This NWN post, Rosedale leaving, does not surprise me. It seems a major management shift in parallel with a strategy shift was underway. I have been meaning to see more about the content policy, the class-action lawsuit against LL by content creators, and anything about new strategy.

All of these actions seem like mid-level, world-based responses/ How it will play out in terms of field dynamics and communities of users may be a great data slice for our papers.

I like Au’s two theories. I wonder if the physical interaction interface (the rig) is the more likely.

Priestly House to Re-Open (hoo-ray!)

The Friends of Joseph Priestley House Museum will reopen the site for weekend

tours beginning Saturday, Oct. 3.  Heritage Day, a grand reopening event will be held

Sunday, Nov. 1 from 1-4 p.m., it was announced at the group’s annual meeting Thursday

in Northumberland, PA.

The site has been closed since mid-August due to the state’s budget emergency, which

forced the furlough of its paid staff and nearly caused permanent closing of the museum.

In the future, Friends’ members, serving as volunteers, will lead weekend tours for the

public. School and community group tours can be scheduled at other times. For

information, contact the Friends’ website (www.josephpriestleyhouse.org.)

SOCNET discussion on miltary and ethics (2 polls)

Some Common Sense at Last about Banks- Volcker

This strikes me as the right approach.

Volcker Calls for Restricting Banks’ Risk, Trading Activity – WSJ.com
The comments reflect Mr. Volcker’s long-held view that banks should act more in line with their traditional role and not take extremely risky gambles, which could threaten the viability of commercial banks and expose the Federal Reserve and taxpayers to large risks.

People keep yapping on about how the financial systems is the “circulatory” system of the economy.  Fine.  Then by extension, the amount of risk we have been allowing into the commercial banking systems is akin to eating four hamburgers every day for every meal, and then doing amphetamines, adn then running a marathon while smoking and hoping it won’t give us a heart attack.

Ethics and Information on Listservs (SOCNET)

Over at Socnet, the listserv (what is a listserv, anyway?  A-ha.) that has been so valuable for me over the years as I found networks and worked through how to do something productive with them, a debate has been unfolding over the posting of a research position with a military agency that would involve using social network tools and insights to do intelligence type work in counter-insurgency.

Some objected to the very position, some to the use of the listserv to distribute information, some to the initial objectors, and some to the politicization of the listserv.

I pondered whether or not to add anything.  Part of me , like may others, felt like I could not add anything that would advance the discussion, and I would be simply adding chatter and emails to our already clogged information pathways and in boxes.  Part of me also felt like there are real ethical conundrums around the issue and also the scope and use of the listserv itself which still anchors much of the network research network (or community if you prefer.  So, maybe against my better judgment, I tried to be constructive.

According to the INSNA website, the purpose of the listserv is:

“The purpose of SOCNET is to allow network researchers worldwide to discuss research and professional issues, make announcements, and request help from each other.”

What exactly constitutes “professional issues” may be up for debate, but the ethics of the tools and theories we develop and use seems to me entirely consistent with a discussion of the professional issues.  I write this without implying that there is one correct answer to the recent debate over the posting of a position at CORE for a post-doc to which several people have made comments.

I think two issues have been raised which may be conflated and can usefully be separated.

1)      Is it ethical to accept the position at CORE?

2)      Is it ethical to post the information on this list serv?

I am not sure what I think of the first question (accepting the position).

I do think it is acceptable to post the position(#2) and also to have others raise concerns and discuss the implications of the professional ethics of our specialized tools and knowledge.  How can we discuss professional issues unless we know about them?  Plus, I favor information transparency whenever possible, as opposed to banning or moderating heavily.  I am not sure how we could even formally execute such an intention.  We rely on more informal norms.

I suggest that this listserv is a kind of commons, as discussed by David Weinberger in this Berkman Center podcast.  Thus, participating includes a certain tolerance for internal dissent and working through the common expectations of how to use the commonly held and valued resource.

Hopefully, I have been succinct and constructive, if not conclusive.

Labor Day Thoughts

This post is mostly for my students (and myself)  since the unyieldingess of the academic calendar means we are in class on labor day.

I know as a kid growing up with two professional, salaried parents, I had no concept of labor day aside from that three day weekend.  I wonder how many of my students have a similarly hazy and immaterial understanding of the “labor” part of labor day.

