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Langue de bois et ethnographie

January 26, 2009 dispar 3 Comments

J’ai récemment eu l’occasion de penser à ce qu’on appelle la «langue de bois». D’ailleurs, cette expression me motive à écrire ce billet en français. Je sais pas exactement comment dire la même chose en anglais, même si le concept est évidemment connu des Anglophones.

Ce qui m’a poussé à penser à la «langue de bois», c’est cette entrevue, réalisée par Jesse Brown de la baladodiffusion Search Engine de Radio-Canada anglais (CBC) avec un porte-parole de Telus:

Search Engine | CBC Radio | Podcast #16 is up .

D’après moi, cette entrevue est assez représentative de la «langue de bois». Telus fait un geste intéressant, en permettant à un de ses représentants de parler «ouvertement» dans le cadre d’une baladodiffusion. Mais le contenu et le ton de cette entrevue révèlent ce qui est, selon moi, un problème fondamental de certaines entreprises en ce qui a trait aux «relations publiques». Plutôt que d’admettre qu’il y a une différence d’opinion entre Telus (ou Bell) et les utilisateurs de messagerie sur cellulaire, ce porte-parole utilise une rhétorique que je considère tortueuse pour convaincre les auditeurs (et l’intervieweur) du bien-fondé des actions de son entreprise.

C’est, selon moi, une stratégie peu appropriée au domaine actuel. Ça ressemble étrangement à la politique de l’autruche et ça n’aide en rien au rétablissement de liens de confiances entre Telus et le public.

Je suis rarement aussi direct, dans mes propos au sujet d’une stratégie. En fait, mes propos sont probablement plus «forts» que ce que je crois vraiment. Outre la frustration par rapport au coût prohibitif des messages entrants sur Bell Mobilité (qui m’a poussé à cesser d’utiliser un cellulaire de Bell), je n’ai que peu d’intérêt réel pour la question précise des rapports entre Telus et ses clients. Mais j’accorde davantage d’importance aux relations publiques, intéressé comme je suis en ce qui a trait à la recherche auprès des consommateurs (“consumer research”).

C’est que je suis en pleine réorientation professionnelle. J’ai récemment obtenu un contrat auprès de la firme Idea Couture de Toronto en tant qu’«ethnographe francophone autonome» (“French-speaking freelance ethnographer”). Pour ce contrat, je fais affaire avec Morgan Gerard qui, en plus d’être ethnographe, est aussi blogueur. J’intègre désormais certaines de mes activités de média social avec mon expertise en tant qu’ethnographe. Je souhaite d’ailleurs renforcer ce lien et éventuellement obtenir divers contrats en tant qu’ethnographe spécialisé en média social. Ce premier contrat d’ethnographe autonome n’est pas directement lié au média social et la principale méthode de recherche utilisée est basée sur des visites à domicile, auprès de familles québécoises diverses. J’aimerais effectuer d’autres recherches du même type dans le futur mais je vois aussi certaines extensions plus près du média social.

En préparation à ce travail contractuel, je me suis lancé dans la lecture de certains textes liés à l’utilisation de l’anthropologie et/ou de l’ethnographie dans le contexte des études de marché ou autres sphères d’activités du domaine privé. C’est un peu une façon pour moi de me «baigner» dans l’anthropologie et l’ethnographie appliquées, de réellement devenir ce type de chercheur, d’«assumer mon statut» d’ethnographe autonome.

Un livre qui m’a été conseillé, et que j’ai lu dernièrement, est Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research, de Sunderland et Denny. Je crois que l’aspect ethnolinguistique de cet ouvrage est ce qui a plu à John McCreery puisqu’il est, tout comme moi, actif dans l’étude ethnographique du langage. D’ailleurs, plusieurs dimensions de Doing Anthropology ont titillé non seulement mon sens de l’anthropologie linguistique mais aussi mon sens de la sémiotique. Ces chercheuses utilisent une approche très compatible avec la mienne puisqu’elle joint l’ethnographie à l’étude de la signifiance. McCreery aurait difficilement pu mieux tomber.

Ce livre me donne aussi un avant-goût des questions débattues par les ethnographes du domaine privé. Je perçois entre autres un sentiment d’incompréhension, de la part des ethnographes du milieu académique. Et un certain embarras face aux questions épineuses touchant à l’identité sociale, voire à la notion d’ethnicité. D’un point de vue ethnographique large, j’ai reconnu dans ce texte des sujets importants de l’ethnographie contemporaine. Au-delà de mon travail pour Idea Couture, j’ai trouvé des pistes pour m’aider à expliquer l’ethnographie à des gens d’autres sphères d’activité.

Et, pour terminer par un retour sur la «langue de bois» de Telus, j’y ai lu des choses très intéressantes au sujet de politiques inefficaces de relations publiques qui, tout comme ce porte-parole de Telus, se concentrent sur une rhétorique hermétique plutôt que de faire preuve de transparence et d’humilité.

Je reviendrai certainement à tout ça très bientôt.

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Transparency and Secrecy

January 26, 2009 dispar 5 Comments

[Started working on this post on December 1st, based on something which happened a few days prior. Since then, several things happened which also connected to this post. Thought the timing was right to revisit the entry and finally publish it. Especially since a friend just teased me for not blogging in a while.]

I’m such a strong advocate of transparency that I have a real problem with secrecy.

I know, transparency is not exactly the mirror opposite of secrecy. But I think my transparency-radical perspective causes some problem in terms of secrecy-management.

“Haven’t you been working with a secret society in Mali?,” you ask. Well, yes, I have. And secrecy hasn’t been a problem in that context because it’s codified. Instead of a notion of “absolute secrecy,” the Malian donsow I’ve been working with have a subtle, nuanced, complex, layered, contextually realistic, elaborate, and fascinating perspective on how knowledge is processed, “transmitted,” managed. In fact, my dissertation research had a lot to do with this form of knowledge management. The term “knowledge people” (“karamoko,” from kalan+mogo=learning+people) truly applies to members of hunter’s associations in Mali as well as to other local experts. These people make a clear difference between knowledge and information. And I can readily relate to their approach. Maybe I’ve “gone native,” but it’s more likely that I was already in that mode before I ever went to Mali (almost 11 years ago).

Of course, a high value for transparency is a hallmark of academia. The notion that “information wants to be free” makes more sense from an academic perspective than from one focused on a currency-based economy. Even when people are clear that “free” stands for “freedom”/«libre» and not for “gratis”/«gratuit» (i.e. “free as in speech, not free as in beer”), there persists a notion that “free comes at a cost” among those people who are so focused on growth and profit. IMHO, most the issues with the switch to “immaterial economies” (“information economy,” “attention economy,” “digital economy”) have to do with this clash between the value of knowledge and a strict sense of “property value.”

But I digress.

Or, do I…?

The phrase “radical transparency” has been used in business circles related to “information and communication technology,” a context in which the “information wants to be free” stance is almost the basis of a movement.

I’m probably more naïve than most people I have met in Mali. While there, a friend told me that he thought that people from the United States were naïve. While he wasn’t referring to me, I can easily acknowledge that the naïveté he described is probably characteristic of my own attitude. I’m North American enough to accept this.

My dedication to transparency was tested by an apparently banal set of circumstances, a few days before I drafted this post. I was given, in public, information which could potentially be harmful if revealed to a certain person. The harm which could be done is relatively small. The person who gave me that information wasn’t overstating it. The effects of my sharing this information wouldn’t be tragic. But I was torn between my radical transparency stance and my desire to do as little harm as humanly possible. So I refrained from sharing this information and decided to write this post instead.

And this post has been sitting in my “draft box” for a while. I wrote a good number of entries in the meantime but I still had this one at the back of my mind. On the backburner. This is where social media becomes something more of a way of life than an activity. Even when I don’t do anything on this blog, I think about it quite a bit.

As mentioned in the preamble, a number of things have happened since I drafted this post which also relate to transparency and secrecy. Including both professional and personal occurrences. Some of these comfort me in my radical transparency position while others help me manage secrecy in a thoughtful way.

