Social Media and Immortality

I suppose everyone who uses social networks like Facebook eventually comes up against the situation when that network presents a dead friend in some context that only makes sense about someone who is alive and actively maintaining a social media presence. I just did, again.

In this particular case it was triggered by the suggestion from LinkedIn that I might like to add a fellow Learning Tree instructor to my roster of friends. He died, quite young and to most of his colleagues' surprise, about fifteen months ago (if my memory can be relied upon, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend as a strategy). I've seen similar reports on Twitter from other friends.

Now, I'm just a guy who chose to eschew the corporate career ladder and work on small systems that do demonstrable good, so I freely admit that the young devops turks of today are able to develop far more capable systems that I could have conceived of at their age. That's just the nature of technological progress. At the same time, I have to wonder why nobody appears to have asked the question "Should we take special actions (or at least avoid taking regular ones) for users who haven't logged in in over a year?"

Do they have no business analysts? Must we geeks be responsible for avoiding even the most predictable social gaffes?

Sidebar: I once designed the database for a system that monitored the repayment of student support funds by those who had accepted assistance from the federal government to train in teaching disadvantaged students. There were certain valid reasons for deferring repayment (such as military service), and of course these deferrals had to be recorded. I remember feeling very satisfied that all I had to do was associate the null value with the deferral duration for "Dead" as the referral reason to have everything work perfectly well.

The answer to my question of two paragraphs above, by the way, would be “yes”. This will be the last time I give free advice to the social media companies, so Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest, I hope you can find some benefit in this advice. Anything further will cost you dearly. (I should be so lucky).

Quite separately from the above speculations on human frailty, I can't help wondering what kind of immortality a continued existence on these platforms represents (even though this will probably lead to hate mail from all kinds of people the concept offends). I had an email from Google a couple of days ago asking me to log in with a particular identity* within a month or have the account go inactive. That's a necessary second step to whatever palliative actions you choose to take when presenting the account to others. Google, for all their execrable support,** get that you have to log in now and again just to assert your continued existence.

It strikes me this is a reasonably humane way to proceed. If you want to keep someone's memory alive on a social media platform then you must know them at least well enough to log in to their account, after which it's basically your shrine to them if you want it to be. I really don't like to think about what kind of complications the lawyers will dream up about this, though. Otherwise, well, we are after all all born to die (Ray Kurzweil notwithstanding).


*Note to the Google identity nazis: no, of course I was joking, I only have one identity
** Hint re Google customer service: if you aren't paying you aren't a customer, so expecting service might seem presumptuous

The Python MiroCommunity

Well, I have been wondering what to do with python.tv for a while, but I think it's pretty clear now that a lot of redirection to the Python Miro Community is in order. This is some seriously helpful stuff for anyone who wants to know more about Python.

If I were Steve Jobs (and I'm sure he will tell you I'm not) I might want to say it was fantastically amazingly stupendously great, but in fact it's simply the result of some solid work by an individual and a foundation.

So, a tip o' the hat to Will Kahn-Greene, the currently volunteer curator of the collection (sorry the PSF couldn't help you with funding, Will, but the amazing job you have done without it surely tells potential sponsors that your channel will represent amazing value to them) and to the Participatory Culture Foundation, Miro's originators.

Oh, and then of course there's the hundreds of people involved in creating the videos and the conferences and user group meetings at which they were made. Including a small core centered around Carl Karsten who have worked for years to get to the stage where we are publishing video while the conference is still happening. Pretty amazing stuff, really. Lots of Python in the mix, naturally, and pretty all of it open source unless I mistake my guess.

Hmmm, python.tv ...

The Media We Deserve?

Many thanks to Patrick Logan for bringing this New York Times article to my attention. It highlights the fact that the "military analysts" used (and paid!) by the major networks often appear to have business dealings and Pentagon relationships that cause blatant conflicts of interest with their independence as analysts.

My favorite quote shows that the networks feel they have something to hide, and in particular just exactly how "fair and balanced" Fox News wants to be:

CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.

NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.”

Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.

CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.

Nothing like shutting up when you have something to hide. You can almost hear the ranks closing.

Miro: A Cool Python Video Player

I have just downloaded Miro 1.0, whose announcement I saw on Will Guaraldi's blog. The Windows installer was trouble free (EDIT: Linux and Mac versions are also available). It's currently scanning my disk looking for videos (and I had no idea there were so many on my hard disk), and I am looking forward to getting rid of Real Player.

No, rats, I have to keep that because the BBC are in cahoots with Real so I have to use their plugin to listen to Radio 4.