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February 03 2012
Tweet Us Not Into Temptaton. OK, Just This Once.
Oh! Oh God, I spent the last 8 hours on Facebook!!
When you text thousands of people seven times a day for a week, and ask them whether they have felt temptation recently, what do you get? A giant database of thousands of tiny vices and people’s own admissions—some true, some likely edited for the sake of vanity—of whether they caved.
According to researchers who recently performed just such a study, people’s biggest willpower failures related to checking things like Twitter or email. People were more able to control sexual urges or the desire to spend money than they were the desire to check social media (though we note that it may take two people contemporaneously caving for certain sexual urges to be considered indulged). Though the paper isn’t available online yet for us to check on this, the researchers told The Guardian that the number of times people were tempted by cigarettes, coffee, and alcohol was surprisingly low, and that the desire to check social media was much more frequently reported. The fact that media temptation came up so frequently, and was so often indulged, may be because unlike smoking, drinking, or spending gobs ...
March 18 2011
U.S. Government Writes Software to Enable Squads of Propaganda Comment Trolls
It sounds like the deranged words of a conspiracy theorist: The U.S. military is (not so) secretly creating software that’ll generate phony online personae in order to subtly influence social media conversations and spread propaganda. But what may sound like wacky theory is actually wacky reality, or at least will soon be, depending on whether it’s already in the works.
Dubbed the “online persona management service,” this technology would enable a single soldier to assume upwards of 10 different identities. As United States Central Command Commander Bill Speaks told The Guardian, “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.”
Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home ...
September 21 2010
It Has 3,700 Facebook Friends, 1,800 Twitter Followers, & It’s a Tree
This 100-year-old tree wants to tell you about its day.
The tree, an English-speaking Belgian, shares pictures, videos, audio, and comments about it’s day to day life with the world via its website, twitter feed, and Facebook page. But don’t try to Facebook friend it right now—the tree is already over its friend limit.
The tree’s also outfitted with special sensors that detect the CO2, soot and ozone levels and also acts as a weather station, detecting local rainfall and temperature fluctuations. All of this information is transmitted to software which translates it into status updates like these examples on io9:
They analyze what the tree sees and senses, then translate that into updates like “Won’t be doing too much photosynthesis in this cloudy weather,” and “This ozone concentration makes it difficult to do my job.” It also advises people to ride their bikes on days with air pollution.
The information gathered by the tree’s sensors can also be used by researchers. Check out the making of the social-media tree video for more information on what went into the creation of this arboreal social media master.
Though the tree has to deal with the ups and downs of climate change, it is still pretty chipper as based on his social media slogan:
Hello! I’m a tree, and this is my feed. I’ll be online all day to keep you posted on how I feel.
Related content:
Bad Astronomy: Archiving NASA’s social media
Bad Astronomy: Social media diseases
Discover Magazine: Talking Plants
Image: The talking tree’s Facebook Page
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