On the professional front, first. I’ve recently signed a freelance ethnography contract with Toronto-based consultancy firm Idea Couture. The contract included a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Even before signing the contract/NDA, I was asking fellow ethnographer and blogger Morgan Gerard about disclosure. Thanks to him, I now know that I can already disclose several things about this contract and that, once the results are public, I’ll be able to talk about this freely. Which all comforts me on a very deep level. This is precisely the kind of information and knowledge management I can relate to. The level of secrecy is easily understandable (inopportune disclosure could be detrimental to the client). My commitment to transparency is unwavering. If all contracts are like this, I’ll be quite happy to be a freelance ethnographer. It may not be my only job (I already know that I’ll be teaching online, again). But it already fits in my personal approach to information, knowledge, insight.

I’ll surely blog about private-sector ethnography. At this point, I’ve mostly been preparing through reading material in the field and discussing things with friends or colleagues. I was probably even more careful than I needed to be, but I was still able to exchange ideas about market research ethnography with people in diverse fields. I sincerely think that these exchanges not only add value to my current work for Idea Couture but position me quite well for the future. I really am preparing for freelance ethnography. I’m already thinking like a freelance ethnographer.

There’s a surprising degree of “cohesiveness” in my life, these days. Or, at least, I perceive my life as “making sense.”

And different things have made me say that 2009 would be my year. I get additional evidence of this on a regular basis.

Which brings me to personal issues, still about transparency and secrecy.

Something has happened in my personal life, recently, that I’m currently unable to share. It’s a happy circumstance and I’ll be sharing it later, but it’s semi-secret for now.

Thing is, though, transparency was involved in that my dedication to radical transparency has already been paying off in these personal respects. More specifically, my being transparent has been valued rather highly and there’s something about this type of validation which touches me deeply.

As can probably be noticed, I’m also becoming more public about some emotional dimensions of my life. As an artist and a humanist, I’ve always been a sensitive person, in-tune with his emotions. Specially positive ones. I now feel accepted as a sensitive person, even if several people in my life tend to push sensitivity to the side. In other words, I’ve grown a lot in the past several months and I now want to share my growth with others. Despite reluctance toward the “touchy-feely,” specially in geek and other male-centric circles, I’ve decided to “let it all loose.” I fully respect those who dislike this. But I need to be myself.

App Store, Apple, arrogance, Canada, cluefulness, Clueing, cluetrain, Cluetrain Manifesto, comment-fishing, DRM, experience, Google, iPhone, iPod, iPod touch, iTunes, linkfest, personal, Placeholders, ramblings, rants, responsiveness, shameless plug, Spoofs, wishful thinking

Apps and iTunes Cards in Canada: Follow Up

January 12, 2009 dispar 224 Comments

Recently blogged about this issue: though information about this appears nowhere on the card or in the terms of service, iTunes Cards (gift cards or certificates) may not be used to purchase applications on the Canadian version of the iTunes Store.

Since I posted that blog entry, a few things have happened. I did receive replies from Apple, which were rather unhelpful. The most useful one was this message:

Hello Alexandre,

I understand and apologize about your situation and i do want to assist you as much as possible . I am going to issue you 10 song credit. Again i apologize and i hope this issue gets resolved. I will also apply feedback about this issue .

Thank you for choosing iTunes Store and have a great day.

Sincerely,

Todd
iTunes Store Customer Support

I had no intention of purchasing tracks on the iTunes Store at this point but I do “appreciate the gesture.” Here’s what I wrote back:

Thanks. I wasn’t planning on downloading songs but I appreciate the gesture.

Not overwhelming gratitude on my part. Simply stating that, though this isn’t appropriate, I can still be polite.

What’s funny is that I received this reply to my simple “thank you” note:

Dear Alexandre,

You’re very welcome. I’m glad to hear that i was able to help some .

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Thank you for choosing iTunes Store and have a great day.

Sincerely,

Todd
iTunes Store Customer Support

From that message, you’d think I had praised the iTunes Store for hours on end.

Just in case it might make a difference, I tried filing another support request. Here’s the reply on that one:

Dear Alexandre,

Welcome to the iTunes Support Site. My name is Staci and I am here to assist you.

Thank you for contacting Apple about the App Store. We’re glad you’re interested in
this new offering.

I’m sorry, but you will not be able to purchase games or applications with store
credit or an iTunes Gift Card in Canada. Customers residing in Canada may only
purchase games and applications using a credit card.

I am confident that the information provided will solve your gift card issue. If
you have further questions, I can be contacted during the hours listed below. Thank
you and have a prosperous New Year.

Sincerely,

Staci
iTunes Stores Customer Support

This one sounds even more like a canned reply and “the information provided” doesn’t, in fact, “solve [my] gift card issue.”

Clearly, Apple isn’t “doing the right thing.” In terms of customer service, it’s not a positive experience. I did enjoy some aspects of the iTunes Store and I think it’s quite convenient. But I’m not “enjoying the iTunes Store” so much, anymore.

In the meantime, I started receiving comments on my previous blogpost on the issue. One was from someone who purchased a 150$ iTunes Card. Almost as much as the 8GB iPod nano.

Most of the advice given on this issue, outside from Apple’s unhelpful replies, has to do with things which are illicit. One would be to resell tracks purchased with this card to other iTunes users. Since the tracks are now all DRM-free, this is technically feasible. But it’s also illicit and potentially traceable. Another piece of advice, to purchase applications using an iTunes Card, is to buy a card in the US. As far as I know, this is technically doable but it also contradicts Apple terms of service.

Not good solutions, but ones which disgruntled iTunes Card buyers may contemplate.

Since then, I also received a message asking me to complete a survey about my experience with Apple support. Here’s the complaint I included in that survey:

I was given the “runaround” on a very easy issue: I need a refund.
There’s an obvious problem with the fact that iTunes Cards may not be used to purchase applications on the Canadian version of the iTunes Store. Nowhere on the card itself or even in the Terms of Service is this restriction mentioned. As this issue gains prominence, Apple could get a significant hit in consumer perception. Not sure if it will become a class action lawsuit, but it’s as significant an issue.
Email replies were disappointingly unhelpful. Instead of investigating the situation, I was led to a forum post musing about the possible reasons for this restriction. I was eventually credited ten songs even though I had no intention of getting tracks on the iTunes Store at this point.
While the amount of money is relatively small in my case, I’m getting comments on my blog from people who lost the money equivalent of an iPod nano.

Again, I probably won’t file a class action lawsuit against Apple, in part because these suits mostly make money for lawyers. But my dissatisfaction with Apple remains. In a way, it even grows, because there were several opportunities for Apple to “do the right thing.” Yes, it’s partly on principle. But it’s also a matter of the way the corporation is perceived. In this case, they sound polite but quite dismissive.

There’s no question in my mind that a mistake was made: no information on this restriction was added anywhere a gift card purchaser may find it. Because of this, people are redeeming iTunes Cards with the specific intention of enjoying their iPhone or iPod touch in a new way. As this was a season of gift-giving, some people probably received these gift cards and, thinking they might use them anywhere on iTunes, redeemed these cards instead of returning them. Only to find out, after the fact, that “you will not be able to purchase games or applications with store credit or an iTunes Gift Card in Canada.”

Bummer.

This frustration isn’t such a big deal in the abstract. But context is everything. Part of the context is the set of restrictions placed by the iTunes Store in general. It may not have been much of an issue, for a given user, that it’s impossible to buy applications directly from developers, unlike Android Market (the Google equivalent to the App Store). For casual users, this is pretty much a non-issue, especially since the App Store is so convenient. But this restriction becomes quite conspicuous once an iPhone or iPod touch user runs into this kind of problem.

