Thoughts on Facebook

Here is a link to some information about a book on the Social Internet Darling that brought us ‘pokes’.

So what led me to Kirkpatrick’s book and musing about Facebook in the first place? Well recently I watched the Social Network for the first time. I could care less about the sex lies and scandal all given top billing in that movie. That part was entertaining of course but to me it got in the way of the real story. Facebook is a fascinating phenomenon. The high profile of Facebook in the 2008 elections combined with the information tossed out in the movie regarding the massive success of the site whetted my appetite for a bit more in depth look at just what they had accomplished. So off to Amazon I went to look for a kindle edition book on the subject. A quick glance through the more in depth reviews of the “accidental billionaires” seemed to indicate that the focus on the juicy stuff in the movie wasn’t exactly poetic license for the intent to sex things up... that element featured largely in the book as well which is not what I was interested in. Also I found out that the book was written with zero input from Facebook and almost entirely from the accounts of the estranged friend/partner Eduardo Saverin and the Harvard group accusing Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. “The Facebook Effect” on the other hand was written with a great deal of cooperation from Zuckerberg and numerous of the elite members of the Facebook Team. All in all I figured they would balance out.
While the book deals with the quite sensational birthing story in some detail it has a much longer running focus on the insanity of what the site has accomplished.

Facebook is currently beyond 500 million users and seemingly inexorably continuing towards 1 billion and beyond. That in and of itself isn’t unique. They aren’t the first to hit such numbers and they certainly won’t be the last (not sure about the 1 billion user mark though....). What is amazing is the sustained nature, level and frequency of activity of that massive flock. Some 50% of users visit the site daily. 90% are active within a month and they commit a staggering amount of time on status updates, pokes and social gaming among other pursuits to be found on the eclectic social hub. At this point is when the large but rapidly evaporating pool of non-facebook public collectively sniff and turn away. I had more in common with that mindset than I currently care to admit prior to taking in what “The Social Network” and “The Face Book Effect” had to say. What was that you may ask?

Well lets start off with some back story. For those of you that know me it goes without saying I am a pretty large tech head, geek, nerd or whatever phrase of choice you like to indicate someone who spends too much time obsessing over all things digital. That being said having graduated in 2000 I really was a couple of years ahead of the sea change that Facebook has wrought on the landscape of the internet and of its sweeping change a the college and high school level. Even being one with his ear to the ground on technology fronts I have largely missed what happened having generally dismissed Facebook as largely a waste of time except as a decent spam filter on communicating with ones friends. I knew it was big. I knew it was impressive... but until the past couple of years it seemed like one of many whiz bang companies from Silicon valley that go super nova briefly before vanishing twice as fast as they appeared. Suffice it to say I am finally convinced that they are nothing of the sort and have now been mentally kicking myself for not paying closer attention. I knew I was not up to speed on this particular facet of the web which was a large part of my desire to dig into it a bit more. What I hadn’t realized was the sheer magnitude of my ignorance. It really seems akin to having been walking around in the middle of a cloudless summer solstice thinking it was the dead of night. This shit is world changing stuff. I am not talking better mouse trap changing. Its Atom Bomb level changing. If there is a person or two alive today that will go down in history on par with the likes of Churchill, Stalin, Lincoln, Hitler, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Mao, Gandhi, Henry VIII, Alexander etc... My money and magic 8 ball currently says it is Mark Zuckerberg. He of the fleece hoodie and Adidas sandals good for all occasions. The other potential is the ‘player(s) to be named later’. I will explain in a bit...

Kirkpatrick stops short of such insane claims. But the last chapter or three lays out a general overall trajectory that is hard to miss. It is one my mind began sailing down long before I reached his finishing touches. Its quite possible, hell its likely, Facebook will fall short on Kirkpatrick’s musings (much less my slightly more colorful take) . But if it does (ready for more color????) I posit it will be Athens to some later Rome.

Why do I make these crazy over the top statements? Because Facebook has provided the most effective harness for the voice of the people history has yet to see. If you wonder why that is such an insane thing you should stop to ponder other times in history when individuals, or groups have managed to effectively harness the power of the masses. It built civilization. It created religions, It has sent us through numerous fits of social systems and changes the latest of which was shrugging off monarchal and other forms of elite rule for democracies. It made the streets of Paris run red with Blood. It birthed the ‘Great Experiment’ that is the USA. The ‘networks’ and social structures that made such events possible were nothing to the potential that is Facebook. How so?

