technology

The New York Times ran an article yesterday about the ‘vocal minority’ of individuals who believe that man landing on the moon was all a hoax. All of this as many Americans celebrate the anniversary of that historic event…

The Times reports:

Forty years after men first touched the lifeless dirt of the Moon — and they did. Really. Honest. — polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of Americans believe the landings were faked and could not have happened. The series of landings, one of the greatest gambles of the human race, was an elaborate hoax developed to raise national pride, many among them insist.

They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery, and claim to be able to tell that the American flag was waving in what was supposed to be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through the radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the technological prowess of the American space program; and they cry murder behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.

And while there is no credible evidence to support such views, and the sheer unlikelihood of being able to pull off such an immense plot and keep it secret for four decades staggers the imagination, the deniers continue to amass accusations to this day.

And what does a sociologist have to say about this?

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has studied conspiracy theorists, said “there’s a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups, I think.” For the most part, he explained, “They don’t undertake to prove that their view is true” so much as to “find flaws in what the other side is saying.” And so, he said, argument is a matter of accumulation instead of persuasion. “They feel if they’ve got more facts than the other side, that proves they’re right.”

A law professor weighs in as well…

Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law who has written extensively on conspiracy theories, said he sees similarities between people who argue that the Moon landings never happened and those who insist that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the government and that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake: at the core, he said, is a polarization so profound that people end up with an unshakable belief that those in power “simply can’t be trusted.”

The emergence of the Internet as a communications medium, he noted, makes it possible for once-scattered believers to find one another. “It allows the theory to continue to exist, to continue to be available — it’s not just some old dusty books on the half-price shelf.”

Read more.

25/365What is ‘weisure,’ you ask? The term ‘weisure time,’ coined by sociologist Dalton Conley, is used to describe the increasingly blurred line between work and leisure time for Americans. In their article on this emerging phenomenon, CNN noted, “The increased mixing of work and play doesn’t mean bankers will be refinancing houses during their kids’ piñata parties. But what it does mean is more and more Americans are using smartphones and other technology to collaborate with business colleagues while hanging out with their families. It doesn’t mean tax attorneys will be getting makeovers during their tax-law seminars. But they may be chatting with Facebook friends while participating in a conference call.”

CNN reports:

Many who haven’t already abandoned the 9-to-5 workday for the 24-7 life of weisure probably will do so soon, according to New York University sociologist Dalton Conley, who coined the word. It’s the next step in the evolving work-life culture.

“Increasingly, it’s not clear what constitutes work and what constitutes fun,” be it “in an office or at home or out in the street,” Conley said. Activities and social spaces are becoming work-play ambiguous, he says, as “all of these worlds that were once very distinct are now blurring together.”

Conley used the 1950s as a point of reference. “Back then, there were certain rules, such as ‘don’t do business with friends, and keep those spheres separate.’ It was just one of the hallmarks of capitalist social life. That has completely changed.”

But what is the problem?

Perhaps more disturbing is the idea that weisure is changing us. “We lose our so-called private sphere,” Conley said. “There’s less relaxing time to be our so-called backstage selves when we’re always mingling work and leisure.”

If you’re thinking that a backlash may be around the corner for the weisure concept, you’re right. In fact, Conley says, the backlash has begun.

“You can see that in the populist anger against the bankers” who’ve been blamed in part for the current economic downturn, Conley says. The backlash is evident in the rise of alternative social movements involving people “who live in a more frugal and environmentally conscious way,” he says.

But, short of a nuclear winter or some cataclysm sending us back to the stone age, there’s no turning back the clock on the spread of weisure, he says. The weisure lifestyle will engrain itself permanently in the American culture.

Read more…

A little smashed, otherwise fineNewswise, a press release service, brought to my attention interesting new research out of Vanderbilt University by Sandra Barnes suggesting that, “churches with predominantly black congregations are thriving in urban and suburban areas, and the most successful churches employ a variety of sophisticated marketing and programming strategies to draw members.”

The research offers insights into what successful black churches have in common today, when parishioners have more choices and expect more from their churches than they have in the past.

“Contrary to expectations, I found that the black church is still a very important part of the lives of many African Americans,” Barnes said. “Those churches that market themselves, make sophisticated use of technology, offer practical sermons and programs for families and children over and above typical Bible studies are most likely to draw and keep new parishioners.”

People are expecting more from their churches…

Barnes found that today’s parishioners are “religiously savvy” and expect more from their church service, such as sermons and Bible studies relevant to everyday life, activities for individuals and families, and innovative worship services that incorporate dance and music.

“The broader societal change we have seen in consumerism is also manifesting in the religious arena. We expect more, bigger and better,” Barnes said. “As in the retail environment, today’s church goers are savvy shoppers. They are looking for a worship experience that meets their needs and programs that meet their needs and they’re willing to shop around to find it.”

This consumerism has led churches to use sophisticated marketing tools, specifically the Internet.

