Big Pulp Summer 2012 and Dividing By Zero

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Ian

My copy of Big Pulp Summer 2012 arrived while I was away, and what a treat it is. A very high standard of writing and production, and I’m delighted to be a contributor. So I’ll be a bit quiet for a while as I read on …

Or will I? I’ve been away, and meanwhile, my efforts on the writers’ website Authonomy haven’t done so badly. I’m keeping my work there until something better comes along …

Such as Linkedin. I’m improving my Linkedin profile because it allows me to promote my writing in a professional way, and it isn’t a social networking site, (or is it?). I’ll soon find out.

To misquote Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs joke “The worse I do, the more popular I get”, the more I social network, the more outside the social network I become. Leave it alone for two weeks, and my ranking improves. Eh? This is because I don’t pursue the dreaded consensus. My social networking potential is zero. I actively follow the path of most resistance. That’s how art works. And on a computer, dividing by zero can cause havoc. I wonder whether the algorithm that drives Facebook and Authonomy can cope. I think I know the answer – an emphatic NO.

It’s a feature of the algorithm that drives social networking, that it sweeps along the consensual Nielsen data A1 herd all sharing the same product aware aspirations. I don’t accept that a computer algorithm, a simple formula, should be allowed to form groups and polarise society in this way.

On a positive note, the social networking algorithm appears to be failing. There’s a decline in the take-up of Facebook, and I think I know why this is. There are many zero-rated people with no social networking potential out there. It would be perverse and against the consensus to say why I know this is so. Meanwhile I’m reading Big Pulp Summer 2012 and keeping quiet. But I will whisper BlackBerry. Whoops! Divide by zero error.

Filed under: art, Arts, Fiction | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Don’t Bury the News – The Facebook Party Is Over

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Ian

News that people are leaving Facebook in droves should come as no surprise to anyone using the ageist, algorithm-driven phenomena for more than a few years. It’s as tiring as being in the kitchen at a dull party watching noisy bores ad nauseum. Not that my Facebook friends are noisy bores, of course, but there are those out there, Friends of Friends of Friends, that you do wonder about. Are they for real?

Facebook, like Myspace, was a brilliant idea. A simple algorithm, a mathematical keyword-driven formula that promoted youthful peer pressure and pathological behaviour to ensure it propagated globally across PCs, a business model to cap all business models. Did it work? Of course it did. It created the biggest mutual appreciation society of all time, except, like Myspace, something went wrong. It seems you can’t pin your future success on the noisiest person in the room after all.

It’s the mass pathology that’s a problem. Facebook often leaves a bad taste. It’s just a hunch, but relying on superficiality was never going to ensure exponential growth. Maybe if Facebook had taken a leaf out of the Italian Renaissance and ensured some balance to proceedings, some diversity, it would still be flourishing.

But it’s an intelligence free zone. You can do a simple test. Change your age to 18. Write a status update that includes a product or two from the adverts that hover down the right hand side, throw in some text speak and a bad word, and watch your popularity rocket.

I don’t suppose they’d admit to using an algorithm that automatically puts some product-driven, keyword-laden status updates at the top of the list and buries others, oh no, but unless you are a robot you might, at some point, find it difficult to express yourself on social networking sites. You may start to feel you should hide your face. You may start to feel like you’ve gone to the party at the end of civilisation. You will want to unfriend everybody and cancel your account and never ever have anything to do with the disaster that is social networking. Well that’s my theory. Shoot it down if you want to, that’s if you ever get to read it. It’s an idea. Maybe the word idea is not such a good idea. Maybe the Facebook algorithm will bury the word idea.

Speaking of parties over, Twitter anyone?

Filed under: Arts | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Ultimate Handyman to the Rescue

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Ian

Plenty of things to do, but having discovered Ultimate Handyman forum for instant help, nasty niffs are a thing of the past. “You need a Fernco Adaptor Connector!” Simples.

Another great forum is  Online Conversions, devoted to converting units. I didn’t think this fascinating subject would be a great draw but even at midnight there were 693 users online.  These people are walking computers. Provide them with an item, logs, crushed rock, sharp sand, for example, and they’ll calculate volumes, tell you whether it will damage the springs of your car and what size shed you need. Its success lies in the rise of buying things you can’t see online. Quantities are usually sold in kilograms and without knowing the density, you don’t know how much 1000 kg of sand look like. So you Google away and up comes Online Conversions.

Myspace seems to be having some kind of makeover. It was easy to use, you could define exactly how you wanted it to look, and I made two sites that were online art installations with minimal use of HTML in 06: Friction Fiction and The Hexyl Circle. It was literally My Space. A great idea. Then it became overloaded with adverts, it slowed, crashed, and was impossible to use. Very annoying if you spent time making it look good, and lots of people did. No surprise it’s being relaunched as My [___doh!].

Facebook is great, but it’s impossible to be an individual on Facebook. You have to fit in. To be “circulated” by the software requires understanding of the rules of Social Networking as defined by Facebook, ie You must update with products that Facebook sponsors otherwise you’re wasting your time on Facebook. For example, update with Harry Potter in your status and you’ll be circulated around the world far beyond your immediate circle of friends. And don’t forget to switch privacy off or Facebook will bury you. It’s an algorithm and it uses young peoples’ propensity for free product endorsement. Facebook took Social Networking and defined it online thus propagating their success. It lies in the simple formula that if you promote people who promote you, you’ll succeed. The problem for Facebook will be what happens when a generation grows up and wants to talk about tuition fees and unemployment instead of Xfactor and the jungle. Will Facebook change its winning formula? I doubt it.

Filed under: General | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

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