Archbishop Slams Social Networking

via news.bbc.co.uk

Archbishop Vincent Nichols seems to presume that people are gullible when it comes to the majority of us not grasping the adverse impact of social networking. He warns us all in a rather sweeping generalisation that social networking sites, texting and would you believe it e-mails are undermining community life!.

Now lets just run past that again. Modern society is falling apart because of e-mail?! OK...let me ponder on that for a moment. OK...done that and concluded that it sort of runs counter to the evidence given its contribution to long-distance family life and commerce. The same holds true for all other forms of digital communication.

Of course his conjecture will contains grains of truth, and he draws attention to the well worn fact most social media users have been blogging about for years, the well understood phenomenon of 'social networking friendship'

Now, notwithstanding the extreme cases in any large population, I'm pretty confident that most people who have friended and followed me across Twitter, Friend Feed, Blogcatalog, MyBlogLog and so on don't really consider me to their 'bosom buddy'. The label 'friend' in this context is merely an evolved use of the term for use in a social media sitaution. Sure I'm in touch on a regular basis with a handful of fellow bloggers who I've got to know, and I would consider them my 'friend' in the sense of 'pen-pal', and of course we haven't physically 'met'. Nevertheless I do regard them as a social networking Friend (capital 'F'- proper digital friend) not just a social networking friend (lower case 'f'- digital aquaintance)

Had the Archbishop been commenting in previous decades would he have claimed that having 'pen-pals' was socially dysfunctional.?

In his criticism of 'transient' relationships that cause grief and upset when they fall apart. He seems to be describing the common socio-psychological characteristics of any relationship and somehow blaming a technological medium for when they go wrong!! In social networking Trolls and Flamers are socially and psychologically dysfunctional they are not technologically dysfunctional. They would behave as they did in a family, on street, in a village, in a town because that is how they are!.

The Archbishop has missed his target if he has any cause for concern. The clue is in the title. SOCIAL networking. Its the PEOPLE stupid!. The network is merely the technological medium not the attitude and behaviour of its users.

What about all the people who have found enduring relationships through sites like Match.com and so on? People who have traced lost family and friends through Friends Re-United, People who have found work through LinkedIN?

Instead of patronising us by thinking that he can see issues and problems that people less perceptive than himself the Archbishop is foreclosing the opportunity of social networking to his own vocation. Come on 'Bish, you would like to socially influence people about your attitudes and beliefs wouldn't you?, you'd like bigger congregations hearing what you have to say wouldn't you?. Well...just a suggestion...why not consider delivering your message through the medium that a significant number of people choose to use in the 21st century instead of relying on a social networking technology of the the 1st millennium aka the physical Church building. After all isn't the true meaning of Church really about a congregation of people with similar beliefs NOT the physical place they meet!!

Now here's the question. Archbishop Vincent Nichols...will you be my friend?

Posted via web from Gullibimundi

What Business Are The Banks In?

via news.bbc.co.uk

The BBC reports that Bank boards are to come under closer scrutiny. In the article it is pointed out that several banking heads have no banking industry back ground and no banking qualifications.

This shouldn't really come as any surprise. The reason this has happened is because business and society have bought into the 'MBA' myth that has historically reinforced the idea that a professional manager has 'transferable skills' allowing them to manage any business regardless of its commercial setting.

General tools, deployed by general managers who all speak the lingua franca of business-ese. The language of 'forces', of 'gap analysis', of ROI, of 'brand equity' and so on and so on.

This 'managerialist' philosophy is 'taken for granted', so deeply embedded that its truth and nature is, for most aspiring managers self evident. It is 'the' way to run a business successfully, because it 'stretches competences' (sic) and wraps ruthless scientific rationality up in the soft velvet of service and relationship rhetoric.

Kurt Lewin said there was nothing more practical than a good theory. The implication of this observation is that the way in which a person conceives of their world determines how they act in it. Chris Argyris calls them 'theories for success', deeply held ideas that determine how problems are defined and solutions created.

So why would a supermarket retailer get a job as a top banker then?

One reason is because he is a 'general manager'. At one level all businesses are the 'same' so they can all be run in the same way. The other reason is because of the answer to that most profound of business questions - 'what business are you in?'

This question will have a senior management team split asunder if they have never pondered on it before. It demands an explanation of what exactly the business 'does'. So what business are the banks in?

Generating ROI for investors (the avowedly Freidmann-esque position)?

The 'Service' business (the deceptive landscaping of the service offer pushed by most banks to disguise the fact that they are aggressive sales led organisations)?

The 'Retail' business (we sell consumable products to individual consumers through high street and on-line channels to market)?

Add the last explanation to the previous two and you have a justification for employing Barrow Boy MBA at the senior level of your banking business!