“Successful churches are very savvy when it comes to marketing. Word of mouth continues to be an important tool, but it is no longer the primary mechanism,” Barnes said. “Web sites, television ads and prime time exposure all play a role. Churches are using very intentional marketing strategies and much of it relies on technology.”

Read more.

NYU sociologist Dalton Conley was featured on ‘Marketplace’ this past Tuesday. Host Kai Ryssdal talks with Conley about the blurring line between work and family now that more Americans are taking fewer vacations and clocking in more hours at the office.

An excerpt from the interview:

RYSSDAL: This [Conley’s book, Elsewhere, USA]  is fundamentally, I guess, a book about work-life balance, but really what you do is you tell us how we’re not getting any of it right.

CONLEY: Yeah, it’s really about work-life imbalance and the underlying forces — some of them very visible but some of them more invisible — that have created this new social and economic landscape that we work in.

RYSSDAL: And the visible ones we know about, right? I mean everybody’s got their Blackberry, they’re on the computer all the time, the kids have 14 different things to do after school. What are the ones though that maybe we’re not entirely aware of?

CONLEY: Well, a couple of big socio-demographic changes have occurred since the 60s. First is rising economic inequality. Every year since 1969 economic inequality has risen in the United States and has particularly been concentrated in the top half. In fact, the higher up you go, the more inequality has risen and the gaps get bigger. And I think this causes what I call an economic redshift, no matter where you are on the top half, it looks like everybody is rushing away from you.

RYSSDAL: That’s insane. I mean, on the face of it, that’s nuts, right?

CONLEY: It’s a brave new world. For the first time, it was people with incomes over $200,000, in a New York Times poll, that said that they feel poorer when they’re around rich people as compared to people who are actually poor. That’s stunning to me. And for the first time in labor history, the further up the income ladder you go, the more hours you work.

Listen to the show.

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about how kids these days aren’t into planning in advance – attributing this ‘new’ phenomenon to the rise of mobile communications via text messaging and web-based chat. The Inquirer reports:

The ubiquity of cell phones and text messaging, especially among young people, has changed the whole idea of the word plans – most significantly, it allows people not to make any.

“One of the consequences of the mobile phone is that you can postpone any decision until the last minute,” said James E. Katz, chair of the Rutgers University communications department, where he directs the Center for Mobile Communications Studies. “Since you have up to that last minute to obtain information for the decision, cell phones can give you the opportunity to delay it. What do you want for dinner? Hmmm, I’ll tell you when I am really hungry.”

But a sociologist isn’t so sure that this is a new trend…

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers-Camden, is not nearly as worried, saying that the late-planning habit, especially for young people, started at least a generation ago, or even before, with the countercultural 1960s and ’70s.

“There was a value of being spontaneous and free of entanglements,” said Goertzel, 66, whose own children, now 43 and 39, weren’t big on making long-term plans when they were younger. In comparison, when he and his wife were younger, she had to know Tuesday what they were doing Saturday.

“Even with wired telephones, there was a lot of last-minute communication,” he said. “It might also be cyclical, a matter of generational culture, an ‘uptight’ generation followed by a ‘laid-back’ one.”

Read more.

Mobile devices from smartphone to netbookAn article on technology and sociological research recently came across the Crawler’s radar, originally published in the New York Times. The story describes how nearly 100 students living in Random Hall (an on-campus dormitory) at MIT have traded in their personal privacy for free smartphones used to study their movements. The smartphones generate information beamed to a central computer, including individual actions, to map the dorm’s social network. The Times writes: “The students’ data is but a bubble in a vast sea of digital information being recorded by an ever thicker web of sensors, from phones to GPS units to the tags in office ID badges, that capture our movements and interactions. Coupled with information already gathered from sources like Web surfing and credit cards, the data is the basis for an emerging field called collective intelligence.”

About the researcher…

Alex Pentland, a professor at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is leading the dormitory research project, was a co-founder of Sense Networks. He is part of a new generation of researchers who have relatively effortless access to data that in the past was either painstakingly assembled by hand or acquired from questionnaires or interviews that relied on the memories and honesty of the subjects…

Dr. Pentland calls his research “reality mining” to differentiate it from an earlier generation of data mining conducted through more traditional methods.

Dr. Pentland “is the emperor of networked sensor research,” said Michael Macy, a sociologist at Cornell who studies communications networks and their role as social networks. People and organizations, he said, are increasingly choosing to interact with one another through digital means that record traces of those interactions. “This allows scientists to study those interactions in ways that five years ago we never would have thought we could do,” he said.

Once based on networked personal computers, collective intelligence systems are increasingly being created to leverage wireless networks of digital sensors and smartphones. In one application, groups of scientists and political and environmental activists are developing “participatory sensing” networks.

Read more.

)Market Watch reported with a follow up to an article on ‘sexting’ previously discussed on the Crawler. This new blurb, from United Press International, clarifies that the original claim that 20% of teens were ‘sexting’ was overblown…

A sociologist says she believes claims many U.S. teens are using their cell phones to send provocative photos of themselves are overblown.