There’s a broader issue. With the iTunes Store, Apple is sometimes said to have “solved micropayment.” Ever since the iTunes Music Store opened, at least part of Apple’s success has been assigned to the Amazon-like way they implemented their payment structure and it’s quite likely that the iTunes Store model has been having positive effects on the way Apple is perceived by investors. Because of the way it handles payments and reduces overhead, Apple has been able to make money on relatively small amounts of 99¢ (and, recently, 69¢). I’d call this “minipayment” because one can easily imagine even smaller amounts being paid online (for instance, a minute of cellular or long-distance communication). In this case, Nokia, eBay/Skype, and cellphone carriers have better micropayment systems. But Apple still deserves “Wall Street cred” for the way it handles small payments.

Yet, once you start thinking about Apple’s payment system in more details, say because of a bad experience with the applications section of the iTunes Store, you start noticing how flimsy the payment structure is because it relies on users willingly entering a closed system. It’s not just that the iTunes Store is closed. It’s that, once you buy on Apple, you need to restrict yourself to “Apple’s ecosystem.” This has often been the case on a technical level. It’s now a matter more visible to the casual end user: money.

From a “tech media” perspective, this closed ecosystem is part of a pattern for Apple. But the financial part isn’t frequently discussed.

It will sound like a strange analogy but it’s the one with which I come up as I think about this: IKEA bedding. Because IKEA’s measurements are metric, bed linen was an issue with IKEA-purchased mattresses in Canada. Not sure if it’s still the case but it used to be that those who bought beds at IKEA were then stuck with metric measurements for bed linen and those are difficult to find in Canada. In effect, those who purchased beds at IKEA were restricted to IKEA linen.

In computer terms, the classic case is that of a difference in fileformat between products from two developers. Apple certainly had its share of “format wars” but it mostly solved these issues. Recent Macs (including the Mac mini Intel Core Duo I’m currently using) support a Windows installation as well as Mac OS X. In terms of networking, it’s now quite easy to set up mixed networks with both Mac OS X and Windows machines. Even the music part of the iTunes Store is lifting those restrictions which made them technically incompatible with other devices. All in all, Apple has gone away from its strict control, at least in technical terms.

But in financial terms, Apple is using a fairly restrictive model for its iTunes Store. Once money gets into an account (through gift cards, allowances, or “gifting”), it can only be used on that account. Because of some restrictions specific to Canada, some of that money is restricted from use for buying applications. And Paypal isn’t available as a payment option in the Canadian iTunes Store. In effect, the only way to purchase an application for the iPhone or iPod touch is through a valid credit card. Given the fact that a majority of people are likely to have some kind of credit card, this doesn’t seem too restrictive. But there’s a variety of reasons people may not have valid credit cards and there’s no connection between buying something on the App Store and using a credit card. The iPod touch has been marketed as a gaming platform during the holidays and chances are that some iPod touch owners are children without credit cards. I’m not sure what the options are for them to buy iPod touch games. The same could be said about games for the iPod Classic, a device which clearly is used by children.

Part of the problem relates to the Canadian financial system. For one thing, debit cards with credit card numbers are rare in Canada (I’m not sure they exist). Many Canadians tend to use Interac, which does offer some advantages over credit cards, IMHO. As I’ve recently experienced, Interac now works online. It would make a lot of sense for Apple to support it online (I’m sure Canadian Apple Stores already support it). And there must be a reason Paypal, which can be used for iTunes Store purchases in the US, is unavailable in the Canadian iTunes Store.

So, yet again, Apple’s Canadian customers appear “underprivileged” by comparison with US customers. In public perception, this is pretty much a pattern for Apple.

I don’t think that the messages I’ve received helped. Though they were polite, they were dismissive as my problem was basically dismissed. From being dismissive, Apple can sound arrogant. And arrogance is tricky, in today’s marketplace.

I’m reminded of the recent Simpsons episode about Apple. Excerpts of it made their way to YouTube as they play on several gripes people have with Apple. Arrogance was clearly a key theme in that episode. Another Apple parody, the MacBook Wheel spoof from The Onion, was more directly centred on making fun of users and elements related to Apple’s perceived arrogance were less obvious.

I don’t own AAPL.0 stock but, if I did, I might sell some. Sounds silly but corporations which treats its customers in this way aren’t something I would invest in. Despite the fact that I do “invest” in Apple products.

I just wish Apple “did the right thing.”

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Mac Tip #1: Get RAM

January 12, 2009 dispar Leave a comment

Part of the Back in Mac series.
(Series created on August 13, 2011, and applied retroactively…)

Two years ago, I’ve said something similar about my XP machine (emachines H3070). But now that I’m getting Back in Mac, I’ll say it about Macs too: get more RAM!

I recently got this used Mac mini Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz (early 2006). It’s a low end machine but it’s much better than the Mac mini G4 I was buying from somebody else. One thing, though, is that with 1 GB of RAM, the G4 felt snappier than the Core Duo did with 512 MB of RAM. I just maxed the Core Duo’s RAM to 2 GB and it now feels snappier than the G4 did, for the brief amount of time I had it.

Of course, for casual uses, differences in speed aren’t that noticeable, which is the main point of my previous post on coming back to Mac. But, in this case, the difference between the same Mac mini Intel Core Duo with 512 MB of RAM and the same machine with 2 GB is quite noticeable, even in casual use.

I bought the RAM through NCIX, one of the better known online retailers of PC equipment in Canada. Two Kingston-branded 1 GB PC2-5300 SO-DIMMs for 48.17$, shipping included. It cost me as much for a single 1 GB PC-2700 DIMM (also Kingston-branded), locally (without shipping). This might have been one of the most trouble-free online buying experiences I’ve ever had.

For one thing, NCIX accepts Interac Online. Interac is the main system for debit cards in Canada and it’s accepted in almost any “brick and mortar” business. Despite having lived in the US where “flash cards” debit cards with credit card numbers are common, I still prefer Interac over flash cards. It’s the first time I’ve used Interac Online and I wish all businesses accepted it.

Then, the whole order was well-documented, with a clear description of the step-by-step process. Too often, online retailers rely on the one confirmation message “we received your payment and we should ship your item soon.” One part of that documentation came from my bank, because I’ve used Interac Online. Contrary to Paypal, the operation happens directly.

The item was shipped rather promptly. It could have been faster but that wasn’t an issue. And it arrived quickly, over air, through Purolator. That part cost me about 3$, which is very good for prompt shipment of such a low-cost item (“super saver” shipping usually applies only to more costly orders). The items were properly packaged, with recycled paper.

All in all, I’ve had a very good experience with NCIX.

Then, there was the matter of installing the RAM. My experience with doing this on the Mac mini G4 was rather painless, in part because the box had already been opened. But the Mac mini Intel Core Duo is also much more difficult to upgrade because the SO-DIMMs are hidden under the chassis.

In both cases, I used the Method Shop tutorial on Mac mini RAM upgrade. These instructions are quite good overall. I wish there had been pictures of the four screws which need to be taken off, but it’s mostly a matter of making sure I had the right one. Contrary to what this tutorial implies, I didn’t have any issue taking these screws out and in, even though my screwdriver (the same I’d use for glasses or sax screws) isn’t magnetized.

One thing I did find difficult, though, was plugging back the tiny black cable by the computer’s (PRAM?) battery. Sounds silly but it was actually pretty difficult.

Inserting the top SO-DIMM was also a bit difficult but it’s mostly because I wasn’t clear on how angled it had to be. At the same time, those SO-DIMMs were much easier to secure in than most DIMMs I’ve installed in the past, including the one on the Mac mini G4.

I had a short moment of panic when I tested the mini while it was still “naked.” When I powered it on, I got a screen with a missing folder. I turned the mini off, played with the chassis a bit, and heard a “click.” Turns out the connection to the hard drive hadn’t been made. Because of the episode with the infamous tiny black cable, I worried that it might have been an issue with a cable I hadn’t noticed.

Putting the computer back together was actually easier than with the G4. No idea why, but it worked right away.

So, for less than 50$, I have greatly improved performance on this Mac mini. And it’s such a neat machine (small, quiet, practical) that this RAM installation marks the end of a rather successful process of getting Back in Mac.