Two examples. The first is The Salem Witch Trails. The second is H.G. Wells radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’. The first is a classic example of group hysteria and mob mentality but one largely dismissed these days because ‘modern’ society wouldn’t fall prey to such superstitious nonsense or ‘weaknesses’ of a close nit somewhat isolated social group. The second I bring up because it too is an example of group hysteria and mob mentality but one not so easily dismissed. Religion and Radio both had something in common that led to these two events that is fundamentally different from Facebook... and probably the reason Facebook hasn’t torn itself or a society or two apart (Though Egypt may beg to differ...) They are what I call ‘transmit only’ forms of... well for lack of a better phrase... control of the masses. The Salem witch trials are a tragic case of superstition and quite likely social taboo combining in a particularly nasty manner. The War of the Worlds an amazing indicator of the sheer power of mass communication technology to produce a sudden massive mobilization both mentally and physically of the public being broadcast too. Facebook is a new beast in that it is a true conversation of the masses. A signal boosting conversation of the masses if you will. But because it is a conversation it is much more difficult for someone to pull a ‘Wells’ because just as fast as someone kicks out something another movement is almost immediately a foot to unearth the fact there is no ‘invasion’. As a result most of Facebook is just purile noise and non-sense or canceling content of a more serious nature. But every now and again a signal gains critical mass on a issue with fundamental appeal and no obvious counter (not a bad thing in and of itself). 1 Million People against FARC. Egyptian social revolution organization. The not insignificant impact on the 2008 presidential election. Radio and other traditional forms of mass media have some elements of the ‘social’ conversation but it is limited by its logistics (you can broadcast to millions but you can’t take calls from a significant portion of them). Facebook has the power to turn your social circle... and EVERYONE else’s onto a particular thought in minutes/hours that used to take massive effort and days/weeks if not Months/Years.

So what do the Salem Witch Trails and “War of the Worlds” have in common with Facebook? The fundamental structure of Facebook is your inner social circle. This forms a closeness and greatly lowers your desire to question what they have to say critically. It is the dynamics of such tight nit groups that played a pivotal role in the escalation of the Salem trials to their tragic conclusion. While the motivations of ill informed superstitions and literal adherence to such unyielding concepts as “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” are largely gone... don’t think for a second that such circles are any less vulnerable to fits of hysteria given the right circumstances. That is part of the lesson of H.G. Wells taught us. The other part of that lesson was what happens when a more intelligent society encounters something that collectively makes them hit the “I Believe” button on something frightening in short enough order that it bypasses the ‘saftey valves’ so to speak. In effect it proved a modern society could go collectively off the deep end every bit as much as Salem did... and with far greater potential consequences. Finally it is one of the few concrete examples of such a new technology hitting large audiences before it really had figured out what its powers were. Facebook combines the early stage instability of a transformative communication technology far more powerful than Radio and combines it with a fast track of information into your (and everyone else’s) inner circle where it can reverberate and hit home faster than anything before in history.

That brings me back to Zuckerberg heading down into the history books... possibly with a ‘player to be named later’. By that I mean I am wondering right now if he will be someone that puts his hand on the tiller of his creation and does something with it. Think Jefferson/Washington/Hamilton/Franklin seizing on existing philosophies/concepts of de Tocqueville, Locke and others and setting about actually building a nation with them (Starting in Boston no less....). Or will their be a Stalin taking control of the Communist machine built by Lenin and running with it... or perhaps a less damning comparison of Julius Caesar taking the reins of Rome for himself.

