statistics bear out is this: during peak hours when service is most likely to be affected by overcrowding, heavy users only make up a small percentage of those consuming bandwidth – 14.3%, to be precise. And of the heavy users, only half of them were on the fastest connection, further driving home the fact that while they may consume more in total, they are not contributing more than anyone else to the actual problem, which is slowdown in peak hours.
So why the data caps? Clearly a limit of, say, 300GB a month (or lower) won’t prevent peak usage from affecting service quality. In fact, if people are limited by draconian data caps, they are likely to limit their usage to peak hours: streaming a movie in the evening, or browsing YouTube when they get home from work. This would in fact contribute even more to the problem of peak crowding.
What’s the solution? Bandwidth caps seem more important, and advertising a range of values instead of a maximum would be both more honest and indemnify the ISP against slowdowns. If a dynamic bandwidth cap let you download at 30Mbps in the middle of the night but limited you to 5Mbps during peak hours, it’s the best of both worlds and nobody has to worry about overage charges.
And how would you make money to replace those overages, not that they amount to much? Sell a limited number of premium accounts that aren’t limited during peak hours. Since the ISPs control the number and width of the pipes, they can calculate how many premium and how many standard they can offer. This seems much more logical than imposing a total data limit that’s a pain for some and immaterial to others, though both contribute equally to the problem ostensibly being addressed.
Google made secure search the default option [1] for logged in users last month – primarily for privacy protection reasons [2]. But the move has had the beneficial side-effect of making life for difficult for fraudsters seeking to manipulate search engine rankings in order to promote scam sites, according to security researchers.
Users signed into Google were offered the ability to send search queries over secure (https) connections last month. This meant that search queries sent while using insecure networks, such as Wi-Fi hotspots, are no longer visible (and easily captured) by other users on the same network.
However Google also made a second (under-reported) change last month by omitting the search terms used to reach websites from the HTTP referrer header, where secure search is used. The approach means it has become harder for legitimate websites to see the search terms surfers fed through Google before reaching their website, making it harder for site to optimise or tune their content without using Google's analytics service.
But the change in the referrer header makes life proportionately much more difficult for black hat SEO operators, who commonly use link farms and other tactics in an attempt to manipulate search results so that links to scareware portals appear prominently in the search results for newsworthy searches. Surfers who stray onto these sites will be warned of non-existent security problems in a bid to coax them into paying for fake anti-virus software of little or no utility.
Black hats thwarted
Fraudsters normally set up multiple routes through to scam sites. The changes introduced by Google when it launched secure search will leave them clueless about which approaches are bringing in prospective marks and which have failed. David Sancho, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, explains that it is very useful for black hat SEO-promoted sites to know which search term they have successfully hijacked, information that Google's changes denies them.
"When these sites receive visits from search engine visitors, they will have no idea what search sent them there," Sancho writes [3]. "They won’t have a clear idea which search terms work and which don’t, so they are essentially in the dark. This can have a lot of impact on the effectiveness of their poisoning activities. This is, of course, good for Google as their search lists are cleaner but it’s also good for all users because they’ll be less likely to click on bad links from Google."
Regular no-padlock HTTP searches remain unaltered. Search terms are only concealed where secure search is applied, which means surfers are already logged in to Google’s services.
"Given how many people already use Google Mail and Google+, this may not be such a big obstacle – but it still poses one," Sancho explains. "If people keep using regular no-padlock HTTP searches, they will keep disclosing their search terms and keeping things unchanged."
"The more people use HTTPS, the less information we’re giving the bad guys ... one more reason to use secure connections to do your web searching," he concludes.
Google introduced encrypted search last year but changes that came in last month that make it a default option for logged-in users will inevitably mean that it becomes more widely used, rather than the preserve of security-aware users who are unlikely to fall victim to scareware scams in the first place. ®
In the years of bitter struggle between capitalism and socialism, young generations around the world were obsessed with Karl Marx and his socialist ideas. Posters of celebrated revolutionaries like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Mao Zedong decorated university walls, while red banners and anti-capitalist, antibusiness slogans colored and enlivened popular demonstrations.
Today, with the triumph of capitalism over socialism, with unionism on the retreat, and with another Renaissance of individual freedoms and liberties, younger generations are no longer obsessed with socialist ideas and antibusiness slogans. Their heroes and idols are no longer celebrated revolutionaries. They are entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, who have been the revolutionaries in their own industries, delivering the world new products and businesses and creating enormous wealth for themselves, their associates, stockholders, and society at large.
In some sense, today’s admiration for entrepreneurs parallels Mark Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age with its own celebrated entrepreneurs, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, at least before public opinion turned against them. Yet unlike the Gilded Age, today’s admiration of individual entrepreneurs may be exaggerated. Behind the success of Apple (NYSE:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Facebook, and Google, and hundreds and thousands of successful high-tech companies aren’t just the visible and the famous individual entrepreneurs who started them, but the hundreds of thousands of unknown individual entrepreneurs who collectively share the risks and rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products and business. The many versions of Windows, for instance, wasn’t developed and marked by Bill Gates alone. For all practical reasons, he could not have either the time or the technical experience and and the expertise to write the millions of lines of software code behind the flushing screens and the eye-catching images; neither would have the marketing skills and time to persuade computer vendors and manufacturers to install a copy of the software in almost every PC that came off the manufacturing line. The same is true for Google ‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) search engine, and Apple’s MacBook, iPhone, and iPad.
Microsoft’s, Google’s, and Aplle’s products were develop and marketed by hundreds of engineers and marketers both inside and outside their corporate boundaries paid on the basis of performance, mostly in stock options, rather than on a flat wage basis. In this sense, each and every member of these corporations and their partners and alliances is part of a collective entrepreneurship rather than part of a hierarchical organization that divides its members into stockholders, managers, and workers, into insiders and outsiders. Each member plays a role in the activities of these entrepreneurial networks and shares the risks and the rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products.
