The Evolution of Thanksgiving

Is this where we are heading?:



Don't laugh too hard, we may already be well on the way there:

     

Using physical, mental and social skills all help keep mind and memory sharp

For a Healthy Aging Brain, 'Use It or Lose It'
Social, Mental, and Physical Engagements Help Maintain Memory

[...] Although some memory decline is inevitable with age, the research now shows this decline to be highly variable from person to person.

Imaging studies also confirm that the brains of older people with no evidence of memory loss more closely resemble those of much younger people than their memory-impaired contemporaries.

This suggests that avoiding the changes linked to memory decline, rather than trying to "fix" declines that already exist, may be the key to successful aging, the researchers write.

"There is quite solid evidence that staying physically and mentally active is a way toward brain maintenance," says researcher and Umea University professor of neuroscience Lars Nyberg.

This "use it or lose it" message is not new, but the review highlights a shift in thinking about brain health in the elderly, says Pepperdine University psychology professor Louis Cozolino, PhD, who in 2008 published the book, The Healthy Aging Brain: Sustaining Attachment, Attaining Wisdom.

"The brain is a very complex organ, with many different systems," he tells WebMD. "Some of these systems start to decline in the third or fourth decade of life and others actually function better with age."
Engage Socially and Physically

Although our genes certainly play a role in how our brains age, it is now clear that our social interactions do, too, especially new interactions, Cozolino says.

"Social relationships stimulate the neurochemistry of the brain to help it stay healthy," he says. "One formula for sustained brain health is continuing to engage in social adaptation."

On the other hand, social isolation can cause accelerated brain aging, he says.

"If you want your brain to deteriorate, just watch TV all day and don't do anything else."

Garrett, who almost never watches television, agrees.

"There are two kinds of people -- those who walk into a room and turn the television on and those who walk into a room and turn it off," he says. "I turn it off."

Though Garrett certainly has good genes -- his mother lived independently until two years before her death at age 96 -- his days also include lots of social interaction. [...]

I can find too much social interaction tiring. But I find too much TV tiring, too. I like to read and study, which I'm sure also helps keep the brain sharp. I suppose there is a balance to be found, that's just right for each person. But I suppose it still comes down to the wise old adage, "use it or lose it".
     

Facebook and A.I. = Brave New World

So what does the Face of the future look like?

[...] But the trend Facebook is looking to capitalise on is the gradual move away from computers to mobile devices and the development of Artificial Intelligence.

"Mobile-driven applications will be the way people will interact," says Billy Mahon, CEO of Superior Internet Marketing.

"So in the future it won't be about PCs or laptops. More people have smart phones even now than laptops, so it seems obvious that this will be the future of social media."

While new media guru Dr Mohanbir Sawhney says he can't even begin to visualise what a mobile device will look like in 2015, he is sure of one thing: "You will have your lifestyle at your fingertips."

This will help customise the information you receive, inform the decisions you make and even influence the products you buy.

"For instance, I will be able to download all of my preferences, my personality and details of my likes and dislikes," says Sawhney.

"Then I may provide this information to a 'shopping bot' (robot or automated application) that I will then delegate the task of negotiating and transacting on my behalf. You will see the evolution of "D2D" commerce (Device-to-Device) without human intervention."

Other heavyweights agree that this type of Artificial Intelligence could be the future of social networking and help transform the likes of Facebook over the next decade or so.

"I think that in 10 years, if you ask a question on a social network and you get an answer, you will not know if a computer or a person has answered you," says Yury Milner, chief executive of DST Global, the Russian firm that invested $50 million in Facebook alongside Goldman Sachs.

"On the other hand, when you receive a question, you will not know if it has been asked by a person or an artificial intelligence."

Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are being used as a platform on which to test AI due to their vast wealth of conversational data. The volume of information generated by Facebook alone is daunting with 10.2 million comments and 2.7m photos uploaded every 20 minutes.

"There was as much information generated in the last two days as there was in the history of civilisation up to 2003," noted Milner earlier this week. So AI applications and devices could become key as the stream of information we encounter on a daily basis continues to expand.

There is already an application available on Facebook called Ultra Hal (inspired by the computer in 2001) that is an artificially intelligent chat interface. It allows Facebook users chat to it and it actively learns to improve its intelligence during the discussions.

The firm behind the Ultra Hal software Zabaware sells a commercial version that is clever enough to be "used as a companion or entertainment product" and "can discuss any topic" or "be used as a personal assistant."

In November Spanish Scientists helped AI take another leap forward by creating a computer programme that can recognise emotions in a human voice. [...]

The excerpt is from the 2nd half of the article. The first half is about the growth and power of Facebook, and all the things it's expanding into. Brave New World, here we come...


