Is Flossing the Answer?

So I'm marking time while I wait for my topic approval, I thought I'd talk about why I picked my topic. And some other stuff.

Okay, apparently while I was lollygagging, it was approved. Here's the text of my sales pitch:

Topic: Misinformation in complex systems.

Focus: Pre-web forwarded email urban legends on the internet and their web 2.0 equivalents.

Major: Undecided. I'm having a bit of trouble with this at the moment, but I am most interested in computer science/software engineering, communications theory and marketing.

Why have I chosen this topic:

I believe it is under investigated. People have this nasty habit of believing that there is a solid barrier between life online and the real world. That things which occur in one, do not effect the other. One of my primary examples in this paper will be Craig Shergold, the subject of an email forward campaign that got out of hand during the early days of the internet. The email asked the recipient to send post cards to a sick child in Britain in an attempt to set a Guiness world record and to forward the email on to their friends. The email continued to spread long after Mr. Shergold set his record and recovered from his illness. As a consequence of this the British postal system has spent millions of dollars creating a special zip code just for him, as well as sorting more than a million post cards per year. Later the letter mutated and asked the recipient to send a post or business card to the Make-A-Wish foundation. They received so much mail that they actually were forced to move their home office. The Atlanta post office still has to receive and store letters sent to him. As you can see, a lot of unconnected persons sending an innocent email about helping a sick child have cost governments on two continents millions of dollars and has done substantial damage to a very worthy charity.

What interests me about it?

I'm interested from two perspectives. First, as a student of human nature, I find people's beliefs - especially erroneous beliefs - fascinating. We learn primarily from our own failures, and the failures of others. I also have far more experience with email forwards than I would care to. I seem to be a magnet for email forwards, and copy/pasted Facebook statuses. I've never forwarded them on, but I've always been very curious about the motivations of the people who did. In many cases, the story contains elements that are demonstrably false based on simple common sense, a very small amount of research should be enough to seal the story's fate. Yet the person who forwarded it will often consider it true, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Additionally, there often does not seem to be clear motive to why these messages were sent in the first place. They are not scams, like the 419 scam - which is a mutation of the Spanish Prisoner, a con game so old that it goes back to before the colonization of America. They are not hoaxes for publicity's sake like the boy in the balloon. They typically bear a stronger resemblance to the pull can tabs for medical treatment legend that was prevalent in offices from the nineteen seventies onward. The original sender is seldom identified, and all traces of his identity often vanish from the medium within a few iterations of the message.

I'd also like to see what could be done to prevent situations like the Craig Shergold incident. Short of removing the forward button from the email clients of the people who send these messages and gluing the senders to the floor. Obviously I cannot do that. No matter satisfying it might be to fantasize about that.

I intend to pursue my research using the following:

* I want to build a profile of the average misinformation transmitter. I will accomplish this via a survey about online habits.
* I will also attempt to interview some of the principals involved in the Craig Shergold incident - Atlanta postal officials, and officers of the Make-A-Wish foundation.
* I want to look at common elements in this kind of message and attempt to discover if any particular element makes a given message more likely to be sent on.
* I want to study how a message moves from peer group to peer group on the internet and compare the late 1980s to the present day.
* In addition to my required sources. They will reference specific incidents and communications theory dealing with misinformation as well as transmission errors.
* As extra credit, I want to create a simulated message and investigate (via the groups I've surveyed) whether it would be propagated, and attempt to make an estimate of how large an audience the message would reach. I will do a presentation on the results of this experiment.
* I also solemnly promise to refrain from using adhesives of any kind to attach anyone to the floor or any other surface for any reason during the course of my research or while authoring my paper. No matter how much it might improve my final product.

What information do you think you might find?

I believe the average transmitter is male, between thirty-five and fifty-five years of age, has a bachelors degree and is employed in an office environment.

I suspect the messages themselves are a kind of modern fairy tale, they are an emotional statement designed to evoke compassion (sick child needs object), fear (of strangers, the very poor, the very rich, the sick, people not like us, etc) and other strong reactions. The cues (strong emotive language) that produce these emotions are often accentuated as the message gets corrupted as it is passed from person to person. Messages that don't have these elements, or where the corruption downplays them, tend not to get forwarded and die soon after.