On the other hand, characterise the business of banking as something rather more profound, something rather more central to social welfare of the country and its citizens, something rather more essential to the working of a modern society, then, the business the banks are in is nothing at all to do with getting the sales team to push the latest 'gee-whiz' offering from new product development, nothing to do with callously casting itself as a friendly service provider who cares for YOUR finances through the journey of life.

What if Banking is a prudent guardian of financial stability, the essential counterpoise to the pull of rampant consumerism with its powerful and persuasive temptations to overstretch the wallet? What if it is about 'saving' to spend rather than 'borrowing' to spend?

Retailers want every last penny from us, because every little helps their profit margins, they don't care if its baked beans or shoes for the kids. The banks should,and the way to do it to have absolute clarity about what business they are in!

Posted via web from Gullibimundi

Self-help makes you feel worse

via news.bbc.co.uk

So here is the scientific argument that 'Self Help' might easily become 'Self Delusion'.The appeal of mantras that you can 'be whoever you want to be' and 'do what whatever you want to do' are certainly appealing.

Many therapeutic, counselling and advisory approaches do a fantastic job of helping people recognise self imposed limitations on their ambitions. This is invariably achieved through helping the 'client' notice what is missing or ignored from their mental map of the world and then guiding them in drawing upon their often undervalued resources and potential.

Much of this approach is founded upon a philosophy that manifests itself through Positive Psychology a type of psychology that affirms the good in the situation and the capability of the individual.

This is all well and good, and psychologically we have 'bad' feelings because of their evolutionary benefit. They help us recognise the 'reality' of situations and they protect us from engaging in unnecessarily risky behaviours. Imagine acting on the song lyrics 'I believe I can fly...believe I can touch the sky..." when standing on a cliff top. The result of such an attempt would rapidly confront you with ontological reality of gravity, velocity and mass.

Perhaps the most famous positive thinker was King Canute who sincerely believed he could stop the tide coming in!





The message is clear. Don't be gullible and believe everything you read from a blogging 'Life Hack'. Remain sceptical of their claims, and be sure that you check that they advise what they advise for 'your' benefit and not theirs!

Posted via web from Gullibimundi

School bans black-face Morris Men

via news.bbc.co.uk

Which fool decided that there was any connection between the black faces of Morris Men and potential offence? This is a tradition of hundreds of years and has no racist connotations whatsoever.

The people who make these pronouncements need to publicly defend the logic of their position far more robustly than simply 'imagining' any and every offence that could be taken in this case and any and every possible case.

Usually the ability to spot patterns that connect is a highy valued intellectual skill. That of course is if the patterns are relevant and meaningful.

Prejudicial hypersensitivity is a debilitating and negative outlook. It is NOT intellectually clever to make any old connection and claim that their might be a risk of offence. The precrime thought police seem to be the ones who are prejudiced. Predjudiced against innocent traditions, predjudiced against common sense, and predjudiced against normal people who they regard as simpletons.

How dare they assume that we are all gullible and cannot see the danger lurking behind the face paint of Morris Men, how dare they presume our gullibility, how dare they think that they have privelaged insights to which we are all blind.

They are the people who are drenched in predjudice. So soaking wet in it they leave their soggy thinking footprints wherever they go.

These people should grow up and take their sixth form hand wringing out of public office.

Posted via web from Gullibimundi

Madoff Gets 150 years To Reflect On His Gullibility

via news.bbc.co.uk

The Bird that Madoff has got has to be a pigeon because it's certainly come home to roost. 150 years should be enough time for him to ponder on the havoc he's caused in people's lives by betraying their trust. He was however gullible in thinking that it was only the other people who were the gullible ones.

Events always catch up with people who reckon they are too clever by half. Abuse of confidences, abuse of power, he should find himself in expert company in the land of 'watch your back'.

Mr Madoff...imagine...all the ways you are going to be taken advantage of now!

Posted via web from Reasonable's posterous

Evidence of Gullibility

Its been a while since I reviewed my Technorati page I notice that my 'authority' sits at 7 and that I've attracted 55 fans.

One neat aspect of Technorati is the 'watchlist' and a key word for me is as you would expect 'Gullibility' Over the last few days there have been a couple of great links.

The first is this one that claims to be images recovered from the inside of ill fated flight AF 447 Titled Gullibility (hooray!) the images seem to be clips from a TV series.

Next is a blog called Daily Irrelevant which covers a story about prize winning students who later had their prize revoked"prize-winners, Guillaume Chauvin and Rémi Hubert, read out a statement admitting to the hoax, stating that they had wanted to make a “powerful artistic gesture” attacking the “voyeurism” and gullibility of parts of the press" as they took Paris Match for a ride.