Also See:

Artificial Intelligence Interacts with and Learns from People on Social Networks

Ultra Hal: His "Second Life" is really his first one
     

Are Facebook's "Social Plugins" making the service less popular with older users?

It would seem that users age 35 and older are concerned that their personal data is being carelessly handled:

Amid backlash, Facebook tries to save face

[...] Social plug-ins were one of Facebook's big announcements at F8, the developer conference that the social network held last month.

They take its existing Facebook Connect product a few steps further by bringing users' Facebook friends lists to external sites and showing them their friends' activity. A news site, for example, could show which stories your Facebook contacts have been recommending and commenting on.

CNN.com is one of several dozen sites that partner with Facebook to display and share users' interests.

Facebook says the Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database has seen referral traffic from Facebook double after it started putting Facebook "like" buttons on individual pages in its entertainment directory so that members can easily share their favorite movies and TV shows on their profiles; more than 350,000 "likes" have been pushed to Facebook through IMDB.

For news sites, Facebook reports that its referral traffic has increased 290 percent for the Washington Post and 250 percent for ABC News.

"We think the story behind these stats is more important than the stats themselves. As we've found on Facebook, people share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it's surfaced through friends and people they know and trust," the post by Facebook developer representative Justin Osofsky read.

"We're bringing activities that have been social in the offline world, such as sharing news, reviews, and sports enthusiasm, and giving sites a way for their users to experience their content with friends."

Unfortunately, though these numbers are a bright spot for potential partners, they don't do much for irritated users who say that Facebook is more or less toying with their personal information.

And the bad press, too, continues to roll in. Earlier on Tuesday, news broke that there was asecurity hole in Yelp -- one of the test partners in Facebook's "Instant Personalization" program -- that put Facebook user data at risk.

The "Instant Personalization" program takes Facebook's social plug-ins even further by automatically importing Facebook profile information to third-party partners. Yelp says it's fixed the hole.

This adds to two Facebook-related security holes that surfaced last week, in which there were likely no malicious intentions but which didn't help already-concerned Facebook users from wondering just how safe their data is on a site that repeatedly modifies its privacy policies and has had a well-documented recent history of security flaws and phishing scams.

And one polling firm, YouGov, says that Facebook may want to start getting concerned about its brand image -- at least where adults are concerned.

The firm's BrandIndex service surveyed two slices of the U.S. population, adults 18 to 34 and those over 35, to discover if their perception of the Facebook brand has grown more positive or negative over the past few weeks and rating the results on a scale of -100 to 100. While Facebook's stock appears to be rising in the younger demographic, climbing from 32.8 to 44.8 since March 24, in the older one it's slid from 26.7 to 21.2. [...]

This is a good example of why I haven't jumped onto the social networking bandwagon. It's all too new, and there are still many unforeseen consequences. I'd rather not be the guinea pig. I'll wait and see what happens to other people first.


Also see:

Social Media Dangers in our Brave New World
A look at the creepy ways your social networking data can be used.
     

GOP reaches out, goes high tech with an online portal to write it's "Commitment to America"

GOP about to go online with 'Commitment to America'

Washington (CNN) -- Remember the 1994 "Contract with America" that propelled Republicans back into the majority of the House of Representatives with its author Newt Gingrich as their speaker?

Well, 16 years later, it's back to the future -- the GOP is again drafting a blueprint designed to take back control of Congress. But this time, it is looking for authors everywhere, and if you want help write the 2010 GOP "Commitment to America," you can take out your iPhone or BlackBerry and point your browser to a new GOP website coming soon.

[...]

The online portal will allow anyone to log on and create a personal "profile," similar to Facebook. Users will be able to vote up or down on other people's submissions -- similar to the "like it" thumbs-up feature on Facebook. Proposals can be sorted by how popular they are, or how many "votes" they receive.

Visitors to the site will be anonymous and those setting up profiles can choose their own names, but the site's managers will verify e-mail addresses and postal codes. There will be a filter to weed out offensive language.

California Rep. Kevin McCarthy is leading the effort and he said if Republicans want to connect with voters, they have to prove that their policy proposals aren't cooked up by a group of insiders in Washington.

House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio tapped McCarthy, 45, to craft the 2010 equivalent of the 1994 "Contract with America." But McCarthy said he doesn't want his effort to be compared with Gingrich's '94 playbook and said he's using the "Commitment to America" as a temporary name that's likely to change after the public weighs in.

That's where the new technology comes into play. To connect to other popular social media sites, the GOP's website will also have Twitter and Facebook components. Like those sites, users can participate in the ongoing political debate from their laptops or from mobile devices like iPhones and BlackBerrys.

To encourage people to come back and be part of an online community, users will accumulate "points" every time they submit an idea or engage in a debate. McCarthy compared this to getting frequent flyer miles or points with an airline.