Where do you think you might end up with this research?

The thing I'm most sure of is that there is no easy solution to this problem. Short of gluing people to the floor, which I obviously cannot condone. I believe that I will discover that people have a deep need for these kinds of messages. Much as people in earlier ages needed to believe in Robin Hood or Prester John.

I know my traditional strategy of saying "you're wrong" and showing evidence to back my position is ineffective. I suspect that even emphasizing skepticism, critical thinking and research skills at a much earlier age than education traditionally does would prove only moderately effective.

Despite my low expectations of finding a real solution to this issue, I am eager to study this topic and hope to have the opportunity to write about it.

My biggest concern is how I will format my surveys, what elements to include and what to exclude. I know I'll want basic demographic information. But particularly as to email/tweeting/status behaviors, I'm not sure exactly how to ask those questions. I'll have to give it some thought.

I have another rationale behind why I really like this topic. Jean Shepherd divided the world into Day People and Night People. I think that's an interesting topology, mine would be Kooks and Normals - with maybe some wiggle room between the two categories. Most of these forwards, at least the ones that I've seen were sent by reasonably well educated people, many had a college degree. They worked a steady job, and everyday ate their breakfast. But they send these messages on. Most of them could do a better job writing or summarizing the message, again, educated. Most felt strongly about the virtue of originality, and would sermonize on the topic if you gave them the chance. Yet they were forwarding. They also worried about all sorts of things that I considered odd, but never considered that those emails they sent might have some sort of consequence - that somebody might act on them. They always told me "what's the harm? it's just an email!"

To me, it seems like shouting in an avalanche zone. None of them could ever give me a good account of why they forwarded the emails out. To me, it seems almost ritualistic. Surreal. Like watching a "bank" in a village of cargo cultists. The villagers file in. They exchange leaves with the "teller" and they file back out again. But it's a false comparison, because the villagers may not know what banking is, but they know why they're doing that - they want to bring the cargo to their village and they think this ritual is an efficient means of doing so.

So, while I won't be using it on my actual paper, my real thesis is "Normal People: Weirder than Kooks." Because I study kooks too. I'll tell you that kooks tend to have a system, a set of rules and protocols for dealing with their beliefs, and the world that exists outside their skulls. Even if they don't believe in the reality of that world. They'll explain why they're wearing that tin foil hat or waving a pocket calculator over you or yelling at trees in baroque detail. Their answers may not make a great deal of sense, or even connect with reality at any point, but unlike my email forwarders, they have a reason behind their actions.

One piece of odd normal behavior I've seen, that I've never been able to understand is the fetishization of clothing. I'm not talking about whips and chains here, I'm talking about business clothing. There's a very weird set of rituals that have been built around button down shirts, slacks, and penny loafers. Ties. Shudder. I'll concede that I'm not a fan, but that's not why I think it's odd. Oddity: Nobody knows what "business casual" means, but whatever it is, it's different for men than for women.

Almost every job I've ever worked was business casual. Women at most of them wore T-shirts now and then - I'm not talking about casual Friday. In my early work experience that was an idea whose time had not yet come. Also, don't tell me they were wearing a "blouse" - I worked at HSN, and thus know more than I ever wanted to about woman's clothing. I spoke intelligently about bust measurements with women old enough to be my grandmother.

But let's look at what was in store for gents. Black pants, white colored button down shirt. A little color is okay if you want to occasionally wear a golf shirt - which is distinct from a t-shirt because it has a collar? Earth tones only though. Don't ask me. I can't explain it. Now, if you're over fifty, you can wear gray, and even have pinstripes.

Also, wearing inexpensive, durable, comfortable clothing on any day except for Friday brings down the company's stock prices. Even if we aren't publicly traded. Additionally, though we have gate, building and office security, a customer or investor might burst in like a ninja, rappelling down the side of the building, breaking open one of the bullet-proof, non-opening windows and catch us wearing something other than our salt and peppers.

