Facebook and Twitter? In *my* Academic Discourse?

In 2007 I was very slowly finishing up my B.A. at the University of Toronto, and I remember talking to some people in Anthropology who were writing 4th year term papers about Facebook. And I remember laughing. A term paper on Facebook? At this University? I may have smoothed my imaginary sweater vest and swirled some invisible brandy. Maybe I just smiled politely. Now, as Billy Shakes said, the wheel has come full circle. It’s not a term paper, but are blog posts not the term papers of post-grad college diploma programs? Written at the 11th hour, with the student on the brink of some kind of collegial insanity? You see where I’m going with this.

Yup. Facebook. Specifically, is this the beginning of the end for the venerable FB, Fakebook, Facebonk, Crackbook, whatever you want to call it? I joked once that eventually the entire Internet would collapse in on itself, leaving only Facebook as the one single site on all the web. A scary thought, no? It seemed like it might happen for a while. Facebook started allowing applications, and soon you didn’t need to go anywhere else to play Scrabble or Tetris or find out what kind of dining set defines you as a person. Groups were good, photos were good, importing blogs from other sites was ok, and procrastistalking acquaintances was sinfully delicious.

Then Twitter came and ruined the fun. It took the best part of Facebook, the status update, and made anyone who could express a complete thought in 140 characters or less feel like a brilliant communicator and all-around Big Deal (which is how macro-bloggers feel every minute of every day).

Worse, Twitter stole Facebook’s media darling status. Well, almost. Facebook is still the media’s tasteless resource of choice to get pictures of teens killed in car accidents, but Twitter is creeping up on the FB as the main point of reference for what’s new and hot in news and culture. There have been three Serious Articles about Twitter in the Globe and Mail in the last five days, and more than a hundred less serious news items since March 1st.

At The Globe, Margaret Wente,  Ian Brown, and Sarah Hampson have been writing high-profile pieces about Twitter. But what about poor Facebook? Only Lynn Crosbie remains at the ramparts, defending the castle. Interesting that it is Facebook’s new layout that is getting the attention. The new layout everyone hates. The new layout that has generated more than 600,000 comments on the Vote on the New Facebook Layout page. The new layout that looks like…Twitter.

Some kind of horrible bizarro version of Twitter, where you can’t customize your themes and instead of just status updates, all that previously beautifully categorized content is jammed in, without differentiation, labels, or any of that neat stuff that helps a human brain parse information. If Facebook wants to keep itself in the social networking forefront, it should be moving toward a more organized, logical, and intuitive version of itself. Not a cut-rate version of something that works because of its simplicity, not in spite of it.

Eventually we’ll all get used to the new FB, and the next time they change it there will be another poll with comically oversized thumbs. Eventually something else will come along and Facebook will be the joke that Friendster now is. Like that mumbly old dreamboat Bob Dylan says, you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.

The Future is Now

You know those boxes with the distorted letters and numbers you have to decipher to prove that you’re not a spam-generating computer bot? I was fascinated to learn that those things have a name, and that name is an awesome acronym: CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Kind of like the test Harrison Ford uses in Blade Runner to tell who’s a human and who’s a sexy android.

There’s a great article in The Walrus about how this technology is being used to scan books. With old books it can be hard for computers to recognize letter shapes, and so every time you decode one of those boxes, you are helping to digitize centuries-old books. This is either very good (original Paradise Lost online) or very bad (are we enabling copyright infringement on works that are not yet in the public domain?). The Walrus article does not discuss the egregious Google Books issue, but I encourage you to check it out anyway.

Taddle Creek’s Burly Online Presence

Wikipedia has declared that Taddle Creek magazine possesses “a robust on-line component.” As a person who enjoys both the Internet and words that sound funny, I thought it would be interesting to examine what exactly makes Taddle Creek’s website so robust.

One of the things contributing to Taddle Creek’s mighty online brawn is its archive, in which hundreds of articles, stories, and poems are freely accessible. There are two viewing options: alphabetically by author, or chronologically by issue. One can even download mp3s of every piece of writing in the Summer 2008 issue. I encourage you to check out Paul Bellini as the Voice of Taddle Creek in “Proper Capitalization.”

Taddle Creek’s overall vigour is enhanced by its hilarious submission guidelines, which have an entire point devoted to making sure the magazine never receives another story “written from the point of view of a fetus.” Slide shows, such as the one accompanying Conan Tobias’s “Fake Authenticity,” are a good example of sleek, thoughtful design.

Overall Taddle Creek’s website is simple but thorough, with excellent back issue material. The site has a minimalist design concept, but there are sophisticated touches, like the slide shows. It could use a search bar, but apart from that, the site is easy to use, funny, and engaging. Well done, Taddle Creek. Well done.

The T-word

I’ve been on Twitter for a while now (my updates are protected, but send me a follower request and I’ll probably approve it), and things are getting a little out of control. I follow more than 200 friends, strangers, magazines, publishing companies, and celebrities. Between Twitter’s spartan layout and hundreds of tweets a day, I feel like I’m getting shot in the face with an information gun every time I log on. I can’t tell my friends and future colleagues from the guy with the last-minute travel deals (I need to know the minute vacation packages to Cuba are back under $700).

So today I’m installing TweetDeck, and I’m hoping it’ll organize Twitter’s information discharge for me. Maybe it’ll even change my life.

I’ve clicked TweetDeck’s slightly scary black bird icon before, but I’ve always balked at the little window that comes up and asks me if I’m sure I want to install this application. It will have UNRESTRICTED access to my system. Apparently it will also have UNRESTRICTED access to the part of my brain that regulates body temperature. I’ve got the cold sweats, but I’m going to install it anyway.