Before installing the RAM, I’ve transferred a number of things from a previous Mac OS X machine (had saved everything on an old iPod) and from my XP machine. That machine now sleeps under my desk. I can VNC to it if I need to, and it still holds my ca. 100 GB iTunes Music library. But once I buy a 1 TB 7200 RPM external hard drive, it probably won’t be that useful.

Apple, comment-fishing, computers, constructivism, consumerism, consumption, Digital Life, digital lifestyle, gadgets, geek culture, mac, mac os x, personal, ramblings, shameless plug, soapbox, social change, Tech, techno enthusiasts, techno lust, technological determinism, technology, wishful thinking

Back in Mac: Low End Edition

January 7, 2009 dispar 1 Comment

Part of the Back in Mac series.
(Series created on August 13, 2011, and applied retroactively…)

Today, I’m buying an old Mac mini G4 1.25GHz. Yes, a low end computer from 2005. It’ll be great to be back in Mac after spending most of my computer life on XP for three years.

This mini is slower than my XP desktop (emachines H3070). But that doesn’t really matter for what I want to do.

There’s something to be said about computers being “fast enough.” Gamers and engineers may not grok this concept, since they always want more. But there’s a point at which computers don’t really need to be faster, for some categories of uses.

Car analogies are often made, in computer discussions, and this case seems fairly obvious. Some cars are still designed to “push the envelope,” in terms of performance. Yet most cars, including some relatively inexpensive ones, are already fast enough to run on highways beyond the speed limits in North America. Even in Europe, most drivers don’t tend to push their cars to the limit. Something vaguely similar happens with computers, though there are major differences. For instance, the difference in cost between fast driving and normal driving is a factor with cars while it isn’t so much of a factor with computers. With computers, the need for cooling and battery power (on laptops) do matter but, even if they were completely solved, there’s a limit to the power needed for casual computer use.

This isn’t contradicting Moore’s Law directly. Chips do increase exponentially in speed-to-cost ratio. But the effects aren’t felt the same way through all uses of computers, especially if we think about casual use of desktop and laptop “personal computers.” Computer chips in other devices (from handheld devices to cars or DVD players) benefit from Moore’s Law, but these are not what we usually mean by “computer,” in daily use.
The common way to put it is something like “you don’t need a fast machine to do email and word processing.”

The main reason I needed a Mac is that I’ll be using iMovie to do simple video editing. Video editing does push the limits of a slow computer and I’ll notice those limits very readily. But it’ll still work, and that’s quite interesting to think about, in terms of the history of personal computing. A Mac mini G4 is a slug, in comparison with even the current Mac mini Core 2 Duo. But it’s fast enough for even some tasks which, in historical terms, have been processor-intensive.

None of this is meant to say that the “need for speed” among computer users is completely manufactured. As computers become more powerful, some applications of computing technologies which were nearly impossible at slower speeds become easy to do. In fact, there certainly are things which we don’t even imagine becoming which will be easy to do in the future, thanks to improvements in computer chip performance. Those who play processor-intensive games always want faster machines and they certainly feel the “need for speed.” But, it seems to me, the quest for raw speed isn’t the core of personal computing, anymore.

This all reminds me of the Material Culture course I was teaching in the Fall: the Social Construction of Technology, Actor-Network Theory, the Social Shaping of Technology, etc.

So, a low end computer makes sense.

While iMovie is the main reason I decided to get a Mac at this point, I’ve been longing for Macs for three years. There were times during which I was able to use somebody else’s Mac for extended periods of time but this Mac mini G4 will be the first Mac to which I’ll have full-time access since late 2005, when my iBook G3 died.

As before, I’m happy to be “back in Mac.” I could handle life on XP, but it never felt that comfortable and I haven’t been able to adapt my workflow to the way the Windows world works. I could (and probably should) have worked on Linux, but I’m not sure it would have made my life complete either.

Some things I’m happy to go back to:

OmniOutliner
GarageBand
Keynote
Quicksilver
Nisus Thesaurus
Dictionary
Preview
Terminal
TextEdit
BibDesk
iCal
Address Book
Mail
TAMS Analyzer
iChat

Now I need to install some RAM in this puppy.

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Brassage saisonnier

January 3, 2009 dispar 3 Comments

Deux nouvelles bières que j’ai l’intention de brasser aujourd’hui, grâce à une culture de levure de saison et de Brettanomyces bruxellensis, généreusement fournie par un ami. L’aspect «bière de type saison» ne sera probablement pas très fidèle aux modèles connus. L’idée, c’est d’expérimenter.

D’abord, une bière rouge, inspirée par le thé d’hibiscus:

Dablini

16-C Saison
Auteur: Alexandre Enkerli
Date: 2009-01-03

Grosseur: 5,0 gal

Efficience: 75,0%

Atténuation: 75,0%

Calories: 178,84 kcal per 12,0 fl oz

Densité Initiale: 1,054 (1,048 – 1,065)

|=============#==================|

Densité finale: 1,013 (1,002 – 1,012)

|==========================#=====|

Couleur: 18,94 (5,0 – 14,0)

|================================|

Alcool: 5,28% (5,0% – 7,0%)

|==========#=====================|

Amertume: 12,2 (20,0 – 35,0)

|================================|

Ingrédients:

3000 g American 6-row Pale
500 g Munich TYPE I
500 g Vienna Malt
500 g Caramalt 15
500 g Special B – Caramel malt
1,0 L Pomegrenate juice – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 15 min
25 g Hibiscus flower (dried) – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 15 min
15 g Coffee Berries (dried) – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 3 min
1 oz Crystal (3,3%) – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 60 min

200 mL White Labs WLP565 Belgian Saison I

Résultats générés par BeerTools Pro 1.5.2

Puis une bière très pale, orientée épices (presque comme une wit):

Bretteuse

16-C Saison

Auteur: Alexandre Enkerli

Date: 2009-01-03

Grosseur: 5,0 gal

Efficience: 75,0%

Atténuation: 75,0%

Calories: 196,4 kcal per 12,0 fl oz

Densité Initiale: 1,059 (1,048 – 1,065)

|==================#=============|

Densité finale: 1,015 (1,002 – 1,012)

|============================#===|

Couleur: 3,87 (5,0 – 14,0)

|=====#==========================|

Alcool: 5,8% (5,0% – 7,0%)

|==============#=================|

Amertume: 12,2 (20,0 – 35,0)

|================================|

Ingrédients:

1500 g American 6-row Pale

400 g Rye Flakes

570 g Oats Flaked

28,35 g Crystal (3,3%) – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 60 min

200 g Honey

13,0 tsp Corriander seeds – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 5 min

20,0 tsp Clementine peel (dried) – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 5 min

4,0 tsp Black Peppercorns – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 5 min

4,0 tsp Grains of Paradise – Ajouté à l’ébullition bouilli 5 min

6,76 fl oz White Labs WLP565 Belgian Saison I

2500 g German 2-row Pils

Horaire:

Air ambiant: 70,0 °F

Eau de source: 60,0 °F

00:03:00 Mash-In – Eau d’empâtage: 3,94 gal; Amorçage: 166,34 °F; Cible: 155 °F

Résultats générés par BeerTools Pro 1.5.2

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My Year in Social Media

January 1, 2009 dispar 3 Comments

In some ways, this post is a belated follow-up to my last blogpost about some of my blog statistics:

Almost 30k « Disparate.

In the two years since I published that post, I’ve received over 100 000 visits on this blog and I’ve diversified my social media activities.

Altogether, 2008 has been an important year, for me, in terms of social media. I began the year in Austin, TX and moved back to Quebec in late April. Many things have happened in my personal life and several of them have been tied to my social media activities.

The most important part of my social media life, through 2008 as through any year, is the contact I have with diverse people. I’ve met a rather large number of people in 2008 and some of these people have become quite important in my life. In fact, there are people I have met in 2008 whose impact on my life makes it feel as though we have been friends for quite a while. Many of these contacts have happened through social media or, at least, they have been mediated online. As a “people person,” a social butterfly, a humanist, and a social scientist, I care more about these people I’ve met than about the tools I’ve used.