So, how is the state of our workforce?  Not good. 

Official unemployment is at 9.7%.

This number of course, due to how it is measured (those actively looking for work in last four weeks).  That doe snot include discouraged workers, those who are marginally attached (would work more), or who have dropped out of the labor force.  This NY Times article nicely adds a human face to those categories.

They were left out of the latest unemployment rate, as they are every month: millions of hidden casualties of the Great Recession who are not counted in the rate because they have stopped looking for work.

And it has pictures!

This discouraged worker carpenter fills his time by cutting grass with clippers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has a very broad category to capture these various situations people find themselves in.  In August, the u6 measure, as it is known, came in at 16. 8 million. That was a 6 million increase over the year prior.  At 155 million in the labor force, that is an unemployment rate of 10.8%.  Throw in the number of people dropping out of the labor force all together, and you can  add another % point to get to an unemployment rate of around 12%.

Over at CalculatedRisk, the following chart captures the way that unemployment is steeper (big drop) and longer (more time to recover) than most recent recessions.  In short, this is a whole new world and historical analogies are rough at best.

Click to enlarge.

Well, there are bound to be bumps when you unleash the creative, destructive forces of capitalism, some might say.  Overall, we do better if we take the long view.

This is not a jobless recovery, it is a  jobless economy.  The amount of job growth since 200o is essentially zero. This graph shows that the ten year change in private employment is almost zero.

Edit

UPDATE: Here is a small glimmer of good news.  While labor-managemment, or labor unions in general, are usually seen in pretty negative terms, I am happy to share this little list of organizations acorss sectors that are successful and rely on collaborative organizaed labor partnerships.

Sure signs of cluelessness

Bob Sutton has this gem:

“I always think that when a boss starts eating your food without asking permission it is pretty good sign, as it is such a perfect blend of cluelessness and selfishness.”

Other signs?

This also serves a test of trackback across blogging platforms since his a typepad blog.

Blogging and CVs

A very important question raised by Sean over at OrgTheory.

Do you put your blog onyour CV?

Poll.

My response on the flip.

The Need for Social Science in Climate Change

A recurrent theme I find as I look out at the world and human affairs is that many problems are not wanting for technical or know-how fixes.  Moreover, large scale change or differences over time or place often seem to turn on small differences in application or implementation.  This is more than a generalized idea of tipping points.  More specifically, I mean that small scale points of interaction or articulation between components of human systems can matter.  This is especially true in the case of collective action problems.  I like to tell my students about how idiotic it seemed that at my kids’ school, no one ever pulled all the way up into the drop off zone effectively doubling the number of sets of cars that could pull up (since they would go to half way point and stop).  A crossing guard was even standing there.  A year later, new guard is in place who waves people forward.  Voila, problem solved.  My day starts with less fuming and cursing.

A recent article in Nature addresses the need to understand human systems, the stuff of social sciences (especially everything besides neo-classical economics since we have to deal with networks and aggregations of people.  Sorry about that.).  Ameliorating climate change is a massive collective action problem.  The article quotes a sociologist:

The answer, like the problem, has to be wide-ranging and global, says Jeffrey Broadbent of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who also studies how societies affect their environments. “Its only solution lies in a level of global cooperation that humanity has never seen before.”

This wake-up call will hopefully spur more activity around looking at how networks of interaction, influence, and collective identity formation, sucha s between cities, regions, or countries, are the substrate on whcih policy takes place.  Understanding this, a crucial task, is the goal of the COMPCON project.  Boradbent at UMN is one of the sociologists involved.  They are currently collecting cases studeis and network data to look at what happens to fill the gap between know how and implementation for climate policy.  Let’s hope the answers come soon enough to keep Champagne production in France and not closer to Wales.

I’m Back

I have been traveling a lot this summer and just generally catching up on various life and work projects.

Highlights included

- EGOS conference in Barcelona

- Social Theory and Dynamic Network analysis workshop in Barcelona hosted by Jose Luis Molina, among others.

- LINKS workshop at UKY in Lexington

- Hanging around the old family home near Sils, Spain

- Body-surfing in Cornwall

- Tooling about English National Trust sites

I have a big, bold agenda for next 12 months, and I look forward to using the blog and blogosphere to think and link more about the various projects.

I’m back and…

[Cue runner at the racing line image...]

“He’s off!”