Of all the great advances of Media and Society, the internet likely has had the most impact since the advent of the printing press. Self-expression is easier than ever. I for one can create my blog (and have), share my feelings on any subject I choose (I do), I can scour message boards to post comments on any particular item (I do) and I can create avatars that may highlight existent or non-existent aspects of my personality I feel should be better showcased(no comment). The internet contains gazillions of opinions and more than a few people who do what I do.

I think this is a result of one of the two great halves of American culture: Express Yourself. The second half is of course: Conform. So why is there this need for self-expression. In many ways, I believe self-expression is a precursor for a diverse, tolerant, idea-oriented society where people value new ideas and experiences and have the experience to debate the merits of this or that. On the other hand, I think self-expression can go too far, or not far enough. The way we have come to express ourselves in today’s society is increasingly dependent on the brands, ideas and categories that are becoming increasingly defined and polarizing. For instance, political independents – they have taken on an identity of their own. Ugh. Ditto for hipsters, those in the art scene and other supposed counter-culture ‘types’. At the risk of sounding close-minded, these groups have become increasingly uniform and increasingly defined by what they look like, which groups they belong to and what causes they adopt.

That self-expression fits so neatly into the business of buying and striving may be inevitable. That many people I know and like have created multi-media personalities that are not only appealing in themselves, but integrate in such a way that they enhance their social and professional lives, has brought self-expression to a new level.

On the other side of the coin is what about the world outside. I increasingly admire scientists and even hobbyists who are able to devote their time and passion to the world outside of them. But, who knows – maybe their time is spent in vain too. Like the Uncertainty Principle, maybe we can not observe anything without changing it. I recently read an autobiography on Albert Einstein that’s been on the NYTimes best seller list. For the past few weeks, I couldn’t figure out why Einstein was so reluctant to say that Bohr’s positions on quantum mechanics were incomplete and that the world must exist objectively, as a predetermined state of events at some point in spacetime. The biographer, Isaacson, made it seem like it was almost a religious need for Einsteen to believe in that objective reality in that classical sense. (My confusion stems from my own belief that whether the world is in great symmetry or in utter chaos isn’t all that comforting in the face of other realities). Einstein was an athiest by almost all measures of the definition of an athiest, but wanted to believe in that symmetry and completeness of a universe defined by tangible rules. Maybe, its because a world made up of subjective people might just be too banal. Its not just a matter of how ethics could ever be completely defined…but ultimately what would the fun of being a scientist come to? I think the Internet may give us a bit of insight into what such a world would be like.

Did the MTA pay?

The New York Times ran a snapshot of where we’re at in the ‘evolution’ of Product Placement. We’ve come a long way from The Price is Right but probably will go a lot further. Writers are being tasked with brainstorming ideas for advertisers – a tremendous boon for the creative resources of advertisers- while advertisers are often elbowing their way into approval over the script. When an advertiser buys placement in an episode at about $100K, its usually bundled with a traditional advertising buy. The debate about how the advertising should be disclosed to the public and the ethics of this time of advertising are going full speed.

Personally, I think its a bit of nonsense. Teach people to think for themselves in the first place and maybe all the ‘advocacy’ groups will find some other cause.

And Obama is Facebook.

Social Networking was a big reason for Barack’s success. He was able to tap into a constituency that could utilize their knowledge to create spontaneous buzz, online gatherings and public interest that translated directly to dollars. It was a big part of his  $31m haul and as this UK article points out it came in sums of $200 or less.

His URL is My.BarackObama.com .

Facebook recently introduced Beacon, software that tracks data about Facebook users when they are shopping on certain external sites and shares that information with their Facebook friends as well as advertisers (See Computer World Article). Beacon has been controversial, as many believe Facebook provided misinformation. They failed to disclose  that in addition to Facebook members, all users of the other sites were being tracked. Facebook has since allowed users to turn-off the feature.