Perhaps my examples are a little to far a field for you... I apologize. Perhaps something a bit more approachable and tangible like US presidential elections? In 2008 Facebook exploded on the US political scene. The social network that barely existed in 2004 changed the face of US presidential elections in 2008 whether you realized it or not. It was the first time the service really pinged on my radar as something I needed to pay closer attention to. It seemed like the news casters were competing with each other to see how often they could mention Facebook and its various polling and discussion groups. One of Facebooks early inner sanctum played a pivotal roll in Obama’s ground breaking election team. Nothing ominous in that... simply pointing out that the value of this persons experience was such that it put him in a key role for the election of what is considered the most powerful office in the world. Perhaps not unsurprisingly The voice of younger voters in 2008 was felt in a real way for perhaps the first time in a truly meaningful way. The impact was a few percentage points difference. But it was in the toughest most hard fought national arenas where success and failure is often measured in such small percentile differences. The post electoral break down by the pundits and bobble heads all seem to be willing to grant Facebook its due. It seems a common theme they felt its polling information rivaled and generally trounced long standing polling powers like Gallop. But that isn’t what I find interesting. In 2008 the active Facebook Audience in the US was significantly smaller than the voting population and it was also heavily skewed in favor of the College and 20 something demographic courtesy of Facebooks roots as a college social hub. By comparison, in 2012 it looks like Facebook will be drawing on an active audience in the US that actually rivals that of the voting populace and will far exceed any previous ‘polling’ audience. The odds are extremely high that anyone actually motivated to vote will have a Facebook account and they will be extremely likely to engage in the political process via the wealth of tools the site presents for such discussion. In english this means that in a given day (or certainly week) Facebook will not gather a statistical representation of voting intentions... it could effectively poll a huge percentage of all the voters straight up and put the results in front of you live, tallied up and dissected down to silly specific levels of social breakdowns. By the time the election actually happens it quite possibly will have happened multiple times at the same, or near enough as makes no difference, levels of participation as the ‘real election’ via Facebook. By 2016 if they continue to grow at far more modest rates they will likely garner a far HIGHER percentage of opinion from the citizenry than the official voting process. That is not just amazing. It is scary. It is exciting. It is a world changing possibility because it will be the same in numerous other countries as well.

If you don’t get why that is ‘nuclear’ stuff you really need to brush up on your history of nations. Suffice it to say that at the fundamental level Democracies (really any government) run on the basis of perceived legitimacy. Perception in this case is far greater an issue than reality. Perhaps more aptly I should say that in the case of democracy/government the perception of the masses defines reality. If ‘we the people’ believe the system to be legitimate then it is. If we believe it to be illegitimate then lets just say the ‘spark’ is out of the romance and in all likely hood such a government is going to rapidly be flushed. If the Facebook masses as a community believe their voice is legitimate and the actions of their respective governments run counter there will be a serious crisis. You think hanging Chads were big? Chew on this. Imagine if you will a Facebook election which consisted of a significantly higher voting population than physically cast a vote in the ‘real election’ resulting in the selection of different candidates in a nation critically divided on a critical issue. Remember. Ultimately the people decide what they will accept as real. Tradition will hold the line quite a ways. Suspicions of manipulatable results in the control of Facebook will be another cooling factor. But ultimately it is a question of what people believe. The world thought the Founding Fathers were nutz to place their faith in the vote of the general public. Is placing faith in a company run by a man who turned down a billion dollars cash on more than one occasion to maintain the integrity of an internet cast vote really any different or crazier?

Call me Crazy if you like. I’ve been called worse. While I am not certain Facebook will make good on these possibilities.... I am convinced that the potential is very real that they could... or ‘the people’ themselves could via the incredibly powerful tools Facebook has provided. And if their history is any indication they will waltz into this kind of stuff with barely any warning that its actually happening. It will just suddenly be and a month or two later you will wonder how it ever wasn’t. Heres hoping it all ends well. Enough ranting and raving for tonight... time for some sleep. Debate welcome as always.

New Tax Based on Miles Driven? Really?

There is a new idea being kicked around in Congress. Basic idea is to start taxing miles driven in addition to existing taxes such as the tax you pay on gas. Why? Well with new efficient cars and technologies such as hybrids and electrics it is possible someone would pay no gas tax and or revenues may fall due to the increased efficiency (less gas\diesel purchased).

Really? I might be able to understand this one if and only if they dropped the gas tax altogether. This is just getting plain silly. Let me get this straight. I make money. I pay income tax. I buy gas and pay sales tax (only in some states) and a federal gas tax. THEN I pay a tax for the miles I drive in the car I pay yearly registration fees (tax) on. Just exactly how many times do I need to get taxed on this?

Let me be clear... I am not some looney that thinks taxes should not be collected. However, I am a firm believer that any dollar I make should only be taxed once. IE if I pay an income tax to the federal and state governments then I should not have to pay ANY more tax because every red cent I make has been taxed. At least then it would be easy to determine just how much money vanishes down the government maw. Lets use this gas thing as an example.

I make one dollar. It is taxed at ~28% after FICA, SS and State income tax is removed. Leaving me 72 cents. If I buy 72 cents of gas that gets me... .21 gallons of gas. In Al that is taxed at about 32 cents a gallon... so 6.7 cents in tax leaving me to purchase ~65 cents worth of actual product from a dollar I made. That is a 35% tax rate on every dollar I spend on gasoline. If I drive a 30mpg car that will let me get a little over 6 miles down the road. If the tax rate is say 1 cent per mile driven (120$ yearly at 12k miles average) that adds another 6 cents leaving me with 59 cents of gas/driving purchasing power with the rest going to the government. ~40%. A ~40% tax rate. taxed at ~40%. No matter how I say it it seems ludicrous.