Obviously, most of the contacts I’ve had through the year were with people I already knew. And my relationship with many of these people has changed quite significantly through the year. As is obvious for anyone who knows me, 2008 has been an important year in my personal life. A period of transition. My guess is that 2009 will be even more important, personally.

But this post is about my social media activities. Especially about (micro)blogging and about social networking, in my case. I also did a couple of things in terms of podcasting and online video, but my main activities online tend to be textual. This might change a bit in 2009, but probably not much. I expect 2009 to be an “incremental evolution” in terms of my social media activities. In fact, I mostly want to intensify my involvement in social media spheres, in continuity with what I’ve been doing in 2008.

So it’s the perfect occasion to think back about 2008.

Perhaps my main highlight of 2008 in terms of social media is Twitter. You can say I’m a late adopter to Twitter. I’ve known about it since it came out and I probably joined Twitter a while ago but I really started using it in preparation for SXSWi and BarCampAustin, in early March of this year. As I wanted to integrate Austin’s geek scene and Twitter clearly had some importance in that scene, I thought I’d “play along.” Also, I didn’t have a badge for SXSWi but I knew I could learn about off-festival events through Twitter. And Twitter has become rather important, for me.

For one thing, it allows me to make a distinction between actual blogposts and short thoughts. I’ve probably been posting fewer blog entries since I became active on Twitter and my blogposts are probably longer, on average, than they were before. In a way, I feel it enhances my blogging experience.

Twitter also allows me to “take notes in public,” a practise I find surprisingly useful. For instance, when I go to some kind of presentation (academic or otherwise) I use Twitter to record my thoughts on both the event and the content. This practise is my version of “liveblogging” and I enjoy it. On several occasions, these liveblogging sessions have been rather helpful. Some “tweeps” (Twitter+peeps) dislike this kind of liveblogging practise and claim that “Twitter isn’t meant for this,” but I’ve had more positive experiences through liveblogging on Twitter than negative ones.

The device which makes all of this liveblogging possible, for me, is the iPod touch I received from a friend in June of this year. It has had important implications for my online life and, to a certain extent, the ‘touch has become my primary computer. The iTunes App Store, which opened its doors in July, has changed the game for me as I was able to get a number of dedicated applications, some of which I use several times a day. I’ve blogged about several things related to the iPod touch and the whole process has changed my perspective on social media in general. Of course, an iPhone would be an even more useful tool for me: SMS, GPS, camera, and ubiquitous Internet are all useful features in connection to social media. But, for now, the iPod touch does the trick. Especially through Twitter and Facebook.

One tool I started using quite frequently through the year is Ping.fm. I use it to post to: Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, LinkedIn, Brightkite, Jaiku, FriendFeed, Blogger, and WordPress.com (on another blog). I receive the most feedback on Facebook and Twitter but I occasionally get feedback through the other services (including through Pownce, which was recently sold). One thing I notice through this cross-posting practise is that, on these different services, the same activity has a range of implications. For instance, while I’m mostly active on Twitter, I actually get more out of Facebook postings (status updates, posted items, etc.). And reactions on different services tend to be rather different, as the relationships I have with people who provide that feedback tend to range from indirect acquaintance to “best friend forever.” Given my social science background, I find these differences quite interesting to think about.

One thing I’ve noticed on Twitter is that my “ranking among tweeps” has increased very significantly. On Twinfluence, my rank has gone as high as the 86th percentile (though it recently went down to the 79th percentile) while, on Twitter Grader, my “Twitter grade” is now at a rather unbelievable 98.1%. I don’t tend to care much about “measures of influence” but I find these ratings quite interesting. One reason is that they rely on relatively sophisticated concepts from social sciences. Another reason is that I’m intrigued by what causes increases in my ranking on those services. In this case, I think the measures give me way too much credit at this point but I also think that my “influence” is found outside of Twitter.

One “sphere of influence” which remained important for me through 2008 is Facebook. While Facebook had a more central role in my life through 2007, it now represents a stable part of my social media involvement. One thing which tends to happen is that first contacts happen through Twitter (I often use it as the equivalent of a business card during event) and Facebook represents a second step in the relationship. In a way, this distinction foregrounds the obvious concept of “intimacy” in social media. Twitter is public, ties are weak. Facebook is intimate, ties are stronger. On the other hand, there seems to be much more clustering among my tweeps than among my Facebook contacts, in part because my connection to local geek scenes in Austin and Montreal happens primarily through Twitter.

Through Facebook I was able to organize a fun little brunch with a few friends from elementary school. Though this brunch may not have been the most important event of 2008, for me, I’ve learnt a lot about the power of social media through contacting these friends, meeting them, and thinking about the whole affair.

In a way, Twitter and Facebook have helped me expand my social media activities in diverse directions. But most of the important events in my social media life in 2008 have been happening offline. Several of these events were unconferences and informal events happening around conferences.

My two favourite events of the year, in terms of social media, were BarCampAustin and PodCamp Montreal. Participating in (and observing) both events has had some rather profound implications in my social media life. These two unconferences were somewhat different but both were probably as useful, to me. One regret I have is that it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to attend BarCampAustinIV now that I’ve left Austin.

Other events have happened throughout 2008 which I find important in terms of social media. These include regular meetings like Yulblog, Yulbiz, and PodMtl. There are many other events which aren’t necessarily tied to social media but that I find interesting from a social media perspective. The recent Infopresse360 conference on innovation (with Malcolm Gladwell as keynote speaker) and a rather large number of informal meetups with people I’ve known through social media would qualify.

Despite the diversification of my social media life through 2008, blogging remains my most important social media activity. I now consider myself a full-fledged blogger and I think that my blog is representative of something about me.

Simply put, I’m proud to be a blogger.

In 2008, a few things have happened through my blog which, I think, are rather significant. One is that someone who found me through Google contacted me directly about a contract in private-sector ethnography. As I’m currently going through professional reorientation, I take this contract to be rather significant. It’s actually possible that the Google result this person noticed wasn’t directly about my blog (the ranking of my diverse online profiles tends to shift around fairly regularly) but I still associate online profiles with blogging.

A set of blog-related occurences which I find significant has to do with the fact that my blog has been at the centre of a number of discussions with diverse people including podcasters and other social media people. My guess is that some of these discussions may lead to some interesting things for me in 2009.

Through 2008, this blog has become more anthropological. For several reasons, I wish to maintain it as a disparate blog, a blog about disparate topics. But it still participates in my gaining some recognition as an anthroblogger. One reason is that anthrobloggers are now more closely connected than before. Recently, anthroblogger Daniel Lende has sent a call for nominations for the best of the anthro blogosphere which he then posted as both a “round up” and a series of prizes. Before that, Savage Minds had organized an “awards ceremony” for an academic conference. And, perhaps the most important dimension of my ow blog being recognized in the anthroblogosphere, I have been discussing a number of things with Concordia-based anthrobloggers Owen Wiltshire and Maximilian Forte.

Still, anthropology isn’t the most prominent topic on this blog. In fact, my anthro-related posts tend to receive relatively little attention, outside of discussions with colleagues.

Since I conceive of this post as a follow-up on posts about statistics, I’ve gone through some of my stats here on Disparate. Upgrades to Wordpress.com also allow me to get a more detailed picture of what has been happening on this blog.

Through 2008, I’ve received over 55 131 hits on this blog, about 11% more than in 2007 for an average of 151 hits a day (I actually thought it was more but there are some days during which I receive relatively few hits, especially during weekends). The month I received the most hits was February 2007 with 5 967 hits but February and March 2008 were relatively close. The day I received the most hits was October 28, 2008, with 310 hits. This was the day after Myriade opened.

These numbers aren’t so significant. For one thing, hits don’t imply that people have read anything on my blog. Since all of my blogs are ad-free, I haven’t tried to increase traffic to this blog. But it’s still interesting to notice a few things.