A recent ComputerWorld OpEd points out the good that came from this: public awareness of the sophisticated activity tracking software already in use. Having worked in online advertising, there is pressure to grow online revenue by providing the most segmented and logical user-paths possible. It is a competitive advantage for retailers and ad spenders (whose next spend depends on performance of recent campaigns).

So what’s to do? Ironically the information that is typically the least useful is what is most private: name, address, kid’s names, etc. The biggest indicators of future performance are the ‘RFM’, recency, frequency, monetary variables. How online advertising is able to bridge this current divide and harness the software is an ethical question that will shape the direction of the Internet. Hopefully, a middle ground is reached where users can have some privacy, while sensible software tracking allows for targeted advertising.

A recent ABC article, “You’re Being Watched Right Now” summarizes just how powerful online surveillance will be in the very near future. Fascinating and Scary!

If the way people negotiated moved steadily to an online platform, I would be willing to wager many of those who are used to getting what they want through negotiating would resist such a movement.

It is  fascinating to me is how much literature and coursework is available for improving negotiation skills. In a Forbes ‘In Pictures’ Article, the author lists out steps for effective negotiation and matches them up with their quotes. The 12 steps contain human elements (establish trust, understand the other side) that to me sound like ways to try to better understand what can’t be completely known (i.e incomplete or imperfect information).

In comparison to structured and strategic negotiation theories (like Game Theory) these are rather arbitrary. However, I do think the article points out how some people have a powerful understanding and ability for the art of negotiation. It is this human factor, talent or compassion, which I think online systems will lack.

As I was bouncing around the internet reading about negotiation topics, I came across this short clip about Game Theory.

How did your group make the decisions? What problems did you encounter in the process? Did your group make decisions in a different way than the whole class did? Why? What kind of information system do you need to design to support such a process of negotiation? Provide a simple hardware/software configuration.

Once everyone understood the project,we decided to share our spreadsheets with everyone else in this group. The communication and decision-making was being done by email and was mostly led by one group member who had the best handle on the project. This group member combined all the spreadsheets into one document and aggregated points for the different scenarios, knocking the least fair off the list, until finally we were left with two.

This is where we hit a snag. We decided to make our final decision before class. During class there was much debate. With only two choices left, and with 4 of the 6 people benefiting from ’scenario II’ but with scenario 1 having a smaller range and less deviation from the mean, it became a somewhat frictious debate. The 3 people with the most to lose in switching between scenarios I and II were not budging. Ultimately, the one outnumbered 2:1 was willing to concede. However, luckily, by consulting an outside facilitator (the professor) we learned we were able to share points and reach a conclusion where we’d all receive the average score.

It would be interesting to see if this assignment had occurred earlier in the semester, as maybe we would not have decided to share our spreadsheets, or to share points.

The best software and hardware applications would have been for us to individually input our numbers into one ‘master document’ on a network that we could all access. It would have been preferable if people were given anonymous IDs rather than have their names listed with the scenario on the document. Software that would quickly sum the points each individual would receive for each scenario would speed up the process. Done this way, the process would have been considerably more anonymous. I believe if we could have done project anonynmously, people might have been more likely to vote in favor of their self-interests(we would not have to choose a seat at the table in the cartoon below). In this case, an online poll would need to be implemented and a security key (so that people only vote once) created. If we decided to not be anonymous, helpful software for this project would have been an online chatroom where we could have all discussed at once, rather than through an inefficient email trail.

Having worked with programmers but without total understanding their jobs, I know how revered Linux and other open source platforms are for web development projects and how villified Microsoft systems can be but I haven’t known enough to formulate my own opinion.

I suspect that Verizon’s making its wireless standards open source will not curry this same positive opinion from programmers. As evidenced in this InformationWeek just how meangingful the standards will be is still in question and this was likely a move to stay competitive with Google/Sprint. Another interesting Op-Ed from Technology News points out this has a lot to do with hardware sales, as the popularity of the iPhone has changed everything.