Now the article I link to does not say what the potential rate would be, or even that it would be a single rate. Perhaps 1 cent is to high? Well a 50 cent per gallon tax (over all national average) would be 1 cent per mile in a car getting 50mpg (not that many get that). Since average gas mileage is in the low - mid 20’s we already pay more than 2 cents a mile on average. So it isn’t crazy talk. Lets not even get into the sticky mess that would be variable rates. A 50mpg 2000lbs car does far less damage to roads than a 6000lbs soccer mom urban assault vehicle, which in turn does far less damage than a fully loaded Semi (~80,000 pounds). A single Semi on a deserted road does less damage than all us rats in our tiny go karts in rush hour. The combinations are endless as is the argument over what would be ‘fair’. Ideally fair would probably be something on the order of some calculation taking into account congestion, weight and cost of maintaining the current piece of road you are on at any given particular time. With GPS and some other electronic monitoring devices that is now actually a realistic possibility.... but that then raises privacy issues. Whether fuel consumption taxing is the best method or not it seems relatively fair to base your share on the amount of fuel you buy. It is is pretty simple and probably good enough. Electric charging stations and home meters can be rigged to charge similarly for juice going to electric vehicle batteries. Seems a much simpler fix than some convoluted electronic nanny system that will likely be royally abused anyway. And for those yammering about commercial vehicles causing more damage they are very right... and they are generally faced with further charges because of it.

Based on 2005 numbers it looks like we generate some where in the neighborhood of 69 billion a year in gas taxes (50 cent average tax per gallon, 20 million barrels of oil a day, 19 gallons of gas from a barrel, 365 days in the year ). This doesn’t include the added collection of diesel taxes. That isn’t enough? Really? Even with hybrids and electrics the amount of gas or diesel being bought isn’t exactly dropping just yet. When it does then perhaps it will be time to reconsider how we fund transit infrastructure costs. But it should NOT involve any method of double (triple if you count income tax) taxation. I personally think this should be rolled into income tax, or the entire tax collection system in the US should be switched entirely to consumption based taxes where money goes to things it is spent on when it is spent. Doing that would have the added bonus of killing the nightmare that is yearly tax filing and refocusing the IRS on sales tax collection\reporting rather than overseeing the incomes of every single wage earner in the country.

Anyway... enough ranting for one night.

AT&T cracking down on Tethering

Check the story here. But it looks like AT&T has finally deployed technology which allows it to detect who is tethering when they do not have a tethering plan. It is most likely a combination of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) combined with data usage profiles as it is much easier to use LOTS of data when tethering vrs just doing stuff with the phone itself.

Pardon the rant... but this one really chaps my @$$. I currently do not utilize the jailbreak methods to use tethering by this method but I have in the past and I did so with a clean conscious. I pay for unlimited data and even so I always stayed within the loose guidelines of what was determined a reasonable amount of data usage and in fact my usage is not anything insane. For instance I have never threatened the 5gb soft cap assumed to exist for AT&T iOS device unlimited plans. While my TOS has verbiage to the effect of trying to create a distinction between data that is relayed to my computer it is not one that I feel can withstand any real legal scrutiny as a realistic split. It is troll under the bridge stuff at its finest.

AT&T has ZERO right to judge what I do with the data I receive it from their network. Once the data hits the phone it is no longer their business what I do with it. In order to enforce a ‘no tethering’ clause AT&T is determining what I (or you) do with the data after it reaches my phone. This is none of AT&T’s business. Their control over the data ends once it reaches my device and concludes our service transaction... that of access to the mobile broadband network. To say I can’t tether is no different from AT&T saying I couldn’t transfer a photo I downloaded from the web from my Phone to my laptop. IE save image in mobile safari then blue tooth file transfer the image to another phone/tablet/laptop etc... ZERO difference from tethering in terms of the data being retrieved by the phone and sent to another device. Yet most people understand that AT&T trying to do that would be considered INSANE. But because the terms of service says ‘No Tethering’ many believe they can stop you from doing exactly that by the specific method of Bluetooth PAN connection.

I hope that sooner rather than later this issue gets a legal hearing. The terms of service are not ambiguous on the limitation. I am of the opinion that it does not matter. And there is plenty of precedent for ruling insane TOS clauses to be un-enforceable or just plain outright illegal. This is a growing consumer rights issue and I hope it gets resolved sooner rather than later.