C.J. Pascoe, an assistant professor at Colorado College, told the McClatchy-Tribune News Service she and her research assistant interviewed 80 youngsters as part of the three-year Digital Youth Report study. She said her look at what teens actually do online did not match a poll’s claim that 20 percent of teens have sent sexy or nude pictures, a practice nicknamed sexting.
“No one brought it up,” she said. “I had them go through their last 10 messages, their last 10 photos and I never saw it.”
The 20 percent claim came from a poll by Teenage Research Unlimited for CosmoGirl! magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Pascoe said she believes teenagers are doing what they have always done — at least since teen culture emerged in the 1950s.
“I think what makes adults nervous about new media is they have a window into a teenager’s world for the first time,” she said.

Time Magazine recently reviewed Dalton Conley’s new book entitled, ‘Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety.’ As for the book’s content? As Time reports, “It’s pretty much all there in the subtitle.”

Conley, a New York University sociologist, asks why middle- to upper-class professionals who were once able to put in a full day’s work at the office, enjoy their leisure time, save up for a house and retire well now find themselves working more for seemingly less. There’s a new class of Americans in town, says Conley. “Changes in three areas — the economy, the family and technology — have combined to alter the social world and give birth to this new type of American professional. This new breed — the intravidual — has multiple selves competing for attention within his/her own mind, just as, externally, she or he is bombarded by multiple stimuli simultaneously.”

Although Time ultimately rated the book a ‘Read,’ they offered some critique of Conley’s work…

Conley’s a sociologist, and at times he writes as if he’s submitting a paper for review rather than penning a book for mass-market consumption. Still, Conley’s concept of intravidualism — “an ethic of managing the myriad data streams, impulses, and even consciousnesses that we experience in our heads as we navigate multiple worlds” — is fascinating. So is another useful but slightly silly neologism: “weisure,” Conley’s term for our increasing tendency to work during leisure time, thanks to advances in portable personal technology. As Conley writes, there are fewer and fewer boundaries in the world of the middle- to upper-class professional. “Investment v. consumption; private sphere v. public space; price v. value; home v. office; leisure v. work; boss v. employee” — the walls between them all are increasingly blurring or falling altogether. We seem to work all the time because technology now makes it possible to do so. Constant motion — between jobs, between relationships, between multiple selves, even — is Conley’s all-too-familiar “Elsewhere Society.”

Read the full review.

kiwanja_india_texting_18
Yesterday the Kansas City Star ran a fascinating story about parental fear about children ‘sexting’ each other beyond the watchful eyes of their mothers and father.

But what is ‘sexting,’ you ask?

One in five kids have used their cell phone to send sexy or nude photos of themselves, according to an online poll by Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), a trend analyst firm in Chicago. The poll surveyed 1,200 kids online. The kids had signed up as volunteers to take TRU surveys. The study was sponsored by CosmoGirl! magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The results became national news and adults dubbed it “sexting.” Newspaper and television headlines asked worried parents, “Is your teen sexting?” No one asked: “Is this a real trend or adults just totally freaked out?”

Don’t worry, a sociologist clears all of this up…

Adults may just be nervous, according to the results of an academic study. The Digital Youth Report was the result of a three-year project in which 28 researchers studied new media and teens. The researchers interviewed 800 kids and young adults in person. They also observed more than 5,000 hours of online activity.

Sociologist CJ Pascoe and her research assistant interviewed 80 kids for the project and said sexting was not a major issue. “No one brought it up,” said Pascoe, an assistant sociology professor at Colorado College. “I had them go through their last 10 messages, their last 10 photos and I never saw it.”

Sexting was not a common enough practice to make it into the report. Instead, Pascoe suggested that adults have fears about teens and the Internet. “I think what makes adults nervous about new media is they have a window into a teenager’s world for the first time, ” Pascoe said. “Teen culture has been around since the 1950s and teens have been pushing the boundaries since the 1950s but adults haven’t seen it.”

Read on

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune posted a podcast today about holiday spirituality, which included a discussion of new work from Mark Chaves, a Duke University sociologist studying churches in the United States. Technology is the opiate of the masses…

One of the biggest changes in churches over the past decade is a huge increase in the use of computer technology to keep in touch with current members and to reach out to new ones, according to a Duke University study that was released — appropriately enough — in the online version of the journal Sociology of Religion.

An average of 10,000 church websites are being launched every year, according to the National Congregations Study, Wave II, a follow-up to a 1998 study. In the earlier study only a handful of churches used e-mail to communicate with members. Now 60 percent are doing it.

Researchers conducted interviews with 1,500 congregations representing a cross-section of religious traditions. For the follow-up study, they went back to the same churches.

“This is the first study that has tracked change over time in a nationally representative sample of congregations,” said Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology, religion and divinity and the lead researcher. “We’ve never been able to do that before. This research tells us what is changing and what is staying the same.”

Read the full story.