It seems to me this is a major shift for the wireless industry. As Google comes in with an operation system, Android, that could revolutionize how people interact with their phones and with the iPhone, telecom companies might be better off focusing on how to get the most people sign up for their services(and keeping those customers!) rather than how their R&D will come up with the next big thing — gadget or functionality — that will win some market share in the short term. Maybe, even, cell phone service would become more robust and more economical as this becomes the primary differentiator or competitive advantage to be had.

Shifting back to the web, the idea of buying hardware (my pc) from my DSL provider seems absurd. I doubt innovations would have happened so fast in either hardware or web programming if we left so much control in the hands of a few telecom companies. Maybe now we’ll see wireless innovation at a pace exponentially faster than before.

Another Information Week article points out how to best incorporate Open Source into development and systems projects. Much of the insight in the article into how to best use open source presumably explains why programmers love it so much: it depends on feedback from the programmers themselves, its community-oriented (for instance, I know that some of the programmers at my last job submitted projects they built on wordpress, an open source platform, into contests for the coolest derivate from the original code) and its flexible.

I took a trip to AdAge.com looking for some recent articles on online advertising and couldn’t help but notice this week’s cover story: Comcast Must Die! Definitely, a strong title. The author of the article has been frusterated to the point of alienation by the cable provider’s customer solution. His solution: create a blog comcastmustdie.com. And this is nothing new, this ‘criticism culture’ has been flourishing online and many companies must be bracing at past embarrassments. But can some good be made of this?

Why not. This is a great way for companies to monitor the successfulness of its customer service. With more customer service being outsourced and evenoffshored and or – as from my work experience – the obsession to turn call centers into revenue machines through the perfect mix of a great upsell and an aggresive rep or a well-played ’saving a cancel’, companies should see this as a report card. Sure there’s some negative publicity, but its a way to monitor the effectiveness of their programs. Companies often staff a position to look for any references to the company within their PR Staff; maybe its time for companies to do the same from within the operations department.

Other sites for venting online: Complaints.com and Consumerist.com.

Looking for a plumber, here’s a neat site I found in the article that has a rating of local services: Angie’s List.

Suggest two other business cases in which this method can be used to collect information. What problems do you see besides the ones mentioned in the Background information section? What kind of information system do you need to design to support this method of collecting information? Provide a simple hardware/software configuration.

The concept of information coming from many different directions and sources aligning in one direction through an electronic market is clearly expressed in the financial concept of efficient markets. This theory generally states that stock market prices are perfectly aligned when insider-information is available, generally aligned when there is a abundant information available and expert interpretation and disaligned when there is deficient information and/or lacking interpretation. In a B2B marketplace, electronic auctions could hypothetically be very valuable a New Product Development where as new products could be traded in some way as a ‘commodity’; employees working on the project and or industry people like retailers, financial analysts and others could interact in such a way that the product’s forthcoming arrival in the marketplace could be monitored by interest in the product from these sectors. For instance, we could determine if retailers are confident the project would sell. The marketplace could even be started at the nascent stage where designers and engineerings could provide feedback on new products — would be especially applicable when there are patent protections. A second possibility would be for venture capital firm. A precursor this idea is the website, f*ckedcompany.com, where bloggers would go onto the site and blog inside information about the possible and often probable demise of a startup company. Suffice to say, it was a popular website when the eBubble burst. A more grown up venture with a marketplace of sophisticated investors and financial experts could similarly provide information about the company and sell existing shares in the company. The biggest concerns would be making sure that the proper people were using the marketplace and people honest and secure enough to participate in the exchange. There would be huge financial ramifications with improper use of information.

In order to make either exchange happen, there would have to be a server which housed the actual exchange with authorization for those involved in the marketplace. For instances when there would be automatic buy/bid triggers, the marketplace would need to exist in data formats that could be synchronized with company/personal computers/database. Security and encryption software would also be very important. A diagram of a possible configuration can be seen below: