Starting Up

This post is going to be a little different than previous ones.  It’ll probably mention social media, #OWS, and Steve Jobs though, so keep reading if you like those things.

So you know those moments when you turn on the television, see a news story, flip to another news station, see the same story, and so on down the line (except for Fox News, which will be saying” [news story] hates America”)?  Yea, we’ve all been there.  We’ve all taken a moment when this occurs to think “Man, this must be important.  Better listen to one of these guys and have an opinion.”  Frequently enough this thought ends with a lot of metaphorical head-turning to see if everyone else is doing the same.  We check teh twitterz, maybe mention the situation to a buddy, or write someone an email about it.  If anything, social media has made it much easier for us to find where we stand in the scope of human discourse and allows us to effortlessly gather reactions to our thoughts and opinions.  It does seem that this was inevitable–we’re social creatures, after all!

But how many times have you taken the time to think about the actual story being reported?  Does it deserve the attention it’s being given?  Or, more generally, how often do you stop and think “wait, why am I doing this?” and had your brain come up blank?  In my mind it’s a pretty regular occurrence, and all too often I enter that place I affectionately call “alienville” in which I feel like I must be the only person in the world swimming against the current.  I question whether others share my concern over whether red-state/blue-state differences really constitute the whole of political participation, or whether driving five blocks to the post office is the best use of gasoline/money/muscles.  In fact, it leads to a lot of feelings of isolation that have caused me trouble from time to time.

Truly, it’s not fun to feel that way.  However, being a natural skeptic and a bit of a curmudgeon, it’s a place I’ve found myself frequently, especially when discussing technology, music, and social trends (three of my four favorite things, along with a good homemade brisket, which rarely comes up in conversation).  It can be difficult in this situation to find courage and validity in your beliefs simply because they are uncommon or carry stigma  in our society (e.g. I find myself coming up with ideas outside the usual scope of most economic/political discussions, and find I’m labeled as “radical” when discussing gender, but in fact I feel my approach is quite pragmatic).  And without that courage, without that sense that your ideas are sound, you are unlikely to share them or to support similar ideas.

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Full Disclosure:  I work for Hashable, Inc., a start-up based in NYC.  Hashable does not compete in the same space as Klout, nor have I interacted with any employee of Klout at any time, but we do share some investors. My views do not reflect those of any other individual or group of individuals and are presented solely as my opinion.

There are a lot of new Internet start-ups out there, and some of them are better than others.  Many succeed or fail based on their merits, but a significant percentage do fail despite having high value.  Plenty of bad ideas receive funding as well, and many of these take off despite very clear cycles of hype and failure.  Klout, a social networking scoring service, is one of these–despite providing a meaningless, contextless metric, the company continues to capture the hearts and minds of the social media elite.  However, with a number of parallels to the troubled credit system endemic to the Western world, it will only be a matter of time before users wake up to the lack of utility offered by Klout.

Necessary Evil, or just Evil?

I’ve just had such a fun time these last few weeks, and it’s all because of credit scores!

No, that is not a phrase you’ve ever heard, and there’s a reason for it.  Even in the best of times, your credit score is a “necessary evil.”  In the worst of times, it’s an impediment separating deserving individuals and high quality of life.  It’s supposed to be the first line of defense for lenders and was designed to weed out those applicants who pose too high a risk.  Most of the time when you apply for credit, whether it’s through a credit card, a car loan, or a mortgage, the bank immediately runs your credit to see what your history is.  Most of the time, your history is represented by three FICO credit scores compiled by three different bureaus.  Depending on your score and a smattering of other factors, your request will be approved or denied.  Sounds sensible, right?

Sure, as long as a few assumptions are made, like:

1. The economy is stable:  Obviously, if the economy tanks it will take credit scores with it.  As people lose jobs, investments flop, and businesses go bankrupt, they turn to lines of credit they can’t necessarily pay back.  The result is lowered credit scores because credit standards are set at the same “best case” levels.  Synthetic metrics simply cannot change as quickly as reality.
2. The criteria are fair:  This one is pretty subjective, but if a “passing” score is only attainable through SuperHuman Feats of Capitalism (or, alternatively, through cheating or “gaming” the system), then your score is useless.
3. The score is relevant:  There are two parts to this one:  First, your score has to be useful, meaning that people with higher scores actually represent a lower risk.  Second, the score should be used only where applicable, meaning only in matters of credit.  It should not be applied to such situations as RENTING an apartment (shame on you, NYC) or applying for a job.  It’s simply not relevant in these situations.

These assumptions are crucial to the functioning of our credit system, and they come under fire frequently.  Part of this may be due to the fact that credit scores are relatively new, but the bigger problem is that human behavior, even relating to such a constrained and measurable system as finance, is simply too unpredictable to measure with a single score.  Just as psychiatrists will evaluate patients in person as a supplement to automated evaluations, so should lenders evaluate the viability of their applicants to determine more accurately the level of risk.  Without this level of added intelligence, FICO scores will continue to annoy and frustrate those who need and deserve to take advantage of our credit-based economy.

We certainly don’t need yet another online tool attempting to emulate such a broken, flawed real-world system, but as luck (and entrepreneurial unoriginality) would have it, many services have cropped up offering to measure a plethora of different internet phenomena and show you just how well you perform against your friends.  Seeking to capitalize on the perceived social need to compete on networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, most of these companies have failed for the exact same reason FICO is criticized:  It’s almost impossible to boil down human behavior into a number.  However, one start-up has managed to capture the interest of many high-powered Twitter and Facebook users and has gathered a good deal of momentum behind its .

Software Imitating Life

My current Klout score, out of a possible 100

Enter Klout. It’s a Software as a Service, non-opt-in (meaning if you’re on Twitter, you have a Klout score) start up with a ton of design panache that offers a one-score-fits-all system which grades you based on your perceived social networking influence and involvement.  The site looks beautiful and works very well, and the algorithm that calculates your score is consistent enough to keep your score relatively steady.  You are graded based on how many people you are connected with, how often your content is acted upon, and how active your 1st degree network is.  Your score is plastered all over the site and has already been integrated into such illustrious twitter clients as HootSuite and CoTweet.  You are rewarded for having “Klout” with “Perks,” tangible deals or discounts that are unlocked based on your score.  Truly, it’s an industry darling that is being adopted quickly and without second thoughts due to its entrepreneurial spirit and good product execution.

Except I don’t see anything positive about Klout at all.  At its core, Klout is just another FICO score, but for the internet.  Your online activity is analyzed and condensed into a metric for others to view and compare and decide whether you are worth interacting with.  Again, this is a metric based on thousands of individual human interactions, condensed into one number.  And that one number (from 1-100) is essentially meaningless.  No, I’m not referring to its many inaccuracies, although you can read about those here, here, here, here, and here.  I’m saying that your Klout score, framed ever so beautifully in a font I personally love, measures nothing.  Zero things.  It’s a waste of space.

Waste of Space

Let’s return to the criteria required for a credit score to be useful:

1. Is the economy stable?  In the case of Klout, we’re talking about the face of social networking.  Is it stable?  Does it have a base-line?  No.  Absolutely not.  It’s foolish to even think about the web this way.  Any social media service you currently use did not exist 10  years ago.  The most popular ones did not exist 5 years ago in their current form.  Twitter, the basis of all Klout scores, has only been in the mainstream since 2007.  Myspace, which once was the social network, is now defunct after less than 10 years of existence.  And this year alone hundreds of fancy new start-ups were founded, each of which is bidding for the top spot as the “next big thing” in social networking.  To put this in perspective, this would be like Fannie Mae being founded and collapsing entirely in 10 years.  The economy would feel that, without a doubt, and credit scoring would suffer.
2. Are the criteria fair?  Simply put, no.  Klout states pretty clearly that in order to have a high score you have to be a celebrity in the areas you talk about online.  So, only the internet elite are rewarded.  It is also easily gamed, as stated above.
3. Is the score relevant? [part 1]:  Is the score useful?  No.  Those with high scores do not always represent those with expansive internet presences.  Those with low scores are not always non-participants, either.  I’ve experienced this one first-hand.  When I first found out about Klout last winter, my score was a measly 31.  I went about my business (and my network did not really grow in size), and it increased to around a 46.  My behavior had not changed.  Now, several months after that, it’s back down to a 39, again with no change in behavior on my part.  There is little correlation between my behavior and my Klout score.
4. Is the score relevant? [part 2]:  Is the score applied only when applicable?  No.  And it seems that Klout wants their score applied more broadly, as well.

This last one represents the biggest beef I have with Klout, and is fueled by the fact that there is not a specific use case where using a Klout score makes sense.  So while it is being heralded as a beautiful new emerging technology with the potential to disrupt the way in which we interact with others online, it threatens to damage the way employees are hired, community leaders are chosen, and opinions are formed regarding media personalities–and that’s just a few non-monetized applications of the technology.  The problem is that the score has no relevant context to accompany it other than its own definition.  It is, in effect, useless.  Unlike FICO, which was created to fill a perceived need, Klout was created to imitate an institution which most people agree is flawed and possibly crumbling.  So why do we continue to beat the drum for this entirely useless endeavor?

Plenty of people have made the false argument that “Klout is irrelevant,” but it’s not–it’s latched on and it’s not going anywhere until someone can make it clear that this is the wrong approach.  The argument I’m making is that the web should curate the positive aspects of offline history, not emulate it just because it’s there.  Credit and credit scoring have multiple systemic flaws which impact those who use it in very real ways.  Why would Klout want to introduce these flaws that did not exist on the web previously?  In my mind it is irresponsible, derivative behavior that should not continue. My only hope is that more people recognize, as I have, that Klout scores do not add value to the social web and abandon the service before it invades other corners of our virtual lives.

And to top it all off, they spelled the damn word wrong.

UPDATE:  The wonderful folks at www.xojane.com have posted more about the GILT Chromebook pigeonholing, found here.  Apparently, GILT has been insisting that it is a man-only item!

I recently read an article on BoingBoing.net detailing the “dark side” of internet content filtering.  It’s actually a review of a book by Eli Pariser, of MoveOn.Org fame.  The article starts with this quote:

Pariser is concerned that invisible “smart” customization of your Internet experience can make you parochial, exploiting your cognitive blind-spots to make you overestimate the importance or prevalence of certain ideas, products and philosophies and underestimate others.

Neat, right?  The rest of the article has a similar proportion of big words, too.  The point the article (and the book, I’m assuming) is making is that content filtering happens constantly, from the moment we hop online until we log off.  This filtering is essential when it comes to everyday google searches, reading Facebook or Twitter, or when we look something up on eBay.  We don’t want information that is for all intents and purposes “noise,” useless within the context of our current task.  All of that is well and good as long as filtering is done objectively, but it’s not.  From the article:

Pariser also points out — correctly, in my view — that filtering algorithms are editorial in nature. When Google’s programmers tweak and modify their ranking algorithm to produce a result that “feels” better (or that users click on more), they’re making an editorial decision about what sort of response they want their search results to evince.

Algorithms and product choices are made by humans with the needs of other humans in mind.  It’s pretty common.  So that’s why when I signed up at Gilt today to check out the brand new Google Chromebook, I wasn’t surprised to see this as my default view:

It’s actually not that noticeable, until you realize that the default view for female visitors is as follows:

Note the difference in the logo on the left, the color scheme throughout, and the presence of “Gilt MANual” in the first image.

This is content filtering at its most prevalent:  the page is telling you via the toggling of a SINGLE option that your content will be different depending on your gender.  I don’t dig this, and here’s why:

1. Gender is actually pretty irrelevant to a person’s shopping experience, as long as the store itself serves a variety of genders (gonna move away from referring to it as a binary choice from hereon out)
2. Such bifurcation alienates users who want to access content not readily available to them
3. This setup assumes a one-account, one-user structure.  Seeing as Gilt isn’t a social network, this is a poor assumption.
4. This decision took a totally separate design pass to prepare both views, meaning a person actually had to do extra work to make it happen, all for little to no payoff (see #2).

Cool!  Always good to see a company taking feedback seriously and putting forth real effort in their customer service channels.  But noticeably absent from this (or any of their other responses I haven’t displayed) was any acknowledgment that this was anything other than a misunderstanding, when it is clear from the design of the site that this was a deliberate decision.

When we speak of Google’s results as being driven by “relevance,” we act as though there was a platonic, measurable, independent idea of “relevance” that was separate from judgment, bias, and editorializing. Some relevance can’t be divined a priori…

Quick note:  Sorry for the long period of radio silence, and also, sorry that this post (as well as all forthcoming posts) will not be nearly as funny as that wonderful investigative piece by Taylor on the mechanical/bionic nature of cats. 

I hate being wrong.  It’s true–It really bothers me when I say something that feels correct based on something I’ve heard, read, etc., only to find out I’m mistaken.  It’s a huge weakness of mine, and it really grinds my gears, but I’m not exactly sure why.  Whatever the reason, this irritation I’ve developed has resulted in more time spent reading, absorbing facts, and expanding my knowledge-base.  Luckily, my memory is one of my strong points; I don’t forget things easily, and I tend to soak up lots of different aspects of a given scene, making my recall pretty accurate in general.  I guess I should thank my lucky stars I am correct as often as I am, since otherwise I may have collapsed into an inconsolable heap long ago (I still have flashbacks of shouting an answer out in math class, being wrong, and being laughed at for turning red and taking it so poorly.  I was 8.).

My Feelings Exactly!

Of course, there are two schools of thought on this.  One would agree that if being wrong bothers you, it would be smart to be wrong less often.  The other would politely refer to me and people like me as self-involved know-it-alls and strive to convince us that maybe we shouldn’t be such a bunch of uptight pricks about our CAP (correct answer percentage).

These people would be wrong (see what I did there?).

No but seriously, there is an Art to Being Wrong that I haven’t learned yet, and I’m not sure it’s possible to learn how to be wrong gracefully while actively trying to avoid the experience.  People who have learned this Art are amiable without being overly flattering, gregarious without being loud, and fun to be around without any specific reason.

Those who Possess the Art (Wrong Artists) are listened to more frequently than those of us who can’t let a moment go by without flexing our virtual mind muscle (Wrong Haters).  This seems counter intuitive to Wrong Haters because we are generally more accurate than Wrong Artists, and our facts and opinions ALWAYS have the ring of truth to our ears, but the truth is that people prefer to listen to someone who can be equally informative and self-deprecating.  Being right is akin to being a lecturer in a large lecture hall, and recalling the number of these lectures I paid attention to in college (read: not many), I can tell you it sucks to be in the position of a “listener” in that situation regardless of the veracity of the knowledge being imparted.

So I guess that explains why stupid, irritating, slovenly morons (example) get so much air-time these days.  Or is that just sour grapes?  I do tend to hold those scientists and thinkers most capable of imparting their ideas without being thought to be academic blow-hards (Richard Feynman, Brian Greene), so it does seem probable that humility and grace rather than a lack of intelligence are the defining factors.  Wrong Artists come in all shapes in sizes, and I’d wager that their natural charisma is separate from their intent–Ronald Reagan (not a fan. sorry, Gipper!) was a master of owning his mistakes in order to soften the hearts of those who doubted him.  By being wrong, he and others increase their chances of being heard and connecting with people.

