The emerging food pics fad

Is it just me that’s a little slow on the uptake of new fads. Would you know it – it seems there is an increase in the number of people uploading food pictures onto the Internet. A quick check of Google’s search volume index confirms the obvious. Yes, I know it’s been said before that a lot of people use social media to tell us about the sandwich they just ate. But, now, we also get to see the sandwich.

So is there an explanation to this latest fad? The answer is yes. But before that here are some staggering numbers to consider.

It is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would be a staggering 375 billion photos. This year alone people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook. And Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos. Also, at least once a month, 52% of people take photos with their mobile phones; another 19% upload those photos to the web.

And the the food pics - People are documenting their lives, or at least the gustatory portion of it. There are other reasons, too. Sometimes, it’s to celebrate the completion of a dish or a special occasion. Some are photographing “food art.”

The graphic provides a breakdown of some of the motivations for food picture uploads.

The impact of Social Networks on humanity

When social networks change what it means to be human you would think we would turn our backs on that perceived threat and look inwards for who we are, our identify, family and friends. Instead, Facebook boasts almost a Billion members. But, of course this isn't just a Facebook thing.

Professor Sherry Turkle from the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says there is a "shift" from an analog world in which our identities are generated from within, to a digital world in which our sense of self is intimately tied to our social media presence.

The always-on social media world, our solitude has been replaced by incessant online updates, which both weaken our sense of self and our ability to create genuine friendships.

The shift from the private to the public self has been said to be a possible contributor in the rise of narcissism particularly in younger people. A vicious cycle is setup - because the more we self-broadcast, the emptier we become; and the emptier we become, the more we need to self-broadcast.

Social networks compromise our privacy as individuals. And it's not just our kids who are revealing everything about themselves to their many "friends" on Facebook. Sultan and Miller note in a piece (St Louis Post-Dispatch), "Facebook parenting" our obsession with posting data about our kids - is "destroying our children's privacy."

Based on interviews with 4,000 children, Sultan and Miller argue that we've created what they call a sense of "normality" about a world where "what's private is public."

Kids are growing up, they explain, assuming that it's perfectly normal to reveal everything about ourselves online. "And our children will never have known a world without this sort of exposure. What does a worldview lacking an expectation of privacy mean for the rest of society?" 

Social media on the toilet

After reading a report earlier today where a recent survey (the Yellow Social Media Report, published by Sensis in Australia) reveals, amongst other things that

• 33% surveyed said they check social media first thing in the morning and 40% said they checked it as the last thing before bed, and
• 5% of users said they had accessed social media in the bathroom, and another 5% said they had used it on the toilet.

I become curious as to the relative take-up of social media in various countries particularly after the large amount of noise created of the back of Facebook’s recent IPO (see illustration by O'Rilly Research). Interestingly it seems Turkey is now, according to ComScore the 3rd largest country using Facebook and likely to become the second biggest behind the US fairly soon. Here in Oz-land there are almost 8 Million of us using Facebook.

Facebook raises awareness of organ donation

Facebook and Zuckerberg's call to have people add their donor status to their Facebook Timeline is inspired, truly using technology and the social media as an enabler for societal change.

In the United States alone there are currently over 90,000 people waiting for a donor kidney. A cursory look at the U.S Department of health & Human Services provides a breakdown of organ waiting lists by organ type (see graphic).  The waiting list is not getting shorter.

Surveys show that as many as 90% of Americans support organ donation, but only about a third of the 200 million licensed drivers in the United States actually tick the box indicating consent to being an organ donor.

And just as an aside we recently heard, according to Xinhua News Agency, that a 17-year old teenager sold his kidney in order to purchase an Apple iPhone and iPad.

Zuckerberg put out the call earlier this week to encourage the social network's users -- more than 900 million -- to speak up if they are organ donors and display it on their personal pages. He said, "We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends, and we think that can be a big part in helping to solve the crisis,"

http://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/

Friendships, Emotional Wellbeing, and Facebook

Jack Dikian

January 2012

Recently I’ve been thinking about examining correlational factors between the size of a contact list a person contains in their mobile phone and overall psychological well-being.

Sure, this is hugely an over simplification. Pathology aside, we know for example that a raft of factors impacts upon our emotional well-being. And, even when we horde hundreds of contacts, are they of people who we remain in touch with regularly, and are they all positive elements in our lives.

Our capacity to recognize our emotions and express them appropriately can help us avoid depressive, anxiety creating, and/or other negative moods. Having a strong support network, having trusted people we can turn to for encouragement and support can boost resilience in tough times.

I guess what I’m really asking - are people with large groups of [friends] also share good emotional and mental health. I say “friends” in italic because that in it-self has many contentions. For instance, Facebook friends, colleagues, acquaintances, associates, family members, etc sometimes blurred.

