Fieldnotes on Humanity

Do you remember that nearly three weeks ago Facebook agreed to a sweeping settlement of notable allegations regarding how it mishandled user privacy and pay $5 billion civil penalty , and also agreed to implement robust new protections of user data? Well, as part of the new privacy settings, Facebook has enabled the permanently deleting account option. Until recently, you could only deactivate your account, but now you can delete the entire account with one click. Remember that nothing will come back after you push the delete button. It is scary and I am hesitant to do that though I do want to stay away from Facebook. I created my Facebook account in 2007 through the help of a friend. Back then you couldn't create independently (especially if you were living in Afghanistan) you should have been invited by someone. I had a friend at Duke University who sent me an invitation. Just as a reminder if you want to delete your account, make sure to take a backup of all your photos, v...

A few days ago, I felt I was succumbed to the temptation of using Instagram, which I have been trying to stay away from. The temptation was the result of thinking whether it is a good idea to upload some of my photographs there. I don't know why, perhaps, publicity was the spur. I opened an account, but for some reasons, I could not upload landscape photos to Instagram. I posted some photos of myself and tried different colors and features. I spent nearly two hours playing with a couple of photos. Then, suddenly, I thought, if I had spent that much time, I could have edited several photos on Photoshop and uploaded them to my website , or I could have read a few articles. Time was not the only thing that I was worried about, it was something else: the ego. I did not download the Instagram app, but instead, I used the website through a backchannel. Even though everything looked basic, my photos looked fancy after I manipulated the light and color values. I could have stopped it, bu...

Last week I tweeted : "I had a bizarre morning, lost keys and forgot my power adapter at the coffee shop, one of the laundry dryer machines did work, had to redo it ," a few minutes later, I got this tweet from a user saying : " We can get you a new set of keys!" There was also another company who tweeted me saying that they sold the best key leashes. These companies advertise their products through twitter, watching for key words and checking who tweets what, isn't that amazing? Compare these tweets with the tweets that are being sent out from the Middle East, telling of how many people died in anti-government protests while government media denies them. It's quite ironic that on the other side of the world, people use twitter for their liberation from oppressive regimes while on this side of the world, people use twitter to advertise their products. For one part of the world, twitter has become a powerful source of communication, spreading out their ang...

Today, March 21, 2011 marks the fifth anniversary of the first tweet ever sent. PCWorld has counted five milestones from the past five years , two of them are the most important to me: 1. The role of Twitter in coverage of Iranian elections. 2. Twitter in Tunisia and Egypt which help protesters organizing their protests and finally we unexpectedly saw the demise of authoritarian regimes one after another. Here is a fascinating video of some important figures telling why twitter is important to them.