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

Lending Pythonistas

Too often I hear people bemoaning their inability to change the world, so I wanted to bring Kiva, and specifically the Pythonistas team, to your attention because if you have even a modest amount of money to spare you can put it to use again and again to help worthy enterprises, typically closely allied with their local community.

I started lending money through Kiva a while ago, and more recently joined its Pythonistas team. I suggested starting such a team shortly after I joined Kiva, but it took Anna Martelli's energy to actually get it off the ground, and I received my invitation a couple of months ago - thanks, Anna! If you decide you want to become a "Kiva Pythonista" all you have to do is follow this link.

Even as a Kiva Pythonista you still decide to whom you want to lend money, you simply say you want your loans to be counted as a part of the Pythonista effort. The enterprises you will fund are typically far from hi-tech: here are some of the groups I am currently funding to give you some idea of the kinds of activity you can support.

Secretarial Services in Uganda
Second-Hand Clothing in Guatemala
Fish Retailing in Senegal
Cattle Farming in Azerbaijan
A Grocery Store in Cambodia
Animal Rearing in Tajikistan
A General Store in Togo
A Cooperative Bank in Bolivia

This came to mind because I got an email this morning reminding me that I had received repayments of $150, and so I am just about to use the Kiva site to lend those repaid funds to new borrowers, keeping my money actively at work. And now I can do it as a Pythonista!

Can You Do Better?

As a graphic artist I'm a pretty good combine harvester operator, so there is no subtlety about the banner graphic I came up with for (maybe) the python.org homepage. But I was glad that Andrew Kuchling asked, because PyCon should be better known. If Python is the technical secret weapon then I believe PyCon is truly the social secret weapon. I know other projects are having good success with community conferences, and would like to have the time to visit some of our sibling foundations' events.

If you attend such an event you will be doing the Python community a service by writing it up for Planet Python. It's not hard to get your blog on the Planet if you do a few good Python posts, and we hear a lot more about the technical than the social normally.

Wow, next year it will be PyCon number eight. Three years after that will be the tenth anniversary of the very first PyCon. It would be terrific if we could go back to DC for that conference. What about it, DC metro area?

EveryBlock Acquired by MSNBC

News today from EveryBlock via Adrian Holovaty that the founders have agreed to let MSNBC acquire their company. Happily Adrian is on record already as expecting a completely unchanged relationship with Django and Python, pointing out that MSNBC is only half-owned by Microsoft.

Is Guido Drunk Yet?

So Guido is encouraging people to get him drunk today. I hope someone gets a video!