If you allow casual clothing in your company, nobody can wear anything else. The idea that you might want to wear a "dressier" outfit apparently makes you overdressed. The penalties for being overdressed are apparently too horrible to imagine, because nobody would ever describe them to me. Additionally, if you don't have strict (but not so strict as to be an actual instruction, dress codes are supposed to be absorbed through osmosis) dress codes people will show up in their underwear or worse nude!

Besides, everyone knows you're more "professional" when you're dressed in at least business casual in the one hundred plus degree Florida sun. Nobody has ever cited evidence, but everybody knows. Nobody can describe what "professional" might mean in this context. Everyone knows. One intelligent co-worker of mine even suggested, of her own free will, that we be forced to wear uniforms! What could go wrong?

The most surreal interaction with dress codes I've ever had though was at my last real job. They pulled us from our desks in the middle of the shift to go hear this lady talk about how, though we had ritually practiced casual Friday for aeons untold, we would now have to wear a company button in order to wear jeans on Friday - and even that might be cut to once a month. There was also a great deal of singing, and some general praise about how generous our company was - there was even talk about "spirit". It was all very confusing.

I'll be honest, this spirit thing has always befuddled me. Back when I was in High School, I was told that I must have it and was forced to go to the gym to listen to vaguely rhythmic chants about it. They'd say "We have spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit how about you?" but all I could do was stare blankly, because I had no idea what they were talking about - just that I was forced to be there when I could have been planning that week's Gangbusters campaign or reading. It was even weirder in a professional context - it apparently isn't enough that I've taken your shilling, shown up most of the time, and turned in what you tell me is excellent work. I have to source a spirit and be thankful that you're letting me wear the clothing I prefer somewhat less often . . . if I wear your totem. A totem, that only my co-workers and supervisors will know about because I never see my customers?!?!

I'm not sure that I'm a kook, but I'm quite glad that I'm not normal. Those normal guys are really weird.

Meet the Old Dread Pirate Roberts

Yarr! Me Hardies, Grab a Pint o' Grog an' Sit Down for a Tale of a Pirate's Legacy

I have been wanting to discuss intellectual property law here, but I'm trying to find a way to do it with the dudgeon level turned to something other than "eleven". It is not an easy thing for me. So I have decided I would start by focusing on how I interacted with IP in the past.

Once upon a time, I was a pirate. This was well before the term "pirate" entered common speech in reference to IP - back then a pirate was a guy like Edward Teach or Sir Francis Drake. People pictured the eye patch, the peg leg, the parrot. But I had none of these. I was eight years old, the year was 1982.

I had received my first computer from my parents that year. A brand new Commodore 64, I was pretty lucky, I almost ended up with a Coleco ADAM. I received it so I could improve my hand-eye coordination, my childhood testing showed my as having a problem in that area. I was also to learn how to touch type on it, because my handwriting was terrible. Of course, I quickly discovered the huge catalog of video games available for the C64. I loved Blue Max, Spy Hunter (the C64 version was arguably one of the better ports of this game), Lazy Jones (the most self-referential game ever), and Zork.

I purchased a lot of games. All the Infocom classics, a number of titles by Mastertronic, and quite a few others that I've forgotten. I also joined a user group, and that's where my tenure as a pirate began.

The C64 users group I joined was based around sharing software  piracy. It was a huge group. We met in a church once a month, brought our keyboards, 1541 disk drive and a portable television set and set them up on long tables. Then we'd walk the rows looking at what other people had made copies. Most of the users were around my age and had their parents with them, there was the occasional teenager or adult as well. One of the nice things about the group was that you could get games that were not available at any American retailer. Lazy Jones, for instance, was a product of the British software boom. The American gaming market had just collapsed. No American retailer stocked it, not my local computer shop, not Service Merchandise, or Kmart. But I got a copy at the group. My Dad, my cousin and I would also occasionally get games through friends. One of my friends had a cousin who was part of a pirating group - I forget which one, but I remember his particular moniker. He was Weird Beard the Pirate. It should be noted that Weird Beard wasn't old enough to grow a beard. I think he was about ten years old at this point.

I eventually moved up to MS-DOS around my fourteenth birthday, my first IBM PC was an Amstraad. My Dad got it as a credit card perk from AMEX - but it didn't turn out to be a very good perk. Similar to the Coleco ADAM, it was a complete system. That is, it came with a printer, and the monitor, disk drives and computer were a single unit. It shipped with MS-DOS 3.2, and was not very compatible with most software available for DOS at that time. I think I returned at least one fourth of the software that I purchased, not because I was pirating (retailers were becoming better informed about piracy at this point), but because it would not work on the Amstraad. To give you an impression of how bad this machine was, Sears - one of the few American retailers that stocked it, originally advertised it as a computer. Within two weeks of advertising it they began advertising it as a word processor and cut the price by something like fifty-percent. At this point I was buying more software because copying was getting more difficult. Rights management systems included things like needing to type in a certain word from a page of the manual, or the use of a code wheel to play the game. Additionally some software had code in the program itself to make casual copying difficult.

At first glance, this looks a lot like current rights enforcement systems and that it is working. I have bad news for you if you believe this. Every single technique was defeated rather quickly and those methods filtered down from professional pirates (IE those who sell illegal copies of these programs - this is particularly prevalent in Asia and Eastern Europe today) to hobbyists like me. Yes, at this point I definitely sussed that IP piracy was "wrong."

License keys came next, when you installed a program to your hard disk, you were asked to enter in a long sequence of letters and numbers. If you fail to do it correctly, the program tells you that you're wrong and waits for you to do it properly. There were always rumors that failing to do it correctly would do horrible things to your computer. I've heard people even claim that an incorrect entry could cause your computer to explode. I wish I was kidding. These failed because those codes are generated based on an algorithm. Once someone figures out the algorithm, they can generate "valid" keys all day long. This system combined frequently with a part of the package that "phones home" to the producer's server is mostly where we are today. Ask anybody in the industry, piracy is still rampant despite the use of the "phone home" defense.

I used Napster occasionally when it first released. Napster was great because I found music that I'd never encountered before. I recall one song that was a musical interpretation of a Robert Anton Wilson novel - and it included the author in the production. But this is the point where I gave up my life of piracy and went legit. All of those songs are gone, they died with my old P4 single core.

So why did I give up a life under the good auspices of the Jolly Roger? That's a question media companies ought to be asking, but aren't.

Primarily I gave up piracy for security. Not security against being sued, but computer security. File sharing sites are rife with viruses and malware. I was never infected but the thought was always worrisome. A single song, even priced at CD pricing could cost me a lot of time reinstalling Windows.

Convenience was another factor. Using a p2p like Napster was pretty easy, but it was often difficult to find what you were looking for - of course finding things you did not intend to was often very rewarding. Also assuming you found something you wanted the download took a long time to complete - even if you had a good connection (I was on dial up back then), it didn't mean the other guy did. Frequently the other party would get disconnected in the middle of a transaction, so you might spend an hour downloading and not get the song.

Cost was also a factor. iTunes was less expensive and had a better selection than my local record store. The price was still reasonable, and you didn't have to get a whole CD just to get the one or two songs you actually cared about.

Notice a trend in my reasons? Its all about me. Here's something from the software companies that failed to convince me:



Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. That is horrible. If I were still a pirate, I'd get a billion lashes under the Articles.

The iPad Wrap Up

I needed a little bit of time to collect my thoughts on this and restrain my fanboy-ism. Let me start out by saying that I think it has the potential to be a great device and to be a category killer. The category in question is netbooks. Small, low powered notebook-like devices designed primarily towards web browsing and basic office tasks. These typically have a long battery life. The only place the iPad doesn't beat a netbook is on price, and price competition has typically not been a part of Apple's marketing strategy.

I think iBooks looks very interesting indeed. It is in ePub format, which makes it a game changer. ePub is supported by a lot of different devices - Sony's entire ebook reader line, iPhone OS (using Stanza), Barnes & Noble's Nook reader, in addition to the software available for Mac, Windows and Linux that will handle ePub. I suspect iPhone OS devices are the only ones that will directly sync with iBook, but it should be possible to use other devices by copying the file as you would to a thumb drive. How all of this works out will depend upon how digital rights management is handled with the ePub file, there is no standard for it at the moment which means Publisher A may use a very sensible set of rules, while Publisher B may use DRM that is overly restrictive or hampers the operation of the reading software.