An interesting phenomenon, in the United States at least, is the idea that Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. Facebook friends are on an upward trend. In Britain today, the average 22-year-old has over 1,000 Facebook friends, 50 times more than their parents.

According to the study in the June 2006 issue of the journal American Sociological Review reports that 25% of Americans have no close confidants and that the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two. The study reports also:

• Americans' dependence on family as a safety net went up from 57% to 80%.
• Americans' dependence on a partner or spouse went up from 5% to 9%.

Incidentally, that research found a link between fewer friendships (especially in quality) and psychological regression.

Google Plus - invite?

Jack Dikian

September 2011

So are you like me waiting for a Google Plus invite? Come-on Christian, Larry, and Sergey I’m etching to get my mittens into this. As we’ve heard Google is rolling out the service in waves and we can expect it to become a ubiquitous social option real soon. Early users of Facebook will know that if two people wanted to see each other’s updates, both needed to “friend” each other. Of course we can “like” groups now too. Twitter has always been a one-way thing. I can follow you but you do not necessarily have to follow me back.

Google Plus provides the ability to see updates from certain groups like "Work," "Friends" and/or "Family" (Circles) as well as the ability for one main stream. Here are some of the Plus features

• Circles - The idea that we share different things with different people. So sharing the right content with the right people is a plus.
• Hangouts - You will be able to let specific people or an entire circle you are hanging out and then see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat.
• Sparks - By telling Sparks your interests and it will send you content that it guesses you’ll like.
• Huddle - turns different conversation threads into one simple group chat, getting everyone onto the same page.

Erasing History - Social Networks

Jack Dikian

December 2010

Introduction

In recent times it seems a day doesn’t go by if we don’t hear about controversy emerging from the use of social networking sites.

More prevalent issues include:

(A) Crimes originating through or on a social networking site and whether government has a role in regulating such sites, and,

(B) Users' ability to deactivate themselves from a social network and further, have a perhaps unrealistic expectation that their internet chatter can be erased completely.

Objective

My objective in this piece is to question the legitimacy of an individual’s expectation to have remarks made by them using a social network to be erased completely and without a trace. I would like to examine this question from a lens of historiography – how history is produced.

Before dealing with this however, it might be useful to briefly review key points associated with the issue of governments in the regulation of social networks.

Regulation

As awful and regrettable as these crimes often are, much is said about government’s involvement in regulation and surveillance in aid of providing protection to users. Debates over the pros and cons of greater government involvement have raised numerous considerations including, that of philosophical, legal, political, and technical to name just a few.

Some key issues:

• Government surveillance is always touted as a protective measure, and yet the only ones who usually suffer are the innocent.
• Despite all of history, despite the record of government - the idea that we can regulate something and magically cure its problems is at best naïve.
• Government’s right or otherwise to interfere with the fundamental freedoms of speech. The manner technology is used is changing so rapidly - government, due it its size and bureaucratic nature, will always be a reactionary response.
• Police already monitor some public aspects of social networking in the course of their duties.
• Would government regulate all social networking or just large websites like Facebook or twitter
• Does the banning of hate speech ban hatred? The censor of words censor deeds, mind or opinion?
• The role of social networking sites in the provision of greater user security,
• Etc.

Historiography

Here, I am going to make a number of assumptions. Firstly, that users of social networks are, by in large individuals who, as well as appreciating the benefits and conveyance that these networks offer, also understand the potential consequences that may arise when providing personal information, making remarks upon others, and /or even just pontificating about nothing.

Secondly, there is much said about the role of social networking sites in enforcing stricter security schemes and simplifying how users may better protect some aspects of their personal details, This is an area that’s probably best left to technology and system userability experts. From my point of view, the more these sites do to protect user privacy, simplify security set-ups, and reduce the level of data fraud the better.

I wanted to examine the validity of the expedition that remarks, recollection of events, interruption of social signals, etc, made through social networks can, and indeed, should be made erasable once a contributor (user) no longer wishes access to that social network.

Fundamentally, this is more than just an issue of ownership and the arguments of public domain - it questions our ability or legitimacy to rewind the creation of history. History is produced at every point an individual makes a statement. It doesn't matter much how significant or trivial the particular remark is. It is a small part of history. How, overtime, this becomes a part of a broader theme or trend can only be analysed when looked upon from a future stand.

This is no different than say we examining a body of work produced by an author some centuries ago. The author was at the time making history, and we use history to examine his or her work. Also how history is produced, by analysing or conducting a meta-analysis of descriptions of the past, focussing on the narratives, interpretations, world views, etc - this provides an invaluable perspective and understanding of those issues that shaped society at that particular point in time.