But users won't get prizes or free flights, just the bragging rights that they are helping the GOP write its agenda.

The site will include a few major topics like "jobs," and "the economy," but won't have any specific proposals laid out by GOP lawmakers. McCarthy said the goal is for "the public to take ownership."

The site will allow a continuing debate about the merits of the party's policy priorities. Once it goes live, Republican House members will have a widget posted on their Congressional web pages that will link to the main GOP "commitment" site on a real-time basis.

Although the software to do all these things is already available to the public -- NASA uses a similar web portal -- Republicans pointed out that no other political organization has yet used it this way.

McCarthy described the effort to come up with the party's policy priorities as a three-phase project. [...]

Hmmm. It sounds... interesting? I tend to think of anything to do with "social networking" as shallow crap, but then I don't use most of that stuff either. The article goes into some detail as to how it should work. It is pretty cutting edge. I suppose we shall have to wait and see what results from it, before we know it's merits. I think it's a good move for the GOP, and if they can make it work, it could be a great move. We shall see.
     

Social Media Dangers in our Brave New World

Creepy Ways Your Social Media Data Can Be Used

People who use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not known for their reticence -- many put just about any personal information imaginable out there.

The risks to such openness are clear -- from inviting tailored phishing attacks to appalling potential employers with one's late-night party habits -- but many users who are tech-savvy appear willing to brave them. The risks they don't know about though, however, are a different matter.

Increasingly, there are signs that companies -- from financial service firms to affiliate marketers -- are targeting social media for new purposes. Roger Thompson, chief research scientist with AVG, for example, believes his credit card company has incorporated data from his Facebook account into his credit card file. He told of an incident in which he had to verify information about himself for security purposes, and one of the questions was about his daughter-in-law -- information that the bank didn't get from him and is only publicly available on Facebook, he wrote in a blog post.

Some credit card companies and financial service companies reportedly are developing algorithms based on an account applicant's online friends -- the theory being that deadbeats tend to associate with one another. Other stories focus on shady affiliate marketers weaseling their way onto a member's account and then sending sales pitches and product recommendations to their networks, supposedly from them.

These practices are not necessarily mainstream -- but the general trend is clear: Companies are recognizing the treasure trove of data sitting on social networks, and are beginning to experiment with it.

"2009 was a watershed year for social networks, with the numbers of people joining or expanding their use of these sites," Dallas Lawrence, chair of the digital and social media practice group at Levick Strategic Communications, told the E-Commerce Times.

"The next stage, I believe, will be companies taking all this information [and] combining it with new search tools in order to sort through the trillions of data points available," Lawrence said. [...]

The article goes on to discuss how such data may be used, the legal implications, and consumer rights.

The blog post by Roger Thompson, linked to above, was especially creepy. I don't use Facebook or Myspace, but after reading this, I can only wonder, who is "harvesting" what from sites like Blogger.com, or any sites and forums where a person posts with their real name? And what are they using the data for?

Oh Brave New World...
     

Bi-sacksual struggles with social networking

I got this in my email recently:

Story of a Challenged Senior...

I thought about the 30 year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-ul-ating". You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn instead, it was not good.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out how I can lose three phones, all at once, and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop.

I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused but I never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look.

Is the human race evolving into something Borg-like, where we are always wired into some social networking hive?

I enjoy the internet. I enjoy email. I appreciate the convenience of my cell phone. I enjoy technology... but not ALL the time. Who wants to be constantly inundated with all that stuff?

I remember when I worked in some Law Offices, I think it was 1994. There was a new technology that allowed mobile faxing. You could send or receive a fax from anywhere... even the beach! Some people in the office thought that was wonderful. Some people, like myself, thought it was awful. When asked why, I didn't have to think twice, when I replied, "I go to the beach to get AWAY from things like fax machines!"

I like technology. I don't mind the ability to send a fax from the beach, if it's absolutely necessary. But just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

Even if you think all this social networking technology is good, isn't there still such a thing as too much of a good thing?
     

Morse Code VS Text Messaging

I've seen this clip from Jay Leno's show on some Ham Radio sites:


Morse Code-Leno - More amazing video clips are a click away

It's a demonstration that Morse Code is faster than Text Messaging.

At least that's what it seems to be, but some have argued that if you had to send Morse Code over a cell phone, it would take longer to type all the dots and dashes on a cell phone keypad. Maybe, it sounds plausible. I don't do text messaging, so I can't say from experience.

But even if that is true, there may be a way around it. There is a portable accessory, that purports to make Morse Code and texting devices compatible:

Wireless SMS/IM/chat by Morse code

[...] The project's goal is to endow existing mobile devices and create new custom-designed devices with a Morse code text entry/output interface and allow them to tie into existing message-based communication networks such as SMS and IM as well as a new character-based chat medium in which each letter is transmitted as it is encoded. [...]