Another nice feature of ePub is that it has been around for a while, and there are plenty of people who are knowledgeable in working with these files. Tools for creating ePub files are abundant and available across all platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux). The barriers to being a published author are dropping fast.

When I was in high school, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I had the opportunity to attend a writers workshop as part of my junior year English class. Nothing in the entirety of my academic or professional career did as much to turn me off towards writing as a profession as that workshop. It wasn't criticism that steered me away from writing, it was the business model.

The focus of the workshop really had nothing to do with writing as a craft, it was focused on how to get your work published. They showed off the writers guide and taught us how to read the entries, how to decipher what each publisher required from their submissions, etc. They had published authors describe how they got their book published. Send in your manuscript to somewhere between ten and thirty publishers per day, wait for a response, continue submitting. The average time until publication seemed to be about three years. They also talked a little bit about intellectual property law as it applies to publishing. It is baroque in the extreme. First rights, anthology rights, magazine rights, audio rights, and on and on. It doesn't surprise me that piracy is so rampant. Professional authors and lawyers have difficulty with the subject, how is a layman that has no interest in anything but reading content supposed to know or care about this? I'll save my rights rants for another essay though, you're welcome.

Electronic publishing is by no means a new thing, nor is the ease of access new. In the late 80s I downloaded my first electronic book. This was a few years before I had my first internet account - I got it from a BBS in Clearwater, FL. It was huge, weighing in somewhere around 1.2 megabytes. I think it took about three hours to download. It was the Jargon File, a dictionary of computer terms and geek folklore. These days you can find it here if you're interested. It was created as an ascii text file, browsing through it was slow and ponderous.

The real trouble with eBooks has always been formats. Because no single format has managed to emerge as the standard, there is always the question of "will my device or program read this?", "can I port this to a new device?", "what format should I publish in as an author?" The web itself is a great platform for publication, easy, simple to update, cross platform and available to a wide audience. The two problems with the web as a publication platform are 1) how do I make sure my customers can find my content? and 2) how do I monetize it? The iBook store solves both problems handily.

The iBook store has a large existing customer base on two of the three platforms (sadly, iTunes is not available for linux and I doubt the iBook store will be either), it has search and is organized as customers would expect. A striking difference between it and Apple's App store - but I won't get off on that rant.

The dollar and cents part is still an open question at this point, and a place where publishers can really trip this up. The customer expectation is that eBooks should be less expensive than their physical counterparts. This is not an unreasonable expectation. While eBooks do provide additional utility such as search and annotation, these features are not a selling point for most readers - they are attractive primarily to students and academic professionals. On the value negative side, you do not own a physical thing when you own an ebook, you own a license to use the content. This license if full of incomprehensible legal jargon, but usually the gist of it comes down to the fact that the retailer or the publisher may pull (or deauthorize) the content at any time, and without providing reason or recompense. This is well illustrated by the 1984 debacle on Amazon's Kindle eBook reader, see this New York Times article for details. While I believe the resolution provided by Amazon (replacement with a legal edition of 1984 or a refund of the purchase price) was ethical, the readers who had annotated the book lost their work. Additionally, readers are smart enough to know that electronic editions of a book cost a fraction of what a printed edition does to produce. Far too often, the pricing on the ebook edition in Amazon's store is very close or on occasion exceeds the MSRP of the printed edition. Additionally readers know ebooks cannot be loaned, resold or traded. B & N Nook does have a very limited and largely worthless loaning feature. I do not expect to see a similar feature in iBook.

I want to point out this article from A Newbies Guide to Publishing (which I just subscribed to) on the monetary differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing in eBook format. I would like to particularly draw attention to the pricing differences between his works published with Hyperion books (an arm of the Disney media empire) and his self-published works on the Kindle eBook platform. Hyperion is coming in at traditional paperback retail pricing, which runs from $5.99 - $9.99. Looking at it from a retailer's perspective, the numbers on his Hyperion books are not exceptional. No offense intended. Now look at his self-published work. It is sold very cheaply, but the numbers are considerably higher. Simple business 1000 level stuff, but publishers seem to have forgotten it. You can see the same process repeat itself on the iTunes app store. Software priced at the $9.99 or greater mark has few sales, at the $.99 to $1.99 level, lots of sales.

