thoughtcrumbs

Quotes from (the other) Oppenheimer

Frank Oppenheimer (Robert's little brother) was a creative and charming pacifist. So charming, in fact, he was even beloved by his FBI tail (assigned because of his membership in the Communist party for their racial integration campaigns). Oppenheimer believed that students should be able to do fundamental lab experiments at any time, so created a library of permanent experiment stations which eventually morphed into the Exploratorium. He was also known for integrating art and science (or maybe was just trying to convince his artist friends to help construct the museum):

"Artists and scientists are the official 'noticers' of society. They notice things that other people either have never learned to see or have learned to ignore, and communicate those 'noticings' to others."

Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman were good friends, and a quote often attributed to Feynman was more broadly stated by Oppenheimer:

"Understanding is a lot like sex: It has a practical purpose but that's not why people do it."

Social network activity and social well-being

Just submitted the final version of this paper:

Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (To appear). Social network activity and social well-being. ACM CHI 2010: Conference on human factors in computing.PDF

It's the product of another fantabulous summer with the Facebook Data Scientists. This time we surveyed about 1200 English-speaking Facebook users, asking them validated social psych scales measuring social capital and loneliness (e.g. "I come in contact with new people all the time" or "There are several people I trust to help solve my problems".) We paired their self-reports with communication activity on the site.

The work is based on the numerous studies that Nicole Ellison, Cliff Lampe, and Chip Steinfeld have done at MSU, connecting self-reports of Facebook use with social capital. Since we had granular activity data on server logs, we extended their work to look at different kinds of communication, particularly (1) directed communication (e.g., interacting with individual friends / sending messages / writing on each other's walls), and (2) passive consumption (e.g., reading stories about friends in the newsfeed). Turns out directed communication acts as expected (people who have strong relationships tend to communicate heavily with individual friends), but passive consumption is associated with greater feelings of loneliness. Since it's a cross-sectional study, we can't tell if clicking on feed stories makes people feel lonely, or lonely people tend to click on more feed stories, but we'll be able to tease out causation in future waves of the study.

We also validated the Facebook Intensity Scale; people are great at self-reporting their number of FB friends (duh) and pretty good at reporting time on the site. But attitudinal questions about their engagement with the site don't correlate to any measurable activities (like content production, repeat visits in a month, etc.)

Electric cars: Battery caching, navel gazing, and community building

CMU robotics prof Illah Nourbakhsh unveiled ChargeCar today, a project to redesign electric cars for urban commutes. He prefaced it by recounting all the times he's been in his own electric car, a RAV4EV, driving 70mph by the airport when he'd hear an NPR interview lamenting that electric cars just aren't able to go highway speeds or be dependable for long trips. He's also never visited a mechanic; no scheduled maintenance because the system is so much simpler, and regenerative braking means the motor does most of the work, rather than the brake pads. In eight years, he's only replaced the tires. (Though he can't pass PA emissions testing: You need a tailpipe.)

ChargeCar is based on the idea that hilly, stop-and-go, traffic- and coffee-detour-ridden urban commute is ideal for electric motors (and sucky for gas ones), but not for electric batteries. Batteries can't handle the constant changes, and have trouble regulating thermal processes when they're under heavy load. So, he treats them like a database and adds a caching layer: a low-voltage supercapacitor, which changes current direction easily but has lower energy density. Then he tries to hit the capacitor rather than the battery whenever possibly (charging when braking, and discharging to accelerate).

Okay, so battery caching is awesome. But the project also focuses on harnessing the power of communities:

1. Communities of commuters submit .gpx data from their daily drives to the site. (Is there an iPhone app in the works?) In return, they get personal informatics about their commute efficiency, cost, and carbon footprint. And how much they would save (in real cash money) if they'd been driving an electric. Could be used to pit neighbors against each other, à la this California MUD's social comparison energy bills.
2. Communities of hackers. They've released the totally naive controller algorithm (always hit capacitor first, then battery) as open source in Ruby. Hackers are encouraged to submit better algorithms. One of them will win an electric car. And über bragging rights.
3. Communities of mechanics. Pittsburgh is full of good mechanics and metal shops. One chop shop owner gutted the engine, gas tank, and transmission from a Toyota Scion demo car for free (the parts were worth more to him than his time) so the researchers could fill it with their own electric engine and batteries. ChargeCar would foster a community of mechanics to recycle cars (like Cash for Clunkers, eco-style).