The author explains that Morse code would indeed be faster than conventional texting. Read the whole thing for the details, it sounds like it has interesting possibilities.

But that's not all, there is another device called "Clique" from Toshiba that also sounds interesting:

The wheel turns. What was old becomes new. Morse Code is back in favor.

Twittering text-aholics will soon have a new plaything: Toshiba has teamed up with American microprocessor giant Intel to produce Clique, a handheld, thumb-operated device that uses only three keys. Text addicts will need to learn Morse code.

Perhaps the most startling features of ‘Clique’ are its uni-directional text stream and its reliance on an old-fashioned technology: 160 year old Morse code. ‘Clique’ users can only text out. Responses are collected by the user’s designated electronic mail account. [...]

Much of the terminology used in computer networking and communications comes from radio terminology. It's interesting to see the many ways in which the two technologies are now converging.
     

Cell Phone use and Good Manners

I saw this link to WikiHow on my iGoogle page this morning:

How to Practice Cell Phone Etiquette

To most of us, cell phones are a life saver, but rude cell phone users are the thorns in our sides. They're pretty much anywhere that there's a cell phone signal. The thing is, we could all probably use a little primer on cell phone etiquette. After all, most people who are being annoying don't realize they're being annoying. Could that be you? [...]

The guidelines offered would seem to be common sense; most people probably follow them, or at least used to? But as cell phones have become more pervasive, I think people may have become more lax about following these suggestions.

Text messaging has also added a new dimension to the guidelines. As with any rules, there can be exceptions. I guess I find this interesting, because we had owned a restaurant for several years. I had observed that most people instinctively followed these guidelines, but once in a while you would come across someone who was clueless, and had to be asked to step out of the dining room because they were bothering other patrons.

The guidelines are really just about preserving privacy, not being intrusive into other people's personal space, and not ignoring or neglecting people you are actually with. Thankfully most people get it. I hope.
     

Aligning conservatism with our modern world

GOP'S WINNING TEAM: FACEBOOK/TWITTER IN '12

Republicans have been quick to recognize the practical benefits of technology, but slow to grasp its political implications.

[...]

As the internet exploded into the mainstream over a decade ago, it was widely assumed that it would accelerate the fragmentation of society. Instead of watching the same television shows, attending the same movies, and patronizing the same stores, tech-savvy and self-reliant consumers would retreat into their own online spaces and express their individuality. Libertarianism would flourish.

In reality, Web 2.0 has had the opposite effect. Social networking sites, online chat and discussion forums, blogs, and peer-to-peer sharing have strengthened social bonds, not dissolved them. As never before, interconnectedness and interdependence are central facts in the lives of young people.

[...]

In this context, excessive rhetoric about individualism and personal freedom is not just inappropriate; it’s insane. It’s no coincidence that Republicans are getting slaughtered in densely populated urban and suburban areas, filled with students and young professionals who are intimately involved in their communities, offline and online. They are repelled by swaggering calls to go it alone, to sink or swim, to believe that they alone determine their own destiny.

What is true in spacious America is doubly true in crowded Britain. This is why British Conservative leader David Cameron endlessly repeats that “we’re all in this together” and “there is such a thing as society.” After the economic revolution of the Thatcher era, Tories were viewed as the wrecking crew, as uprooters of communities and enemies of social cohesion. In truth, conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are still trying to reconcile economic liberalism with respect for tradition and continuity. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of Cameron’s modernization agenda has been the enormous effort to recast his party as champions of social responsibility. [...]

It goes on to describe how the Brits are attempting to bond conservatism with this new demographic, the "Facebook/Twitter generation", and how in the US Obama has already done so. Could it be true that American conservatives, while being savy about the technology itself, really have yet to fully understand it's implications?

It remains to be seen if what British conservatives are doing will have any success, but if it does, there may be some lessons there for American conservatives. Even if it doesn't work for the Brits, there still may be some lessons there for us. If the Grand Old Party doesn't connect with the current electorate, we may indeed need a Grand New Party.

I'm very much an individualist, but there are some things we all have to cooperate on; none of us lives in a vacuum. As technology increasingly makes our world inter-connected and interdependent, the need for cooperation becomes unavoidable, and that's not lost on the young people who are on the cutting edge in embracing these technologies.

The article goes on to offer some very conservative ideas about how this cooperation should be approached and even embraced and advanced. IMO these ideas don't diminish conservatism in any way, and are at least worth considering, as our Brave New World continues to evolve. The conservative way involves a lot more freedom and multiple choices, and I'll take that over the authoritarian big government Big Brother way any day.