I've wandered a bit from my original topic, and there is a lot more that I want to say about this issue, but I think it is time to wrap this up. I think the iPad will be very successful based on what I've seen. I think the iBook Store will be good for publishers if they can put aside their experiences with more traditional publishing models. I think it will be a boon to small publishers and authors interested in self-publishing. Most importantly of all, I think it will be great for readers.

Live from the Fortress of Ultimate Dorkness

11:40-ish: So I made it back under the wire, and I'm ready to write about the launch. Whatever my theories about the publishing industry, I'm an Apple fan, so this is a pretty exciting day. I'll be updating this post throughout the day. Fair warning, my mouth is still numb and my dentist released mad dogs, crazed wolverines and badgers that flew about with the wings of bats into my mouth less than an hour ago - so I feel that should be taken into account when you read this post. Seriously, he did a great job and I'm thrilled to back in time to write this.

1:00: Getting ready for the start of the event.

1:03: Here we go - Steve Jobs is discussing sales to date on iPods, the Apple retail store, the App store and other miscellany. Make with the sexy tablet already!

1:12: It's called the iPad, is rather pretty (imagine a greatly oversized iPod Touch with a little different UI. It has a dock!

1:42-ish: Yep, The New York Times will have custom app ready for the tablet. Surprise? I guess? Looks the the Times reader will do flash based movies as well. No word on whether iPad Safari will support Flash, but I suspect it won't just like the rest of the iPhone OS family.

1:54-ish: Yep, now we're looking at iBook. Time to perk up your ears and have a shot of coffee. The bookshelf interface looks a great deal like aNobii.

1:58-ish: Introduces the iBook store which has a lot of big publishers behind it: Harper Collins, Hachette, Pengin, Simon Schuster and MacMillan. Works like iTunes and look like it may be ePub based (Apple supports the ePub format) - this is possibly good news. If true it means you can buy product from other stores on the web (so long as they support ePub), or import your own content.

2:00-ish: They've moved on to iWork, Apple's Office suite. Which is pretty nifty - I want to talk more about the book stuff in my wrap up though. I do like the fact that there will be an honest to the Big Whatever word processor available for this thing. That's great, and it's something I miss on my iPod Touch. Now if somebody would just create a port for iPod Touch and maybe a decent text editor - maybe one as good as Text Wrangler . . .


Mostly they've been focusing on presentation type work though, I can see this as being a good device for that.

Steve Jobs is going over the 3g (cellular internet) service available for the iPad. $14.99/mo prepaid for 250mb/month plan or $29.99 for unlimited data through AT&T. Free use of AT&T wi-fi hotspots, no contract required. That's pretty reasonable. The units with 3g capabilities cost $130.00 more though. Pricing without 3g $499.99 for 16gb, $599.99 for 32gb, $699.99 for 64gb. Not bad at all.

Wi-fi only models will be available in sixty days, 3g models will be available in 90 days.

Annnnnnd that's the show, folks. I'll do my wrap up in a separate post later on. See you then.

The Apple Tablet - Publishing's Savior?

So here we are, on the eve of the launch of Apple's tablet. I suspect I'll be missing the launch, and I'm a little bit cross about that. I'll probably be spending some quality time (and a lot of money) at the dentist.

So instead of rejoicing in what will likely be a fine product, let's do a little speculation. The publishing industry seems to betting all in on this product being their saving grace. The paper of record is putting its paywall back up. Yep, as of tomorrow, no more free content for you! Magazines are just as anxious. But I'm wondering if they've really thought this through.

As the industry seems to be committed to making all the mistakes that the music industry made in their struggle with the internet, I believe the best case scenario is that this is what will happen. That Apple's product is successful beyond their wildest dreams, people forget all those silly ideas they had about creating their own content and go back to reading, listening to and consuming someone else's. Worked out alright for the music industry with iTunes, right?