The most obvious thing is that hits to rather silly posts are much more frequent than hits to posts I actually care about.

For instance, my six blogposts with the most hits:

Title	Hits
Facebook Celebs and Fakes	5 782
emachines Power Supply	4 800
Recording at 44.1 kHz, 16b with iPod 5G?	2 834
Blogspot v. WordPress.com, Blogger v. Wo	2 571
GERD and Stress	2 377
University Rankings and Diversity	2 219

And for 2008:

Title	Hits
Facebook Celebs and Fakes	3 984
emachines Power Supply	2 265
AT&T Yahoo Pro DSL to Belkin WiFi	1 527
GERD and Stress	1 430
Blogspot v. WordPress.com, Blogger v. Wo	1 151
University Rankings and Diversity	995

The Facebook post I wrote very quickly in July 2007. It was a quick reaction to something I had heard. Obviously, the post’s title is the single reason for that post’s popularity. I get an average of 11 hits a day on that post for 4 001 hits in 2008. If I wanted to increase traffic, I’d post as many of these as possible.

The emachines post is my first post on this new blog (but I did import posts from my previous blog), back in January 2006. It seems to have helped a few people and gets regular traffic (six hits a day, in 2008). It’s not my most thoughtful post but it has its place. It’s still funny to notice that traffic to this blogpost increases even though one would assume it’s less relevant.

Rather unsurprisingly, my post about then-upcoming recording capabilities on the iPod 5G, from March 2006, is getting very few hits. But, for a while, it did get a number of hits (six a day in 2006) and I was a bit puzzled by that.

The AT&T post is my most popular post written in 2008. It was a simple troubleshooting session, like the aforementioned emachines post. These posts might be useful for some people and I occasionally get feedback from people about them. Another practical post regularly getting a few hits is about an inflatable mattress with built-in pump which came without clear instructions.

My post about blogging platform was in fact a repost of a comment I made on somebody else’s blog entry (though the original seems to be lost). From what I can see, it was most popular from June, 2007 through May, 2008. Since it was first posted, WordPress.com has been updated quite a bit and Blogger/Blogspot seems to have pretty much stalled. My comment/blogpost on the issue is fairly straightforward and it has put me in touch with some other bloggers.

The other two blogposts getting the most hits in 2008 are closer to things about which I care. Both entries were written in mid-2006 and are still relevant. The rankings post is short on content, but it serves as an “anchor” for some things I like to discuss in terms of educational institutions. The GERD post is among my most personal posts on this blog, especially in English. It’s one of the posts for which I received the most feedback. My perspective on the issue hasn’t changed much in the meantime.

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Influence and Butterflies

December 31, 2008 dispar 5 Comments

Seems like “influence” is a key theme in social media, these days. An example among several others:

Influenceur, autorité, passeur de culture ou l’un de ces singes exubérants | Mario tout de go.

In that post, Mario Asselin brings together a number of notions which are at the centre of current discussions about social media. The core notion seems to be that “influence” replaces “authority” as a quality or skill some people have, more than others. Some people are “influencers” and, as such, they have a specific power over others. Such a notion seems to be widely held in social media and numerous services exist which are based on the notion that “influence” can be measured.

I don’t disagree. There’s something important, online, which can be called “influence” and which can be measured. To a large extent, it’s related to a large number of other concepts such as fame and readership, popularity and network centrality. There are significant differences between all of those concepts but they’re still related. They still depict “social power” which isn’t coercive but is the basis of an obvious stratification.

In some contexts, this is what people mean by “social capital.” I originally thought people meant something closer to Bourdieu but a fellow social scientist made me realise that people are probably using Putnam’s concept instead. I recently learnt that George W. Bush himself used “political capital” in a sense which is fairly similar to what most people seem to mean by “social capital.” Even in that context, “capital” is more specific than “influence.” But the core notion is the same.

To put it bluntly:

Some people are more “important” than others.

Social marketers are especially interested in such a notion. Marketing as a whole is about influence. Social marketing, because it allows for social groups to be relatively amorphous, opposes influence to authority. But influence maintains a connection with “top-down” approaches to marketing.

My own point would be that there’s another kind of influence which is difficult to pinpoint but which is highly significant in social networks: the social butterfly effect.

Yep, I’m still at it after more than three years. It’s even more relevant now than it was then. And I’m now able to describe it more clearly and define it more precisely.

The social butterfly effect is a social network analogue to the Edward Lorenz’s well-known “butterfly effect. ” As any analogy, this connection is partial but telling. Like Lorenz’s phrase, “social butterfly effect” is more meaningful than precise. One thing which makes the phrase more important for me is the connection with the notion of a “social butterfly,” which is both a characteristic I have been said to have and a concept I deem important in social science.

I define social butterflies as people who connect to diverse network clusters. Community enthusiast Christine Prefontaine defined social butterflies within (clustered) networks, but I think it’s useful to separate out network clusters. A social butterfly’s network is rather sparse as, on the whole, a small number of people in it have direct connections with one another. But given the topography of most social groups, there likely are clusters within that network. The social butterfly connects these clusters. When the social butterfly is the only node which can connect these clusters directly, her/his “influence” can be as strong as that of a central node in one of these clusters since s/he may be able to bring some new element from one cluster to another.

I like the notion of “repercussion” because it has an auditory sense and it resonates with all sorts of notions I think important without being too buzzwordy. For instance, as expressions like “ripple effect” and “domino effect” are frequently used, they sound like clichés. Obviously, so does “butterfly effect” but I like puns too much to abandon it. From a social perspective, the behaviour of a social butterfly has important “repercussions” in diverse social groups.

Since I define myself as a social butterfly, this all sounds self-serving. And I do pride myself in being a “connector.” Not only in generational terms (I dislike some generational metaphors). But in social terms. I’m rarely, if ever, central to any group. But I’m also especially good at serving as a contact between people from different groups.

Yay, me! 🙂

My thinking about the social butterfly effect isn’t an attempt to put myself on some kind of pedestal. Social butterflies typically don’t have much “power” or “prestige.” Our status is fluid/precarious. I enjoy being a social butterfly but I don’t think we’re better or even more important than anybody else. But I do think that social marketers and other people concerned with “influence” should take us into account.

I say all of this as a social scientist. Some parts of my description are personalized but I’m thinking about a broad stance “from society’s perspective.” In diverse contexts, including this blog, I have been using “sociocentric” in at least three distinct senses: class-based ethnocentrism, a special form of “altrocentrism,” and this “society-centred perspective.” These meanings are distinct enough that they imply homonyms. Social network analysis is typically “egocentric” (“ego-centred”) in that each individual is the centre of her/his own network. This “egocentricity” is both a characteristic of social networks in opposition to other social groups and a methodological issue. It specifically doesn’t imply egotism but it does imply a move away from pre-established social categories. In this sense, social network analysis isn’t “society-centred” and it’s one reason I put so much emphasis on social networks.

In the context of discussions of influence, however, there is a “society-centredness” which needs to be taken into account. The type of “influence” social marketers and others are so interested in relies on defined “spaces.” In some ways, if “so-and-so is influential,” s/he has influence within a specific space, sphere, or context, the boundaries of which may be difficult to define. For marketers, this can bring about the notion of a “market,” including in its regional and demographic senses. This seems to be the main reason for the importance of clusters but it also sounds like a way to recuperate older marketing concepts which seem outdated online.

A related point is the “vertical” dimension of this notion of “influence.” Whether or not it can be measured accurately, it implies some sort of scale. Some people are at the top of the scale, they’re influencers. Those at the bottom are the masses, since we take for granted that pyramids are the main models for social structure. To those of us who favour egalitarianism, there’s something unpalatable about this.

And I would say that online contacts tend toward some form of egalitarianism. To go back to one of my favourite buzzphrases, the notion of attention relates to reciprocity:

It’s an attention economy: you need to pay attention to get attention.