addendum: vegetarian zombie tattoo beats all

Per the last post, Seth figured out the winning combination:

vegetarian beats zombie

The online dating site OKCupid, which had me at "hello, here's how our match algorithm works," has been publishing troves of great stats about self-presentation and response rates. In their latest analysis of the impact of words in conversational overtures, they find that netspeak (ur, u, luv) and physical compliments (sexy, hot, cutie) are a big FAIL. And that niche interests (like "zombie" and "vegetarian") increase reply rates. Their presentation of the results is even great (but guys, where are the error bars? What's a stats nerd to think?):

It's remarkably similar to the research I did the first couple of years in grad school, using machine learning to identify phrases that predict whether a forum message will get a response. In controlled field experiments we found that saying things like "I've been lurking here" or "I've been following this thread" roughly doubled reply rates. Seriously. (PDF of our paper on rhetorical strategies). But their data set is waaay juicier.

Autism and social norms online

Just submitted the final version of this paper:

Burke, M., Kraut, R., and Williams, D. (to appear). Social use of computer-mediated communication by adults on the autism spectrum. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2010. PDF

It's going to be the foundation of my thesis, and I'm psyched to be applying a combination of ninja data-munging and ethnography on a really meaningful problem. The gist is that a lot of adults on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum are using Facebook, fan forums, online dating sites, and IM to meet new people and support existing relationships in a relatively comfortable medium. CMC removes the need for eye contact, reduces pressure to respond quickly, and is fairly structured and predictable, all properties that mesh with characteristics common to individuals with autism. By removing intonation and nonverbal cues (occasional emoticon ;-) notwithstanding), CMC levels the playing field for interpretation (or misinterpretation).

But CMC isn't ideal. It removes some forms of feedback and is subject to emerging social norms (such as how quickly to reply to an email from a new acquaintance). It's hard to tell who to trust, especially if you don't have a strong network of mutual acquaintances to vouch for someone.

Last spring I interviewed 16 Pittsburgh-area adults on the autism spectrum, and they shared their email inboxes, fan fiction, and MySpace pages with me. We talked about face-to-face social interactions, especially with classmates, co-workers, family, and friends. Then we logged in together and they walked me through any online communities or CMC tools they regularly used, and explained how online interactions differed from face-to-face ones. About half of the adults in the study were actively seeking to build new relationships, so this paper documents their successes and challenges, and proposes technology designs to support their goals.

One of the biggest challenges for several interviewees was figuring out social norms online. What should I say in my online dating profile? How soon should I email a new friend? How many Facebook status updates is too many? This is a problem for everybody to some degree, so interventions focused on one population should generalize well. So, I'm thinking about modeling typical social interactions online (messaging frequency, status updating, txting, tweeting, etc.), plotting distributions of activity, and showing an individual where he or she fits on that distribution. ("You update your status more than 60% of your friends, and more than 71% of all Facebook users your age.") And showing outcomes for following/deviating from the norms ("People who post their Farmville stories *this* often are 3X more likely to get unfriended.") The things that are easiest to measure aren't usually the most important (e.g., good friends won't diss you for tweeting too much, but poor phone or txting manners can stress a fledgling relationship), so if you have ideas for good behaviors to measure (and how to do it), shoot them my way. We're also talking about creating social stories (vignettes about somewhat ambiguous social situations) specific to CMC.

Out Safir-ing

From Ammon Shea's piece in this week's On Language.

Those who have pet peeves about language have chosen their domain of umbrage well, since it is inevitable that people will continue to make errors in speech and writing, and so there will always be something to be offended by, which can be very comforting.

And because the most savory quotes from the piece were longer than 140 characters--the man makes a great, if verbose, argument--I'm posting it here rather than Twitter. If Shea keeps contributing to the Times, perhaps this blog won't languish.

You can't do that in Moab

The Delta check-in agent at Pittsburgh's airport was shocked that anyone would want to go to Jordan. For fun. She kept asking if my friends and I worked there or had family in the Middle East. We told her we wanted to go desert hiking. She goes, "You can't do that in Moab?"

We have since returned from Jordan, which is the most hospitable developing country I've ever visited. Every day we fielded dozens of strangers' invitations in for tea, smiled when they'd cheer "Obama" when we told them we were from the U.S., and ate copious mezza of hummous, tabbouli, baba ganouj, foul, and pita. Upon learning that some in our group love the local dish "mansaf," our cab driver on the way to the airport the last night lamented our departure, because he wanted us to come have mansaf with his family. He may also have been hoping to marry Amy to his oldest son, that part was a little unclear.