Not so fast. iTunes did do a lot to put the music industry's marker online, but not in the way that they wanted. They went from a very tightly structured oligopoly, an industry where a few large companies dominated the landscape, to having the industry dominated by one man - in the computer industry. Steve Jobs. Last I checked, iTunes was second only to Wal-Mart as a music retailer, so Mr. Jobs could and did get pretty much anything he wanted. Including $.99 per track for a very long time indeed. He also got rid of the publisher's DRM, which was a net good thing. In addition to putting Apple as a huge player in music retail, a lot of artists - major artists got the idea that maybe they didn't need a label. That they could make a lot more money by using the tools available on the internet to bring their work to their fans. Not a short list by any means, it included Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne, and Radiohead.

But let's look at the alternative to a successful Apple tablet. What if it's another Newton - which oddly enough helped pave the way for iPhone OS, Apple TV or G4 Cube? I think it's unlikely, but anything is possible. I think iPhone OS is pretty solid, great for people who aren't very computer savvy and has a nice wide range of potential applications even if it's a flop as an eReader. But what if it does turn out to be a dud, what does that mean for Apple and the publishing industry? Apple will shake it off, as it has in the past. We'll see it in the store for a few years and then it will quietly disappear. The consequences for the publishing industry are another matter. Many, like The New York Times have already assumed its success. If it fails, even if they tear the paywall back down, how many customers will have decided that they can find their news and commentary elsewhere?

In either case, how long will it be before authors realize what musicians figured out a long time ago? That publishers need them a great deal more than they need publishers?

Kicking Ideas Around

So I've been away for a little bit, there have been a few things I've been working on for the blog, but mostly I've been hammering away on stuff for another class - a class that forces me to use Windows. But I won't get off on that rant.

Mostly, I want to use this blog for its intended purpose for once and kick around some ideas for research paper topics. The restrictions that have been placed upon us aren't overly burdensome, the only troubling one for me is: Must be related to your major. Technically, I don't have a major yet. The only thing that is computer-ish that immediately comes to mind is the recent security breach in China, but frankly I'd rather puke blood for ten years than try to tell people to get rid of Internet Explorer. I've talked myself hoarse on the subject. Yeah, I know, and there was much rejoicing. Just don't come crying to me when you get infected - I'm not reinstalling your OS. Again.

So let's talk ideas.

• Portrayals of technical persons (scientists, engineers, programmers, etc) in twentieth century media - perhaps compared to real technical wonks or compared to portrayals today.
• Hoaxes, with an emphasis on the really odd ones. One thing that's always bothered me is where the pull can tabs hoax (or similar hoaxes) got started. See the Snopes article for the pull can hoax. I'm fascinated as to how these hoaxes start, but I'm not sure there is a paper there. The collective wisdom of Snopes can't find the origin of the pull can one.
  
  
  

  Another one that I recall vividly was told at my former workplace. It was an email forward (grrr! use your forward button for good, not evil) that spread around the office saying that a guy up in Tallahassee, FL in a white SUV was strapping syringes of aids infected blood to gas pump handles. Of course, it was false. So I did a little research and sent the woman who sent me it a link to the front page of the Florida State Police site (which declared it a hoax), and Snopes which listed a whole litany of similar hoaxes - almost to the letter like the email she forwarded. I also pointed out that our very hot Florida summers aren't good for a virus, or even blood for that matter. Also, consider the mechanics of taping a syringe - even a very small one like those used for insulin shots by diabetics - to a gas pump handle.

  
  

  Of course, she was convinced that the State Police, Snopes, Biology and simple mechanics were all trying to cover it up. I think this kind of cognitive dissonance is fascinating. I suspect that could be a whole paper in and of itself.

  
  

  Better still is how hoaxes like these disseminate like a virus through our mental environment, and sometimes even persist (see above, Craig Shergold, etc.) I think with well structured research (not just cites, experiments, interviews and testing) this could make for a really great paper on how information is accepted as true or false and distributes in a complex system like the internet. There are plenty of good print and electronic sources for this as well. I'll need to think about methodology for this one.