After all, we are innately fallible creatures.  We do stupid things all the time: we trip over our own feet while walking up stairs and commenting on our excellent coordination (oddly specific, I know) and we get our countries involved in multiple wars and conflicts despite promises to the contrary which end up hurting global progress and turning the world against us (again, oddly specific).  But history shows that those of us who hate to be wrong are less likely to be remembered fondly than those who can own their mistakes and give the world that  self-effacing smile that says “I really fucked up, and boy is it funny.”

And plus, being wrong gives you a chance to learn from your mistakes, grow, and actually close that gap between what you know and what you think you know, all while being gracious and courteous to the people around you.  It takes courage and it takes self-awareness, and it pays off (I’m told) by increasing your self-confidence and productivity, because who cares if you’re wrong if there is no negative aspect to the experience itself? [Note: world leaders and other VIPs reading my blog should probably take that last point with a grain of very responsible salt.] And most importantly, disliking being wrong constitutes worry, and worry leads to stress (which leads to anger, hate, etc…)

So why spend time worrying? Given that trying to be correct all the time is such a drag, why even try?  Stop being an asshole (I’m talking to you, Self) and get happy!

Found at BoingBoing.net, original story from NPR.org

An NRA-lobbied bill in Florida will prohibit doctors, especially pediatricians, from asking patients about their gun-safety. The bill is expected to be signed by Governor Rick Scott. Pediatricians routinely advise parents about seatbelts, bike helmets, etc, but this law will make it illegal for a doctor to offer advice on gun safety unless “it’s directly relevant to the patient’s care or the safety of others.” Comparable legislation is under discussion in North Carolina and Alabama.

What. The. Hell.

We like to use a lot of analogies in our thoughts.  They help us communicate our ideas, as well as package them so we don’t have to be thinking about all the nitty gritty details all the time.  But a lot of our analogies are stupid.  For instance, the phrase “put it under a microscope” means we’re going to analyze something very closely.  The analogy as it’s used is weak, though–just as in microscopy, when analyzing something closely we tend to lose sight of the larger picture, but the implication of this phrase is that we are taking the time to really delve in and “get results.” This is the opposite of what is accomplished by using a microscope, whereby the forest is often missed for the trees.  Furthermore, we can’t really take this analogy any further;  it would be simply meaningless to say we are looking at a topic with a telescope (to indicate a big-picture view, even though telescopes zoom in on objects in a similar manner as microscopes, just with the ability to focus on things that are a lot further away).  Just really stupid.

So to fix this problem, I’m going to invent a Megascope.  It’s an instrument whose sole purpose is to broaden the field of view while keeping the details in perfect focus.  It increases the resolution of the image without cluttering it with noise, like a really awesome digital camera.  Except we’re calling it a Megascope (I’m adding it to my WordPress spell-checker dictionary.  it’s official!).  One uses a Megascope to really investigate large, broad topics which in turn depend on a great number of other subjects.  It’s a thorough way of applying knowledge to an issue without ignoring data or drawing irrelevant conclusions.  Some people call it good research, I call it a Megascope.

Every now and then, I’ll whip out the good ole Megascope in my brain (see? Analogies suck, no matter how well-crafted) and peek at an issue to see about getting a better understanding of what we’re dealing with.  You see, I’m sort of a want-to-fix-the-world kind of guy, and I’ve found that it really helps to know what the hell you’re talking about when planning paradigm disruption.  Point being:  you can expect to see some pretty broad-minded/pseudo-political posts here in the future.

Today I turned the Megascope on the cyclical nature of civilization.  I was at lunch picking up some Kati Rolls (you gotta try ‘em) with a coworker and chatting about the travesty that is our health care system (because it’s not universal enough, not for the other reason. I love tea and I love parties, but unless it’s between lunch and dinner, I really despise a tea party) when it came to light that America is really on a down-turn

**NOTE:  THIS PART IS NOT AS WITTY OR AS FUN AS THE REST OF THE BLOG. POTENTIALLY DEPRESSING CONTENT AHEAD.**

when it comes to the way in which an average citizen can be expected to live.  This is something you have surely heard repeated on television, but there is very little real information as to why and what the consequences are.  Mostly this is because people don’t get very far past the “damn, less fun for me!” part, but I think it’s also a matter of denial–we simply don’t want to believe that the ship is sinking.

