Train I Ride

stoweboyd:

Ross Douthat watches the Google Glasses video a few hundred times, and finds a reflection of our society in it:

Ross Douthat via NYTimes.com

[…] the video also captures the sense of isolation that coexists with our technological mastery. The Man in the Google Glasses lives alone, in a drab, impersonal apartment. He meets a friend for coffee, but the video cuts away from this live interaction, leaping ahead to the moment when he snaps a photo of some “cool” graffiti and shares it online. He has a significant other, but she’s far enough away that when sunset arrives, he climbs up on a roof and shares it with her via video, while she grins from a window at the bottom of his field of vision.

He is, in other words, a characteristic 21st-century American, more electronically networked but more personally isolated than ever before. As the N.Y.U. sociologist Eric Klinenberg notes in “Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone,” there are now more Americans living by themselves than there are Americans in intact nuclear-family households. Children are much more likely to grow up with only a single parent in the home; adults marry less and divorce relatively frequently; seniors are more likely to face old age alone. And friendship, too, seems to be attenuating: a 2006 Duke University study found that Americans reported having, on average, three people with whom they discussed important issues in 1985, but just two by the mid-2000s.

The question hanging over the future of American social life, then, is whether all the possibilities of virtual community — the connections forged by Facebook and Twitter; the back alleys of the Internet where fans of “A Dance to the Music of Time” or “Ren & Stimpy” can find one another; the hum of virtual conversation that’s available any hour of the day — can make up for the weakening of flesh-and-blood ties and the decline of traditional communal institutions.

Douthat wants us to go back to the Cleaver’s ’50s, and as a result looks as the present as a fallen era.

First of all, having more weak ties does not lessen the strength of strong ones, but Douthat and others would rather that we don’t connect with many, but would rather that we get back into the nuclear family and commute to a soul-sucking job everyday out in the suburbs than flit around modern day hipster New York.

guardian:

Over seven days The Guardian is taking stock of the new battlegrounds for the internet. From states stifling dissent to the new cyberwar front line, we look at the challenges facing the dream of an open internet

Day two: the militarisation of cyberspace
Internet attacks on sovereign targets…

poptech:

Today, the Obama Administration is announcing the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.”  By improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data, the initiative promises to help accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching and learning.

To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies will announce more than $200 million in new commitments that, together, promise to greatly improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data. Learn more about ongoing Federal government programs that address the challenges of, and tap the opportunities afforded by, the big data revolution in our Big Data Fact Sheet.

We also want to challenge industry, research universities, and non-profits to join with the Administration to make the most of the opportunities created by Big Data.  Clearly, the government can’t do this on its own.  We need what the President calls an “all hands on deck” effort. 

Some companies are already sponsoring Big Data-related competitions, and providing funding for university research.  Universities are beginning to create new courses—and entire courses of study—to prepare the next generation of “data scientists.”  Organizations like Data Without Borders are helping non-profits by providing pro bono data collection, analysis, and visualization.  OSTP would be very interested in supporting the creation of a forum to highlight new public-private partnerships related to Big Data.

2011 Social Innovation Fellow Jake Porway’s Data Without Borders brings data scientists and social organizations together to design transformative visualizations and decision-making tools.

robertreich:

Luxury retailers are smiling. So are the owners of high-end restaurants, sellers of upscale cars, vacation planners, financial advisors, and personal coaches. For them and their customers and clients the recession is over. The recovery is now full speed.

But the rest of America isn’t enjoying an…