This is one thing journalism tends to “forget.” Relationships between journalists and “people” are asymmetrical. Before writing this post, I read Brian Storm’s commencement speech for the Mizzou J-School. While it does contain some interesting tidbits about the future of journalism, it positions journalists (in this case, recent graduates from an allegedly prestigious school of journalism) away from the masses. To oversimplify, journalists are constructed as those who capture people’s attention by the quality of their work, not by any two-way relationship. Though they rarely discuss this, journalists, especially those in mainstream media, typically perceive themselves as influencers.

Attention often has a temporal dimension which relates to journalism’s obsession with time. Journalists work in time-sensitive contexts, news are timely, audiences spend time with journalistic contents, and journalists fight for this audience time as a scarce resource, especially in connection to radio and television. Much of this likely has to do with the fact that journalism is intimately tied to advertising.

As I write this post, I hear on a radio talk show a short discussion about media coverage of Africa. The topic wakes up the africanist in me. The time devoted to Africa in almost any media outside of Africa is not only very limited but spent on very specific issues having to do with Africa. In mainstream media, Africa only “matters” when major problems occur. Even though most parts of Africa are peaceful and there many fabulously interesting things occuring throughout the continent, Africa is the “forgotten” continent.

A connection I perceive is that, regardless of any other factor, Africans are taken to not be “influential.” What makes this notion especially strange to an africanist is that influence tends to be a very important matter throughout the continent. Most Africans I know or have heard about have displayed a very nuanced and acute sense of “influence” to the extent that “power” often seems less relevant when working in Africa than different elements of influence. I know full well that, to outsiders to African studies, these claims may sound far-fetched. But there’s a lot to be said about the importance of social networks in Africa and this could help refine a number of notions that I have tagged in this post.

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Answers on Expertise

December 25, 2008 dispar Leave a comment

As a follow-up on my previous post…

Quest for Expertise « Disparate.

(I was looking for the origin of the “10 years or 10,000 hours to be an expert” claim.)

Interestingly enough, that post is getting a bit of blog attention.

I’m so grateful about this attention that it made me tweet the following:

Trackbacks, pings, and blog comments are blogger gifts.

I also posted a question about this on Mahalo Answers (after the first comment, by Alejna, appeared on my blog, but before other comments and trackbacks appeared). I selected glaspell’s answer as the best answer
(glaspell also commented on my blog entry).

At this point, my impression is that what is taken as a “rule” on expertise is a simplification of results from a larger body of research with an emphasis on work by K. Anders Ericsson but with little attention paid to primary sources.
The whole process is quite satisfying, to me. Not just because we might all gain a better understanding of how this “claim” became so generalized, but because the process as a whole shows both powers and limitations of the Internet. I tend to claim (publicly) that the ‘Net favours critical thinking (because we eventually all claims with grains of salt). But it also seems that, even with well-known research done in English, it can be rather difficult to follow all the connections across the literature. If you think about more obscure work in non-dominant languages, it’s easy to realize that Google’s dream of organizing the world’s information isn’t yet true.

By the by, I do realize that my quest was based on a somewhat arbitrary assumption: that this “rule of thumb” is now understood as a solid rule. But what I’ve noticed in popular media since 2006 leads me to believe that the claim is indeed taken as a hard and fast rule.

I’m not blaming anyone, in this case. I don’t think that anyone’s involvement in the “chain of transmission” was voluntarily misleading and I don’t even think that it was that essential. As with many other ideas, what “sticks” is what seems to make sense in context. Actually, this strong tendency for “convenient” ideas to be more widely believed relates to a set of tricky issues with which academics have to deal, on a daily basis. Sagan’s well-known “baloney detector” is useful, here. But it’s also in not so wide use.

One thing which should also be clear: I’m not saying that Ericsson and other researchers have done anything shoddy or inappropriate. Their work is being used outside of its original context, which is often an issue.

Mass media coverage of academic research was the basis of series of entries on the original Language Log, including one of my favourite blogposts, Mark Liberman’s Language Log: Raising standards — by lowering them. The main point, I think, is that secluded academics in the Ivory Tower do little to alleviate this problem.

But I digress.
And I should probably reply to the other comments on the entry itself.

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Quest for Expertise

December 23, 2008 dispar 23 Comments

Will at Work Learning: People remember 10%, 20%…Oh Really?.

This post was mentioned on the mailing-list for the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE-L).

In that post, Will Thalheimer traces back a well-known claim about learning to shoddy citations. While it doesn’t invalidate the base claim (that people tend to retain more information through certain cognitive processes), Thalheimer does a good job of showing how a graph which has frequently been seen in educational fields was based on faulty interpretation of work by prominent scholars, mixed with some results from other sources.

Quite interesting. IMHO, demystification and critical thinking are among the most important things we can do in academia. In fact, through training in folkloristics, I have become quite accustomed to this specific type of debunking.

I have in mind a somewhat similar claim that I’m currently trying to trace. Preliminary searches seem to imply that citations of original statements have a similar hyperbolic effect on the status of this claim.

The claim is what a type of “rule of thumb” in cognitive science. A generic version could be stated in the following way:

It takes ten years or 10,000 hours to become an expert in any field.

The claim is a rather famous one from cognitive science. I’ve heard it uttered by colleagues with a background in cognitive science. In 2006, I first heard about such a claim from Philip E. Ross, on an episode of Scientific American‘s Science Talk podcast to discuss his article on expertise. I later read a similar claim in Daniel Levitin’s 2006 This Is Your Brain On Music. The clearest statement I could find back in Levitin’s book is the following (p. 193):

The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything.

More recently, during a keynote speech he was giving as part of his latest book tour, I heard a similar claim from presenter extraordinaire Malcolm Gladwell. AFAICT, this claim runs at the centre of Gladwell’s recent book: Outliers: The Story of Success. In fact, it seems that Gladwell uses the same quote from Levitin, on page 40 of Outliers (I just found that out).

I would like to pinpoint the origin for the claim. Contrary to Thalheimer’s debunking, I don’t expect that my search will show that the claim is inaccurate. But I do suspect that the “rule of thumb” versions may be a bit misled. I already notice that most people who set up such claims are doing so without direct reference to the primary literature. This latter comment isn’t damning: in informal contexts, constant referal to primary sources can be extremely cumbersome. But it could still be useful to clear up the issue. Who made this original claim?

I’ve tried a few things already but it’s not working so well. I’m collecting a lot of references, to both online and printed material. Apart from Levitin’s book and a few online comments, I haven’t yet read the material. Eventually, I’d probably like to find a good reference on the cognitive basis for expertise which puts this “rule of thumb” in context and provides more elaborate data on different things which can be done during that extensive “time on task” (including possible skill transfer).

But I should proceed somewhat methodically. This blogpost is but a preliminary step in this process.

Since Philip E. Ross is the first person on record I heard talk about this claim, a logical first step for me is to look through this SciAm article. Doing some text searches on the printable version of his piece, I find a few interesting things including the following (on page 4 of the standard version):

Simon coined a psychological law of his own, the 10-year rule, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field.

Apart from the ten thousand (10,000) hours part of the claim, this is about as clear a statement as I’m looking for. The “Simon” in question is Herbert A. Simon, who did research on chess at the Department of Psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University with colleague William G. Chase. So I dig for diverse combinations of “Herbert Simon,” “ten(10)-year rule,” “William Chase,” “expert(ise),” and/or “chess.” I eventually find two primary texts by those two authors, both from 1973: (Chase and Simon, 1973a) and (Chase and Simon, 1973b).

The first (1973a) is an article from Cognitive Psychology 4(1): 55-81, available for download on ScienceDirect (toll access). Through text searches for obvious words like “hour*,” “year*,” “time,” or even “ten,” it seems that this article doesn’t include any specific statement about the amount of time required to become an expert. The quote which appears to be the most relevant is the following:

Behind this perceptual analysis, as with all skills (cf., Fitts & Posner, 1967), lies an extensive cognitive apparatus amassed through years of constant practice.