  
  
• A study on "phishing." The act of using a message (such as an email) to get the target user to disclose sensitive information, usually a password. My thesis would be that it's pretty easy to succeed, and I would include original research in the form of simulated phishing attempts against a users in a range of sophistication.
  
  
• An analysis of online scams versus classic (IE the Big Store, the Spanish Prisoner, etc) con games.
  
  
• It looks like I could do a paper on the Spanish Prisoner (and modern variations of it) alone.
  
  
• Privacy - how willing are different age groups to share information online? What kinds of information are they willing to share and under what circumstances?
  
  
• Media Piracy & Copyright Law - How informed are people on copyright? Is piracy really as common as it is portrayed by the media? Is it really that damaging to media companies? What alternatives might media companies pursue to lessen the impact of piracy?
  
  

I think that's going to be it for tonight. More is on the burner for tomorrow.

Modern Myths and Legends - Jean Shepherd

So this morning I'm chasing my textbook for LAN Concepts again. I have one of two, and I've been searching for the other, LabSim for Network+ for some time. I've been to the Clearwater bookstore, where a clerk assured me they had it in stock. Nada. I went to the library over the weekend, where my instructor told me they had a copy on reserve. Nope. So now I'm off to Gibbs campus, to once again attempt to purchase it. Wish me luck.

But my text book puts me in mind of another book. I, Libertine by Fredrick R. Ewing, a book on nineteenth century erotica which was published in 1956. It was a runaway bestseller, bookstores couldn't keep it on the shelf.

The only problem with that, is that of all the facts presented above, only the publication date is true. Even that is only true because the hoax gained so much momentum. I, Libertine was a hoax born out of frustration. It was created by Jean Shepherd, best known as the co-writer and narrator for the film A Christmas Story. At the time though, he was a radio disc jockey in New York. He was annoyed that New Yorkers would only patronize art that somebody else had vetted first. A city run by lists.

Shepherd was working the graveyard shift show at the time, and on this particular show he discussed these lists. The ten best dressed list was a big deal in New York at the time. "Top 40 music" had just arrived. The Top 40 music format was born in 1949 and was the dominate broadcast industry until the late 1980s. The New York Times bestseller list came into being only a little more than ten years earlier on August 9, 1942. Jean Shepherd had doubts about this system. Rightly so.

His theory was that were two kinds of people in the world. Day people and night people. Day people led a very orderly and uncomplicated existence. All the lists acted as the teeth in their clockwork. They told them what plays, books and songs were worthwhile. They never considered for a moment that these lists were not the truth-with-a-capital tee handed down from on high. As Mr. Shepherd put it: "They believed in file cabinets, they believed in luncheons, they believed in meetings . . ." By contrast, night people had some doubts. Doubts about whether any of this was worth taking seriously.

He decided to test out his theory with the help of his radio audience. He asked them to go into a bookstore the next morning and ask for a book that did not exist. Together, Mr. Shepherd and his audience ironed out the details. The title, the author's life story, and the publishing house. Soon enough, people all over New York were talking about this fantastic book, many claimed to have read it. The archdiocese of the Catholic church in Boston put it on proscribed works list. In the end, Ian Ballantine, head of Ballantine Publishing after a desperate search for the author of I, Libertine, he wanted to secure the paperback rights. He met with Shepherd and author Theodore Sturgeon over lunch and they revealed the truth, after which Mr. Sturgeon was hired to write the book under the pen name of Frederick R. Ewing. When it was published it sold quite well, even making the bestseller list. All of the proceeds were given

I think this might be the greatest hoax of the twentieth century. But don't listen to me, take it from the horse's mouth. You can listen to an interview with Jean Shepherd on Long John Nebel's radio program from 1968.

Publisher's note: I originally intended to cite this up properly as practice, but I am far too tired after several days of catching up for another class. I apologize for the lateness of this post, I really do want to try to produce something interesting every day. Rather than delaying this post further still, I want to move on to the next item in the series. My primary source for this article is the interview with the author linked above. I'll be back soon with a remarkable set of coincidences that happened while researching this post, and another interesting character that writers ought to know about. Coincidentally, it involves a hoax too.