Dear Tipsters, I am sure that many of you, when not engaging in the endless careerism that is involved in being a member of the academy, have heard about a social networking/time-waster popular on the InterWebs (IW) called Twitter that produces Twits, er, Tweets, that is, short pieces of information that someone has decided has such significance and import that they must be communicated to "followers" immediately. Human decision-making, being as impeccable as it is (e.g., one study of the content of Tweets has shown that only 40% of them are just "babble" [as pointed out in the article below a common response to this finding has been "Only 40%?"; for a popular media account of the study see the following:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/08/17/urnidgns852573C4006938800025761500818FFB.DTL ]) the obvious question that manifests itself (or begs to be answered) is: "Given all of the intensely interesting and entertaining people putting out Tweets, who has the highest signal-to-noise ratio such that following this person maximizes your information/entertainment quota for your rapidly diminishing free time (NOTE: I'm referring to non-retirees here)?" One answer to this question is the decision algorithm provided in the following article: http://www.esarcasm.com/3687/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-a-twitter-guide/ Note that this would a wonderful tool to use in class, either in intro or in cognitive or any other class that focuses on decision-making, algorithmic vs. heuristic reasoning, and, perhaps, highlights some of the guiding values that people who use Twitter/Facebook/Socialnetworking systems have. NOTE: it helps to know who Amy Winehouse and Ashoton Kutcher are as well as knowing how strippers dress. Go and make productive use of these tools. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu P.S. I avoided asking the obvious question of who on Tips is on Twitter, Facebook, etc., in part, because I think that most Tipsters don't have the time to do Twitter (then again, perhaps they are tenured or retired and have given up doing anything productive with their lives). But, perhaps we can have a weekly "Tipster Most Likely to be on Twitter/Facebook/SocialNetworking/etc" feature like we have a "Tipster of the Week" (copyright M. Sylvester). On not. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