The bottom line: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page have drawn a great deal of admiration these days for their pioneering successes that changed the world we live in. While well deserved, this admiration may be overrated, as the accomplishments of these celebrated entrepreneurs is a collective rather than an individual act.
The ads don't interrupt ordinary Web browsing by pushing aside Web page content and don't compete with regular Web page ads. Rather, they appear in a yellow-tinted box at the top of the new-tab page in Chrome.
That page is typically a mere way station for users on their way to other destinations, but it's getting more important as a hub for Chrome Web Store apps and as the home screen for Chrome OS.
The ad reminded me most of the occasional promotions Google puts on its otherwise spartan Google.com home. They're not obnoxious flashing distractions, but they stand out against amid the uncluttered field.
You can't blame Google for wanting to take advantage of a chance to make money. But as the Spiderman saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.
When Google launched Chrome in September 2008, it made it clear that the browser was a secondary mechanism for making money. The company wanted people to see Web pages faster and to enable programmers to build more advanced Web applications--like Google Docs, for example.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Chrome's new-tab page ads will likely remain like Google's home-page ads. They're chiefly used to promote Google services, and occasionally to offer important information such as links to natural-disaster response pages. But Google doesn't sell the ad space the way Yahoo does with its main page.
There's nothing stopping Google from plastering its entire browser with ads. But the moment it did so, it would start annoying users who already have plenty of other strong choices in the browser market right now. And in the long run, I believe Google will make a lot more money using browsers to advance Web services and to drive people to Google search ads than it will selling banners in its browser.
Teenagers prefer smartphones to cars, according to research firm Gartner, highlighting the impact of technology on kids and the auto industry’s future challenges.
The study found 46 percent of young adults aged 18 to 24 prefer access to the Internet over access to their own car, and that teens drive less overall today than they did in past generations. Comparatively, only 15 percent of baby boomers said they would choose a mobile device over an automobile.
The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is likely responsible, as they create an interactive, fun world that’s accessible anytime, from almost anywhere. For teenagers who want to stay connected to their friends, social networks provides an ideal platform for communication.
Public transportation and hitching rides from parents also give teenagers more time to stay connected to their social world via their smartphones, making driving seem an unnecessary hassle that interrupts their social life.
Thilo Koslowski, lead automotive analyst for Gartner, said, “Mobile devices, gadgets and the Internet are becoming must-have lifestyle products that convey status,” and devices “offer a degree of freedom and social reach that previously only the automobile offered.”
To keep up with the trend, the auto industry has gradually begun integrating smartphone-type features like built-in GPS devices, Bluetooth, and iPod docks into their newest car models. In the future, auto makers may increase such features in hopes of making cars more of a “must have” for teens.
“We are not looking at this to ask how we can get teens to buy a car versus an iPhone,” says K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior technical leader of open innovation at Ford. “Instead, the car has to become more than just a car. It has to become an experience.”
Parents, meanwhile, may sleep a little easier knowing their kids are at home and not out engaging in dangerous behaviors like texting while driving. The trend may also be easier on the family finances, as parents won’t be pressured to buy an expensive automobile for their teens.
However, concerns have been raised about whether social networking can ever truly replace face-to-face social interaction. Teens need a balance of online interaction and real time hanging out with friends. The balance can be difficult to attain, since the lure of social networks can be all-consuming.
The auto industry hopes the open road still holds a classic allure, but how teens navigate that road may change in the near future. Automatic Foursquare check-ins and voice recognition systems are already being tested in cars, marking a new trajectory for teens and the auto industry alike.
The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal came up with it as a constructive pasttime for the day after Thanksgiving, when many folks are visiting their folks at home.
If you can't persuade your parents to drop Internet Explorer 6 because YouTube will stop working, "wait until they slip into a tryptophan-induced coma and then sneak into the den," Madrigal suggests.
I'd throw protection against security vulnerabilities into the upgrade argument, too--there's a time and a place for scare tactics, and browser upgrades is one of them. And I'd also advise sticking around to make sure your parents are comfortable with any user-interface changes.
My own personal motivation is a lot more carrot than stick, though. Using old browsers sucks up Web developers' time as they struggle with compatibility issues, and it keeps them from adding useful features that can make Web sites more polished and responsive. And if you want to observe family traditions by playing the guilt card on your parents, you can say that people who use new browsers are indirectly hurt by those who use old browsers.
The event has drawn support from Microsoft and Google's influential search exec, Matt Cutts. They're preaching to the choir, though--my guess is that anybody who reads Windows and IE blogs or follows a prominent Googler on Twitter already has a newer browser. If you're a member of that choir, go bring the modern-browser gospel to your parents.
Wisely, Madrigal also recommends not switching browser brands on your parents. Of course, that means all those Windows XP users with IE will only get as far as clunky old IE8, since Microsoft chose to make Windows Vista or Windows 7 as a requirement for the speedier and more modern IE9. But even IE8 is a big step up from IE6.
Unfortunately, filial piety holds that it's always a good idea to take care of your parents.
One of the big reasons IE6 remains popular is that it's used in corporations that are reluctant to switch for reasons such as internal Web site compatibility or IT staff constraints.
Cajoling your parents may be hard, but getting corporate computer support staffs to budge is a lot harder. Nevertheless, I have a suggested addition to Madrigal's idea.
When any of you still saddled with IE6 gets back to work on Monday, observe Beg Your CIO to Upgrade the Company's Browser Day.
