Disqus - Latest Comments for bukoff

Re: A Research Fable

bukoff — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:45:34 -0000

Thank you. This is a great way to describe what has happened. I've been doing human/consumer research for more than 20 years and the ability to contact people, sample their chatter, explore has simply exploded. But with all these incredible opportunities there seem to be equally frustrating methodological difficulties. It almost seems to me like there is some sort of "structural" tradeoff in all of this: the more exciting the data/possibilities, the more difficult it is to obtain a random sample. This suspicion--let's call it "Bukoff's Conundrum"--is based on an experience I keep having: I get excited when I realize that Twitter/Facebook/etc. provides an incredibly easy source of data for studying phenomenon-X (or Y or Z), but then discover that sampling is going to be difficult...random sampling extremely difficult or seemingly impossible. The more exciting and powerful the data/research idea seems (i.e., this is an important question) and the more obvious and easy the data (i.e., the data needed to address this is easy to get, publicly accessible data), the more difficult or impossible it is to do the necessary sampling. I'm not sure this trade-off or conundrum actually exists, but if it does it might be a function of something like: the structure needed to organize useful research data is different from (opposite to?) the simple and open systems (e.g., Twitter/Facebook) that seem best at encouraging widespread social engagement. perhaps a built in protection against too-easy understanding/manipulation/exploitation? Or something like that.

Thanks for your post.

Re: Is Twitter Transforming How YOU Communicate?

bukoff — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:50:43 -0000

I'm one of those people who initially rejected Twitter, re-tried it and started getting professional value from following smart people, then became more deeply fascinated with its "magic."

You say "great social technology is transparent to our innate ways of being." Which is generally true, but not so much for Twitter. As Marian Salzman has pointed out, Twitter is a constrained in-your-face medium that doesn't fade to the background (whether sender or receiver). This insight became the jumping off point for me for an extended analysis of how Twitter-as-medium gets in the way in a bunch of good ways. My blog post here: http://bit.ly/kKjot .

Re: Twitter--rare medium, well done

bukoff — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:33:38 -0000

This is a test of my new comments application

Re: Similarities: Because It’s All Been Done

bukoff — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:59:48 -0000

Isn't saying "Everything is a memory" a little strong? Don't truly new thoughts/ideas/images get created in our heads from a fusion/association of existing memories--allowing us to think of new things beyond the sum of the memories that are there?