And done. Here’s what mine looks like:

And here are some of my thoughts:

• Groups! This is what I wanted. Settings > Narrow Columns means I can  see almost all of them at once. You can move columns right or left, which allows for even greater prioritizing of information.
• bit.ly right in tweet box – genius! I was wondering why tinyurl was suddenly unfashionable.
• Color scheme is kind of brutal, and I am terrible at picking my own colors. TweetDeck is only in beta – maybe the next version will have some simple themes like original Twitter does.
• TwitScoop: Buzzing Right – some kind of hashtag cloud to show what’s hot right now? Not sure about this one. I’ll get back to you.
• If you hold your cursor over someone’s icon/avatar, you get automatic Direct Message, @reply, and Retweet options. You also get a pop-out menu that allows you to easily follow or unfollow the user, add them to a group, or translate their tweet (into what, I’m not sure exactly). Very cool beans indeed.
• Somewhat scary TweetDeck black bird icon looks cool in my dock. It may seem trivial, but I have deleted icons for being ugly. Design matters!

Overall TweetDeck is easy to use and improves significantly on original Twitter. It takes a bit of poking around, but spend a little time fiddling and you’ll soon be wondering why you haven’t left your house for six days or seen your cat for four.

Fuel to the Fire: Tasers and Excited Delirium Syndrome

Imagine yourself in a state of agitation so severe that you feel no pain as you destroy a window with your bare hands. Your body temperature is so high that sweat is pouring out of every part of you. You don’t know where you are. You can’t stop drooling. Or screaming. Suddenly people are shouting at you. Telling you to do something. You don’t understand. A group of them surrounds you. They point weapons at you. They fire them. You’re still screaming as you fall to the ground and they pile on top of you. Inside your body, your muscle cells are dying. Your heart rate is irregular, and inside your chest, your ventricles are fibrillating wildly. You lose consciousness. If you’re lucky, you wake up later in an ambulance, or in jail. If you’re unlucky, you are dead.

Deadly Assumptions

The physical symptoms described above are associated with a widely discussed but poorly understood condition called Excited Delirium Syndrome (EDS). You will usually hear about it after someone has died after being hit with a blast from a Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW) like a Taser. EDS has become a catch-all term to describe people who are basically acting really, really crazy. Screaming. Foaming at the mouth. Throwing furniture. Breaking things. Unable or unwilling to obey police instructions and lie down on the ground and put their hands behind their backs. If the person doing all these things is Tasered and doesn’t die, EDS will probably not be mentioned at all.

There is no medical consensus on what exactly EDS is, although it is clear that it places extreme physical stress on the human body. It is recognized that people experiencing a state of Excited Delirium who struggle fiercely and are then restrained are often at a significant risk of sudden cardiac arrest and death, no matter what method of restraint is used.

EDS does not appear in the Fourth Edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) because it is not an illness in an of itself, but rather a collection of symptoms that have been observed in individuals in a disturbed state, who may or may not have other underlying mental health or drug use issues. Although EDS is often associated and confused with drug-induced psychosis, people with symptoms of EDS are not necessarily drug users.

People believed to be experiencing EDS are often described as displaying “superhuman” strength. Compare this to perceptions of “negro cocaine fiends” in the 1910s, a characterization that resulted in not a few unjust charges and a special kind of racism that endures to this day.

Much as the idea that black men on cocaine were immune to bullets, the ascription of “superhuman strength” to EDS sufferers robs them of their humanity. The language makes the person seem like a monster on a rampage, rather than a person in crisis experiencing extreme physical stress that actually makes them more vulnerable to serious injury or death, not less.

Testing Tasers on Healthy Subjects

In Canada, Tasers were approved for use by the RCMP in 2001. As part of a field trial prior to the official adoption of the weapon, the RCMP conducted 110 tests on 104 volunteers from law enforcement agencies.

Image courtesy of eaglesbea.com

These tests recorded a serious injury rate of less than 1%, mostly minor burns or mild contusions. No one experienced serious cardio-pulmonary symptoms or died. This was taken as scientific evidence that Tasers were safe to use on just about everyone, excepting pregnant women, the very young, and the very old.

This is problematic because the law enforcement volunteers were healthy subjects who were not experiencing severe physical or mental strain when the Taser was used on them. Compare this to people in the throes of Excited Delirium, who may experience and exhibit any of the dramatic symptoms described above. The health of a person in a state of Excited Delirium is closer to that of a pregnant woman or an elderly man than that of a robust, fit-for-duty law enforcement officer.

No System of Restraint is Without Risk

The need to gain control over an individual and prevent bodily harm and loss of life are valid reasons for using force. No method of subduing or restraining a person is infallible, but the rationale that Tasers are a “safe” way of gaining control over someone experiencing EDS is dangerously flawed.

Until Excited Delirium Syndrome is better understood, and a non-lethal means of subduing people experiencing it is developed, Tasers should not be used against people who, though they may look scary, are not monsters, and should be accorded a level of compassion and respect we as a society owe to our most vulnerable members.

The Death of Robert Dziekanski

Please watch this video of Robert Dziekanski, who was Tasered by RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport on October 14, 2007. The inquest into his death is ongoing, and Taser use has not been directly implicated in his death.

Do you think Dziekanski’s behaviour was a result of EDS? In your opinion, were the RCMP justified in using a Taser against him? Why or why not?

I critique thine online magazine

The New Yorker

This online magazine features customizable RSS feed options (subscribe to the entire magazine or just a favourite section, such as Arts & Culture), more than 40 bookmarking options (everything from Ask to Yardbarker), audio content (podcasts), video streaming, blogs (archived by author and magazine section), and slide shows of still photographs.