Petra, the partially excavated city of the ancient Nabataeans, beat Machu Picchu in archeological scope and lack of tourists (at least on the alternate hike into the ruins we took). We hiked and camped in the Wadi Rum desert for three days, with part of the group on camels, and part walking. Our gracious guides at Wadi Rum Adventures cooked feasts for lunch and dinner (including veggie bean dishes for me), and made the sand hiking look effortless. We stargazed and sang Bedouin songs at night.

The snorkeling at Aqaba, along the Red Sea, is some of the best I've ever seen, and Rani, our host at the Bedouin Moon Hotel was incredibly helpful. He called all of the hotels in Downtown Amman before we headed there to work out a deal (which ended up being far cheaper than anything in our Rough Guide). Eilat, Aqaba's sister city in Israel was also gorgeous, but waaay more ritzy. Although the Israeli border guards were pretty jovial when we interrupted their dinner (and again, there was talk of marrying Amy off).

I can't extol the virtues of Jordan enough. People everywhere kept saying "welcome" and parents would nudge their children toward us, prompting them to welcome us, too. It's as if there were some giant tourism campaign and everybody was in on it. Merchants would ask about my family, not in an effort to bilk me or sell trinkets, but because they genuinely cared. Oh, and the whole not having vowels thing was pretty fun, too. Made for some amusing signs.

More pictures on Flickr:

Choosing appropriate stock photos

TurboTax should perhaps choose its stock photo models more carefully. Martha Stewart is the last person I want tax advice from.

Moral condemnation by RSS

From Time's "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies":

We [the middle-aged] are lazy. We have jobs and children and houses and substance-abuse problems to deal with. At our age, we don't want to do anything. What we want is to hear about other people doing things and then judge them for it. Which is what news feeds are for.

Dude, this is a pleasure that knows no ageism. I get plenty of satisfaction judging others in my feed. And yes, if you're reading this, that probably means you.

But once those pictures from last weekend's "summer in February" party come out, you'll be judging me, too. C'est la vie virtual. I still hold that that bikini top was appropriate public attire.

From Sumo to Shanice

Review of Freakonomics over in Reading.

Thinking outside the box

From the profile of urban environmental leader Van Jones in the New Yorker:

When his parents gave him Luke Skywalker and Han Solo action figures, instead of arranging them to fight he would have them run for imaginary public offices.

Keeping up (down) with the Joneses, energy-wise

Social comparison theory got a California woman to unplug her kegerator. She learned through an innovative experiment by her utility company that her neighbors used far less electricity than she did, and so she wanted to keep up (well, down). Last year the Sacramento Municipal Utility District sent 35,000 customers their monthly energy use compared to that of 100 neighbors with similar-sized homes and the same heating fuel, as well as the top-20 most energy-efficient neighbors. A control group got standard statements without comparisons. They found that customers with the custom statement reduced energy consumption by 2% over six months. This graphic says it all.

Ten more cities have picked up on the social comparison idea, and are including bar graphs on paper statements. It would be trivial to include these charts on utility websites and embed them in monthly statement reminder emails for customers doing paperless billing. If you're in Pittsburgh, let Duquesne Light know you'd like to see this!

Like a chain letter, but curse-free

Ping pointed out a cute meme that I'm jumping on.

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

• I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
• What I create will be just for you.
• It'll be done this year. No guarantees when, it will be a total surprise!
• You have no clue what it's going to be. I may draw or paint or knit something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
• I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost this, and repost right away. We can all make stuff and make someone's day a little bit brighter! Don't respond if you aren't going to offer the same thing.

Love,
Moira

P.S. If you reply, please e-mail me your address as well, so I know where to send your surprise.

Influencing friends in facebook

Just finished submitting Feed Me: Motivating Newcomer Contribution in Social Network Sites ( PDF). The gist is that we analyzed a large group of newly registered FB users and counted all the things they did (or their friends did) in their first two weeks, and predicted how the newbies would behave three months later (how many photos they'd upload). We found that if their friends are uploading photos, they're more likely to, as well (no surprise). And early photo comments are good. But there are some surprises about tagging in there.

What makes this especially cool is that it's the first peer-reviewed publication to come from Facebook's own server data. We were somewhat skeptical about the company letting us publish at first, but the legal team was totally supportive about sharing knowledge with the world, and we were careful to use aggregate data so as to protect users' privacy. The awesome Facebook Data Team does all kinds of brilliant work, so hopefully this is the first of many papers to come from FB. Yay for science!