While it does relate to the notion that there’s a cognitive basis to practise, the statement is generic enough to be far from the “rule of thumb.”

The second Chase and Simon reference (1973b) is a chapter entitled “The Mind’s Eye in Chess” (pp. 215-281) in the proceedings of the Eighth Carnegie Symposium on Cognition as edited by William Chase and published by Academic Press under the title Visual Information Processing. I borrowed a copy of those proceedings from Concordia and have been scanning that chapter visually for some statements about the “time on task.” Though that symposium occurred in 1972 (before the first Chase and Simon reference was published), the proceedings were apparently published after the issue of Cognitive Psychology since the authors mention that article for background information.

I do find some interesting quotes, but nothing that specific:

By a rough estimate, the amount of time each player has spent playing chess, studying chess, and otherwise staring at chess positions is perhaps 10,000 to 50,000 hours for the Master; 1,000 to 5,000 hours for the Class A player; and less than 100 horus for the beginner. (Chase and Simon 1973b: 219)

or:

T
he organization of the Master’s elaborate repertoire of information takes thousands of hours to build up, and the same is true of any skilled task (e.g., football, music). That is why practice is the major independent variable in the acquisition of skill. (Chase and Simon 1973b: 279, emphasis in the original, last sentences in the text)

Maybe I haven’t scanned these texts properly but those quotes I find seem to imply that Simon hadn’t really devised his “10-year rule” in a clear, numeric version.

I could probably dig for more Herbert Simon wisdom. Before looking (however cursorily) at those 1973 texts, I was using Herbert Simon as a key figure in the origin of that “rule of thumb.” To back up those statements, I should probably dig deeper in the Herbert Simon archives. But that might require more work than is necessary and it might be useful to dig through other sources.

In my personal case, the other main written source for this “rule of thumb” is Dan Levitin. So, using online versions of his book, I look for comments about expertise. (I do own a copy of the book and I’m assuming the Index contains page numbers for references on expertise. But online searches are more efficient and possibly more thorough on specific keywords.) That’s how I found the statement, quoted above. I’m sure it’s the one which was sticking in my head and, as I found out tonight, it’s the one Gladwell used in his first statement on expertise in Outliers.

So, where did Levitin get this? I could possibly ask him (we’ve been in touch and he happens to be local) but looking for those references might require work on his part. A preliminary step would be to look through Levitin’s published references for Your Brain On Music.

Though Levitin is a McGill professor, Your Brain On Music doesn’t follow the typical practise in English-speaking academia of ladling copious citations onto any claim, even the most truistic statements. Nothing strange in this difference in citation practise. After all, as Levitin explains in his Bibliographic Notes:

This book was written for the non-specialist and not for my colleagues, and so I have tried to simplify topics without oversimplifying them.

In this context, academic-style citation-fests would make the book too heavy. Levitin does, however, provide those “Bibliographic Notes” at the end of his book and on the website for the same book. In the Bibliographic Notes of that site, Levitin adds a statement I find quite interesting in my quest for “sources of claims”:

Because I wrote this book for the general reader, I want to emphasize that there are no new ideas presented in this book, no ideas that have not already been presented in scientific and scholarly journals as listed below.

So, it sounds like going through those references is a good strategy to locate at least solid references on that specific “10,000 hour” claim. Among relevant references on the cognitive basis of expertise (in Chapter 7), I notice the following texts which might include specific statements about the “time on task” to become an expert. (An advantage of the Web version of these bibliographic notes is that Levitin provides some comments on most references; I put Levitin’s comments in parentheses.)

Chi, Michelene T.H., Robert Glaser, and Marshall J. Farr, eds. 1988. The Nature of Expertise. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (Psychological studies of expertise, including chess players)
Ericsson, K. A., and J. Smith, eds. 1991. Toward a General Theory of Expertise: prospects and limits. New York: Cambridge University Press. (Psychological studies of expertise, including chess players)
Hayes, J. R. 1985. Three problems in teaching general skills. In Thinking and Learning Skills: Research and Open Questions, edited by S. F. Chipman, J. W. Segal and R. Glaser. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (Source for the study of Mozart’s early works not being highly regarded, and refutation that Mozart didn’t need 10,000 hours like everyone else to become an expert.)
Howe, M. J. A., J. W. Davidson, and J. A. Sloboda. 1998. Innate talents: Reality or myth? Behavioral & Brain Sciences 21 (3):399-442. (One of my favorite articles, although I don’t agree with everything in it; an overview of the “talent is a myth” viewpoint.)
Sloboda, J. A. 1991. Musical expertise. In Toward a general theory of expertise, edited by K. A. Ericcson (sic) and J. Smith. New York: Cambridge University Press. (Overview of issues and findings in musical expertise literature)

I have yet to read any of those references. I did borrow Ericsson and Smith when I first heard about Levitin’s approach to talent and expertise (probably through a radio and/or podcast appearance). But I had put the issue of expertise on the back-burner. It was always at the back of my mind and I did blog about it, back then. But it took Gladwell’s talk to wake me up. What’s funny, though, is that the “time on task” statements in (Ericsson and Smith, 1991) seem to lead back to (Chase and Simon, 1973b).

At this point, I get the impression that the “it takes a decade and/or 10,000 hours to become an expert”:

was originally proposed as a vague hypothesis a while ago (the year 1899 comes up);
became an object of some consideration by cognitive psychologists at the end of the 1960s;
became more widely accepted in the 1970s;
was tested by Benjamin Bloom and others in the 1980s;
was precised by Ericsson and others in the late 1980s;
gained general popularity in the mid-2000s;
is being further popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in late 2008.

Of course, I’ll have to do a fair bit of digging and reading to verify any of this, but it sounds like the broad timeline makes some sense. One thing, though, is that it doesn’t really seem that anybody had the intention of spelling it out as a “rule” or “law” in such a format as is being carried around. If I’m wrong, I’m especially surprised that a clear formulation isn’t easier to find.

As an aside, of sorts… Some people seem to associate the claim with Gladwell, at this point. Not very surprsing, given the popularity of his books, the effectiveness of his public presentations, the current context of his book tour, and the reluctance of the general public to dig any deeper than the latest source.

The problem, though, is that it doesn’t seem that Gladwell himself has done anything to “set the record straight.” He does quote Levitin in Outliers, but I heard him reply to questions and comments as if the research behind the “ten years or ten thousand hours” claim had some association with him. From a popular author like Gladwell, it’s not that awkward. But these situations are perfect opportunities for popularizers like Gladwell to get a broader public interested in academia. As Gladwell allegedly cares about “educational success” (as measured on a linear scale), I would have expected more transparency.

Ah, well…

So, I have some work to do on all of this. It will have to wait but this placeholder might be helpful. In fact, I’ll use it to collect some links.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Levitin, Malcolm Gladwell, Herbert Simon, William Chase, Carnegie-Mellon, Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, cognitive sciences, expertise, expert, experience, time on task, ten thousand hours, ten year rule, chess, music, This Is Your Brain On Music, Outliers: The Story of Success, educational success, Philip Ross, The Expert Mind, The Mind’s Eye in Chess, Perception in Chess, Will Thalheimer, STLHE, STLHE-L, demystification, debunking, critical thinking, folkloristics, rule of thumb, Science Talk, Scientific American, Visual Information Processing, peer-reviewed, primary source, Benjamin Bloom, citations, Cognitive Psychology, citation practises, talent, effort, estimates, accuracy, McGill University, K. Anders Ericsson, John Hayes, Ericsson and Smith, Jacqui Smith, chess players, decade, practise, practice, rehearsal, experimentation, timeline, academic contexts, linear scales

Some relevant blogposts of mine on talent, expertise, effort, and Levitin.

And a whole bunch of weblinks to help me in my future searches (I have yet to really delve in any of this).

Dablini

Ingrédients:

Bretteuse

Ingrédients:

Horaire:

A bilingual blog on disparate subjects. / Un blogue disparate bilingue.