Attention and the web

Fittingly brief article on attention and technology:
Untangling the web: attention | Technology | The Observer

References a book on the typic, with a collection of pieces from the likes of Steven Pinker etc., but also points out jury is still very much out in terms of hard evidence (at least for the moment).
But I do like her closing comment:
" Over the last year I've insisted again and again that the web is not doing anything to us; that it merely presents us with a mirror that challenges us to face ourselves. The only way we can untangle ourselves from the web is to pay attention to this, and to reflect on what it is, in the 21st century, we do to ourselves and to one another."

I personally don't concur that the web is not doing anything to us, since I think any such significant change in how we organize, evaluate and manage not only our lives but our self and social image, must result in some cognitive changes, just as countless other things do. But I agree with the idea that what really is required to deal with this is not just better analysis and understanding of the technology, but of ourselves as well. As the title of Charlie Brooker's new TV drama  suggests, it is a "black mirror", a glass through which we see ourselves, albeit sometimes darkly.

don't regret regret

Nice little talk on the subject of regret on TED : www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_don_t_regret_regret.html


I especially liked the phrase 'control-Z culture' (as in ctrl-z, the computer 'undo' command), since there is some truth that in the modern world we do desire, and even expect, to be able to 'undo' mistakes. I think there is a way in which the often awe inspiring 'progress' and development (in technology, science, wealth etc.) which surrounds us leads to the subconcious belief almost that everything is always possible, and nothing is ever permanent, or at least the bad stuff anyway.
 
While such optimism is of course often a good thing, there is an element of immaturity to it, since it means we at some level always appeal to some global 'mother' to come and make things all right again. But the harsh reality of adult life is things happen and stay happened, and maybe our culture is less adept at acknowledging that, and hence dealing with it.

What was also interesting in the talk was the list of areas in which people have the most regrets, with the top 5 being : Eductation (32%),  Career (22%), Romance (15%), Parenting (10%) and Self (5%), and I think this is unsurprising, but also informative, since these, are all domains in which we envisage goals for ourselves, rather than experience them.  We want 'to have' a better education, career, be better parents, as a sort of extension of our selves, but ultimately they are only means to an end - so why not regret the actual ends? Romance may be an exception, since this is something which is perhaps an end in itself (we live relationships, not just have them) , but when viewed as  regret, then maybe it is also rather ethereal and 'idealistic' - since we are wishing for what never was, which might never be as we expect. This I think strikes at a fundamental conflict in our lives - we dream of being certain kinds of people, generic types of levels of career, education, and even partners, but we live as specific individuals. A professor, or a CEO still lives through the daily actions we all do, and it is these actions that ultimately constitute their lives. The higher labels only provide means, not ends.
So I think it is unfortunate that these top our regrets list, because even though we may care about them more, maybe they ultimately matter less, They are about the self image we have of who we want to be,  not who we actually are. Though of course another point is to just dea with the brute fact of this tendency also means we need to consider decisions in these areas much more carefully, since they are the ones which will haunt us, rightly or wrongly. And there is some consolation in that, perversely, the things we fret about most, which might actually have most tangible effect on our lives, the financial worries, the minor social worries, are actually the things we will forget about sooner.
One final point from the talk which is worth mentioning, since forewarned is perhaps forearmed : we regret the things we just miss more than those we had less chance of achieving. Missing a plane by 3 minutes feels worse than missing it by twenty. The reason seems to be that in the closer case, we can imagine how other actions could have made the difference, and this imagination is an important element of regret. Knowing this, maybe we can be more rational and handle it better. As the ctrl-z idea shows, the point is not to banish regret, but to deal with it.

Study indicates no news is really good news, or at least better than FOX news

While it goes without saying that there are serious questions about Fox news' journalistic balance, it could be assumed that even biased opinions on reported events would raise awareness about those events themselves. Unfortunately this might not be the case, as a study by Fairleigh Dickerson University suggests.

In response to questions about middle east events, people who watched FOX news were less able to judge how things had actually turned out, than people with no news source at all.

