A Blog from my cave in the Urdish Woods

Easier social epidemics

2006-12-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

A Garrett Robertson

I argue that the American adoption of the internet makes it much easier for social epidemics to occur.
The first reason that I believe this is that it is such a powerful networking tool that can unite even the most geographically disparate people into powerful groups that would not have otherwise formed.
I have witnessed firsthand the evolution of the indie rock scene since pre-internet times. I have literally seen hundreds of shows in the past decade. Before, indie shows were practically never sold out; the band had to be around for years and probably had signed a major label before it had any chance. Once pitchforkmedia.com gained popularity though, it turned indie music on its head. Now, anyone who gets a 9/10 review on the site is instantly known among a couple hundred thousand people or so, and that means I actually have to buy tickets for shows before the day of. This has had the effect of further commercializing indie music. These ‘social epidemics’ would not have occurred without the internet; it was information externalities that allowed them.
Facebook.com exemplifies the power of the social epidemic. When my friend is doing something cool that he wants others to join him in, he can just send an invitation to his friends, who can send invitations to others. When the idea is to raise money or awareness about a situation like Darfur, the internet is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with; considering that the mainstream hardly reports on it, how could I have otherwise learned about it or further investigated without the internet? In this way I believe that the internet pushes us towards passing the critical threshold in social epidemics.
The second reason I believe that the internet makes it much easier for social epidemics to occur is that it is such a powerful medium for the collection and diffusion of information; if I wanted to find something out about the Bering ice bridge between Alaska and Russia, I would have to make an physical effort to go to the library or mail an expert to get it. This would require me remembering to do it, sustaining my motivation to find out, going through the hassle of finding it at the library, and most importantly to me, an excessive waste of my time. Likewise for practically any other specific knowledge I want. But the internet has completely changed this. I can google it or enter it on wikipedia, and I am already beginning to self-educate myself in mere moments. And if I am so stimulated or motivated, I can follow-up and get to the hard references at the library.
Now I understand the objection that the internet only would cause more clustering via group-specific but not population-wide epidemics, but I simply don’t buy it. We are not segregating ourselves into distinct groups with distinct ideologies, because most people do not identify themselves with single entities. Rather, the internet fosters exchange of perspectives and opinions. In CS103 speak: considering that social networking sites foster new social connections, not only do clusters grow in size, but they also become more interconnected between clusters, bringing everyone closer together in terms of being adjacent nodes in a network, no matter the differences in with whom or what they associate themselves; I might not be friends with any republicans, but I am sure to have a friend who does and so on. I believe that this encourages social epidemics at large because of how interconnected everybody is becoming.
A second objection would state that information gets homogenized on the internet, even if it is false; we could all potentially be believing the wrong thing. I believe that the quality of information on the internet will only get better. Contrasting information battles its out via being factually supported, a feat made easy when we can link to sources. I have seen good arguments lose their steam and become impotent when the get hung up on the facts, debating particulars; the internet fosters a solution to this problem. I have witnessed this personally; when my friends and I hang out in the main room arguing, we can immediately reference the internet and multiple sources for hard data and get on with our points. I find this to be amazingly facilitative and undoubtedly constructive.
It does not matter if being more interconnected makes us less vulnerable as nodes by elevating our thresholds for activation, because the stuff that activates us, ideas, are becoming more refined and supported, thus encouraging their spread at large (assuming people aren’t nitwits), thereby overcoming a need for greater activation in the individual. This should encourage social epidemics.

For those that care about the big stuff, social epidemics should occur more easily because of a feeling of being right, righteous, and real.

Interim Entry HW 9

2006-11-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

I am still promoting wikipedia.org.
Why aren't you?
After thinking about how much I love the website, I have even been using it to keep up to date on current events. For me, this is easily the most comprehensive whats-going-on-now site on the internet. You should check it out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Sorry, for some reason I can't hyperlink right now, but you can always copy and paste!

HW8 AKA Using social websites to search

2006-11-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

I use http://www.google.com to search for basically anything. You may have heard of this site, Google. Its pretty popular, as well as pretty nifty. Not only can you search in the vein of traditional search engines, but you can also search for images on the internet, which google conveniently arranges as thumbnails as a preview to the main page on which that particular image is found. You can also search for movies/ videos and type in addresses, as well as start/end address combinations to get directions from/to a place.
I chose this site because I use it very often. I find that it is very useful to me because I like looking at pictures on the internet, and google enables me to do that very quickly and easily. I can search for 'bear' for example and see lots of my friends all on one page.
Google was unique in the search engine world, for instead of listing first results by how many times a search criteria was found on the page, it uses the 'PageRank' method of returning results, which analyzes relations between websites to determine the relative importance of the sites with respect to each other, and thus which sites should be most relevant to the person who is searching. A better explanation of this method can be found at wikipedia, here:
I find that google makes this information both useful and manageable. Considering that google is the most popular search engine on the web, this should come as no surprise. Google does this by keeping search results short and sweet; the titles of the websites are the links, followed by a brief, concise summary of what the website is about. By default, there are 10 links on every page.
A competing website/ search engine that we have mentioned in class is Clusty:
I find that clusty can also be very rewarding because of its particular strength; the organizational style in which the results are returned. I find this is useful for me. If I search for 'Parliament' for example, it will return results that are somewhat organized by topic. It lists, Australian and European parliament, as well as the type of cigarrette, and the band Parliament, and even 'George Clinton' a famous member of that same band. In addition, this leads me to ideas and websites I would not normally consider. I often find smaller, more offbeat websites this way, which have character, and I appreciate this.
Both social search engines have their advantages and because of this, I use both, depending on what I want to get out of them.