Candid World
talks about the gullibility of people involved with Scientology, posting a fasciinating comment stream too.

It would seem that a fairly low intensity but steady stream of gullibility pervades the blogosphere.

The Rise of Hate 2.0

via news.bbc.co.uk

We'd be gullible if we thought that the digital space was any different from the FtF space. The full diversity of sense-making and behaviour from people of various persuasions will clearly be able to find a voice and constituency in the fluid and far reach medium of digital conversations.

This recent BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8097979.stm is certainly thought provoking.

This merely serves to underscore the need to develop the education and critical skills of all digital media users. This will enable them to readily challenge the flawed logic of the hate-mongers and spot a gross generalisation and simplification at a 1000 meters.

People on the whole have become more media savvy. They know that people have agendas when they communicate. The disturbing feature of social media is that it enables 'the disturbed' who might have been previously disjointed to connect. And in this 'connection' to believe that they are establishing a general norm instead of a perverse small group norm.

Do we see a Hate 2.0 career path here? Does leaving a flame comment mean you will become a Troll, does becoming a troll mean you are predisposed to finding affinities with more established hate groups, does an on-line hate group manifest itself in physical action?

There might be a saving grace in the very nature of social media itself! The power of crowds only really works in the physical realm. Crowd psychology is a powerful thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology The Nazis may have utilised the new technologies of film and radio but it was only in the setting of mass public meetings that the virulence of their thinking took hold.

Posted via web from Reasonable's posterous

Police break up new Tehran rally

via news.bbc.co.uk

Am I missing something? Does the Iranian regime assume that millions of their own are people are gullible enough to be duped by social media messages from 'The West'? How does that work? Surely taking issue with the dogmatic views of a powerful regime requires 'critical thinking'.

Which means that if the the 'subversive' messages from the West' are as flawed, baseless and biased as the regime say they are then the very people they are meant to influence would see straight through them too (because they are smart independently minded people) and therefore they would support the regime.

Posted via web from Reasonable's posterous

She Should Have Had 'Gullible' Tatooed On Her Forehead

image credit Daily Telegraph












There are several factors involved with gullibility. One is not thinking through the consequences of one's choices and decisions, another is placing yourself in vulnerable situations that are in the control of unscrupulous people.

Now you may think I'm being harsh when I describe Kimberley Vlaeminck as gullible. However what on earth was going through this pretty girl's mind?

I can remember camping in the South of France and watching travelling tatooists working the bars and beaches. Clearly relying on the 'holiday spirit'of prospects so that they would take advantage of their relaxed and uncritical situation.

That this young woman fell asleep as she had the face art done is surely a metaphor for an uncritical mind. The full story can be read here 56 Stars later

The Disturbing Danger of Swine Flu Gullibility

We are being really gullible if we think that the 'hot news items' in the world of politics, business, society and entertainment have somehow made Swine Flu go away.


The disturbing nature of this virus was really brought home to me as I was reading Bill Bryon's book
A Short History of Nearly Everything in which he describes the disturbing and frightening reality of the Swine Flu virus over pages 386-389:







I didn't realise that the 1918 flu epidemic was Swine Flu. and Bryson provides some astonishing facts including:

80% of American World War 1 forces casualties were the result of Swine Flu, and 21 million people died in 4 months world wide.

The most frightening aspect of the virus however relates directly to the 'phase' of its development we are in at the moment, yes that means Summer 2009. Bryson writes "Swine flu arose as a normal, non-lethal flu in the Spring of 1918, but somehow, over the following months, non-one knows how or where, it mutated into something more severe"

He goes on to describe a series of stomach churning experiments conducted on convicts in a race to create a vaccine. Their participation was based on the promise that if they survived exposure to the virus ranging from being coughed in the face, to ingesting 'samples' from patients that had died from the virus they would be pardoned!

The most difficult and worrying to explain he says was "how it managed to lie low for several months before erupting so explosively at more or less the same time all over. Even more mysterious is that it was most devastating to people in the prime of life"

He concludes by saying "The greatest mystery of all is why the 1918 flu was so ferociously deadly when most flus are not. We still have no idea"

Swine Flu Latest:
9th June 2009 Australia flu could tip pandemic
10th June 40 New Swine Flu Cases in the UK
11th June 2009 WHO 'declares swine flu pandemic'
12th June UK Swine Flu cases pass 900 Mark
14th June 2009 UK First Swine Flu Death - First Outside Americas
27th June 2009 Swine Flu At Glastonbury
28th June 2009 Second UK Swine Flu Death
29th June 3rd UK swine flu death
2nd July 2009 100,000 a day in UK expected
3rd July 2009 Death in London
6th July 2009 Child 9 years dies in London
10th July 2009 1st death of healthy person