Since naturally this has prevoked a response (albeit the ones I saw were mainly of the blog with US-flag-and-rattlesnake-logo variety, which does indicate a certain disposition to start with) it is worth checking out the original survey results themselves, available here on the university website.

This should help counter any superficial rejections of the study's methodology. For example, said rattlesnake website claimed that the figures presented didn't show FOX news as the ONLY news source, but only perhaps as one of many. The logic being that then FOX news couldn't be solely blamed. Alas this blogger probably knows less about logic and statistics than actual rattlesnakes, but maybe a simple analogy would help explain the situation. If I put my hand into 3 boxes,  with rabbits and hamsters, rabbits and rattlesnakes, and rabbits, rattlesnakes and hamsters, respectively, and get bitten in the last 2 but not the first, then it doesn't take much of a jump of logic to know which pet not to get my kids.

The main point to be drawn from this is I think not that FOX news is a terrible news source (this is more obvious than the pet question), but that its style of news is not just uninformative, but actually detrimental, which is not something even I would have expected.  More studies would be needed to tease out exactly why this is the case, but several possibilities come to mind.

Overall tone overrides the message
Just as the imagery in adverts etc. can be shown to override any accompanying (and even contradictory) verbal message, it could be the overall tone of FOX news drowns out any factual reporting. Maybe  the average viewer is aware of US diplomatic battles with Syria, and so assumes any revolt against Assad has succeeded (with God, or at least Uncle Sam on their side how could it not?), whereas there is no such preconception informing the Egyptian uprising. Indeed maybe something like Obama's famous speech in Cairo linked him to Egypt, and hence any average FOX-viewer prejudice against him would feed into other questions.

The unmentioned better than the dismissed.
Another possibility is that since things like the Egyptian revolt (successful Islamic overthrow of dictator without foreign intervention) didn't fit the FOX narrative, it was so played down on the channel that its viewers also absorbed a distain and active un-interest in it, and hence were basically purely guessing when asked. People without an admitted, chosen, news source of course don't live in an isolationist bubble, and are still going to be aware indirectly of world events, just by channel surfing, or even seeing news headlines on paper stands etc. So even if they don't actively care, it may still be able to catch their attention momentarily, and thus inform them, raising their chance to answer the question, above chance. I.e. maybe FOX news turns people off certain things, and hence makes them more ignorant.

Suits us, but still means something
Of course, the reason this study has gone viral has to be admitted to be largely to the antipathy and disgust with which most people view FOX news, and so any scientific evidence confirming our opinions is going to be jumped on. But regardless of this, the bottom line is there is statistical evidence to show bad news is worse than no news, and this goes beyond FOX, but ties into the wider debate about how important matters are handled by society.

pink vs. blue, really boys toys?

The famous Hamley's toy store in London has decided to scrap its traditional separation of boys and girls toys and instead arrange the sections by type of toy. Apparently until now some floors were floral and pink for the 'girls stuff', and 'boys toys' were in their own levels , all noise and action.
This has prompted a couple of interesting news articles about what, if any, real gender taste differences there are. The bottom line is it's very hard to be sure either way, since nature and nurture are so intertwined, and initial environmental nudging can result in the same reinforced feedback loops as inate disposition. What does seem likely is there is no genetic female preference for pink (something which makes sense given that in previous times pink was considered a boy's colour!) but there is probably some tendency for boys to prefer vehicles and machines, and girls to prefer more role based toys, such as dolls. As someone with both a daughter and a son I can definitely provide ample supporting anecdotal evidence for this one, but despite this was still impressed recently to see in a documentary that this gender preferene is also visible in chimpanzees, even so far as the more masculine (as indicated by testosterone) the chimp was, the more likely it was to choose a toy car over a doll.
What follows are three articles from the Guardian. 

Pink vs, Blue - the initial piece that caught my attention:


Are pink toys turning girls into passive princesses  - an artcle by Kat Arny who argues against the matter

Out of the blue and into the pink  - by master debunker Ben Goldacre who turns his attention to spurious evolutionary reasonings