Unfortunately, the frog is almost boiling at this point.  We are locked into a cycle of our richest citizens becoming wealthier, our poorest getting poorer, and our metrics for measuring prosperity ignoring the fact that none of this “wealth” finds its way into new infrastructure for the things we need to live:  food, shelter, clean water and air, transportation, health care, a sustainable environment, education, and communication (I missed a bunch.  But you get the point).

We’re fucked.  We really are, unless something big changes soon.  And while people will tell you that incremental change doesn’t add up quickly enough, it is unfortunately the cause of the pickle we’re in now:  too much compromising and position-weakening has occurred in government, corporations beyond a certain size cannot be held liable for their actions, and citizens have been slowly worn down from customers, to clients, and finally to consumers.  We’re fucked.  Wealth and opportunity is disappearing into countries with more willpower to build and maintain their empires, and we sit here like Rome in its last days, troops engaged in multiple conflicts on the other side of the globe while we wait for the Huns to attack (I think the Huns in that analogy are bankers. Or opportunistic assholes like that guy James O’Keefe.).

Yes, the Megascope is a useful tool.  It highlights what it is about a situation that lies just outside the lines and ties it into a picture that is both big and in focus.  I hope you, too, have a wonderfully depressing afternoon.

This is a TED Talks segment given by a man I have never met, but whose name, John Hunter, was mentioned many times during my youth.  He is a teacher at an elementary school in my home school district of Albemarle County, Virginia, and he invented a game that is wildly popular with his students.  As you may have guessed, the game is called The World Peace Game, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.  Think of it as an alternative to the concept of a “war game” like Risk, Stratego, Axis and Allies, and so forth.  Summary:  it’s awesome, and seems to be catching on.

But while I’m impressed by the execution of such a concept, what is more amazing to me is how close I was to the concept as it was incubated, born, and matured.  There I was, a child of [anywhere between 5 and 18], almost constantly alienated by the emphasis on violence and patriarchal language/behavior that seems to be especially prevalent in the South. I was entirely oblivious to the efforts of Mr. Hunter in disseminating the radical idea peace starts with play and only later manifests in peaceful adult behavior (And when you think about it, the idea is pretty radical, considering what we accept about the instinct of juveniles coming out in their play habits).  It wasn’t until very recently–many years after my immersion in that other world–that I was finally exposed to the specifics of Mr. Hunter’s game while I watched this video in my Brooklyn apartment.  I had to travel hundreds of miles and wait for a technology (YouTube) and teaching concept (TED) to mature before I was able to receive this information.  I may have become exposed to the experiment had I stayed in Virginia, but it seems unlikely that I would have heard about it any sooner.

And that raises a conundrum:  I was able to consume this content because the Internet makes the world “smaller,” but it has yet to make us any more aware of distance as a real factor impeding communication.  Ten-year-old Me would have loved to play The World Peace Game.  Twenty-four-year-old Me still wants to check it out.  But the likelihood of a ten year old on the internet finding similar projects in his local area is much less likely than finding them somewhere else (probability is a bitch, y’know).  Children are more likely to find new and exciting ideas in the world via the intertubes, but are much less likely to stay at home in order to pursue such knowledge.  Adults seem drawn to new opportunities in other places than in pursuing more thoroughly the opportunities available nearby.  People are moving around more, living disposable lifestyles in pursuit of locales which typify their ideals.

We herald the networking of all devices as one step closer to bring us together as communities, but what if we’re contributing to a global increase in the number of lonely, unfulfilled souls?  Is being able to pursue your dreams more easily and with fewer consequences entirely positive?