Another link, to Pat's blog!

2006-10-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

I linked to Pat's blog too. He wants you to know about their velocity!
Thanks Pat!

Linking to Rahul's Blog

2006-10-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

So I linked to Rahul's blog, but he hasn't linked to mine yet!
Well, I think he is going to because he said he would, and I trust him, so, thank you Rahul!
At least I have a friend now, because the squirrel won't even link to me, yet alone talk to me!
Anyway!
Check out my friend Rahul's blog, its in my sidebar for you to click on.
Enjoy your day.

The traffic on a bear's blog

2006-10-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

WELL!
I finally got some visitors to my site!
That makes me happy!
If you don't believe me, just check these stats out:

Date Range	Visits	Page Views
Oct. 3- Oct. 9	2	4

Pretty sweet. Its good to know someone is out there. It gets lonely in a cave especially when the squirrel never talks to you and always runs away.
Thanks guys who read this blog.

They Rule

2006-09-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys!
I went to http://www.theyrule.net/ to check out how much companies are dominating your lives. It turns out that they are! They do it by being well connected to each other!
So I thought maybe I wanted to see how New York Times and Walt Disney were connected, seeing as how the first often writes about bears, and the second employs us in movies.
It turns out that Walt Disney has a man on its board named George J. Mitchell, who also happens to be on the board of Staples. A woman named Brenda C. Barnes also happens to be on the board of Staples, as well as on that of New York Times!
So thats what they both have to do with bears! Its cause Brenda and George talk about us all the time, and they tell lots of stories, but stories got no business in staples, so instead us bears get into movies and articles, but not into office supplies.
Funny stuff flies around like that, huh!

SharinG Is CarinG

2006-09-23T17:04:00.000-07:00

YO
Diggity-diggity check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Bill Clinton spitting some knowledge on the anti-bush-torture-policy.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6113357
For me, this 100% confirmed the bush wrongness on this point.

Also very good is his appearance on the daily show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr29Lx8dUpg

Also this article is on the Piraha people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people
They can't count, speak in whistles, have no past tense, and don't eat to be 'hard'. Better is this article from the UK independent a couple of monthes agos:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=a9efdc6af9cf050d670ed4569c9f2a72&_docnum=67&wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkVA&_md5=a0e32346c052b1bc60f500c01b04b852

And bringing back Tom Green from the old school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijLL4vsePvA&mode=related&search=

A list hereby made

2006-09-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

I hereby list two links that I have linked to in our link-group:

Here are the corresponding reasons for why I chose to link to these two websites:

Although they aren't bears, they are still amazing. The sooner you hop on the bandwagon, the cooler you are.
Likewise, if you want to be someone, even if you aren't a bear, you should spend at least five minutes laughing at the videos on this site.

Lastly, here is a picture of a valley that looks like where I live, and if you click on it, you can meet some of my friends who live there:

My newly licensed blog

2006-09-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Hey all.
I got around to licensing my blog because I realized how great it is and that I deserve to be credited when they inevitably appropriate all of my amazing wit and charm. I chose the license that lets my work be distributed for free, even for commercial uses, and allows it to be altered, so long as I am credited with the work. This is it:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/
Enjoy!
Oh yea.
I chose this one because maybe I can get my work out there and so become rich and famous, which would mean money and that way I could BUY food, and never have to leave my cave ever. That would be great because then I could sleep and schlep even more. I agree. But you know, some people are gonna do whatever with it so they should be able to alter it and all anyway.

A late night post

2006-09-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

I know that it is late for a bear to be posting on his blog from a cave in the woods when he should really be sleeping, but I couldn't sleep because I was so worried about my computer science class homework.
So I decided that I needed to tell you a little more about myself, but I am somewhat lazy because I am a sleepy bear right now, and decided that it would be easier to have someone else do it for me instead. Learn about me here!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear
Did you also know that I am worshipped?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_worship
Even spanish people know about me!: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursidae
Amazing, right!? Didn't think you knew that spanish people knew about me!

Woke up today

2006-09-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

So I was finally waking up this morning and afternoon, thinking the whole time, oh jeez, I am going to go eat again I hope that I can eat half my body weight again. Then I finally stood up on all fours and got out of my cave. I was really hungry even though I had eaten half my body weight in fish a couple of days ago.
So basically I went to the stream again, and there was a really good run of salmon again. I ate them deliciously. Then I realized: maybe the squirrel is friends with the salmon! Thats why he doesn't want to be friends with me. So I will try to not eat salmon because I really want to be friends with the squirrel. I realized this very early, before I ate my weight in salmon, so I didn't completely fill my stomach, which is OK, because I really should be more active anyway.

My first post

2006-09-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to calling up comcast and so now I have internet in my cave. That means I can finally start posting and keeping you all filled in with all my fishing and berry-eating antics, at least when I am not hibernating.
So I was walking on all fours to the stream today to eat some trout, and I saw my squirrel friend along the way, but as usual, he ran away, so we didn't get to talk again. Oh well! That is life you know, I guess...
Then I got to the stream and it was a really good day. I was able to eat half my weight in fish, which is really good. Usually I only eat one quarter of my body weight in fish! So this means I get to sleep in my cave for a couple of days until I get hungry again!
So it was a grab bag kind of a day: Ate lots of fish, but got ignored by the squirrel again. But you know what they say: it wasn't the cat that painted the kettle black!