An Introvert in a Wired World

Introverts are often fond of peace and quiet: so fond, in fact, that unnecessary noise can be downright intrusive. My standard pet peeves along these lines are TVs in airports. You can't get away from them except in the restrooms and airline lounges, which are not cheap.

Some gas stations now have TVs with advertisements blaring while you're pumping gas. Here's a clue that they know the practice is annoying: the only way to turn off the noise is to buy some gasoline. THEN the mute button works. In Orwell's 1984, the only way to turn off the telescreens was to become a senior political official.

Another gripe, since I'm on a roll here: relentless "social networking." The Yelp app on my iPhone is a decent service for locating businesses in any city, along with customer reviews. But in addition (the programmers are never at rest), they have a contact/texting feature so that you can communicate with your friends while looking for a particular business. To which my introverted mind is asking, "Why?"

Maybe I'm simple minded here, but I really don't NEED that. Yelp is the electronic version of the Yellow Pages. All well and good, but if I'm looking for a business, that's all I want to do.

I've been fighting these types of battles with the internet for years now. One of my first introvert-based reactions occurred when I installed one of the instant messaging (IM) apps on my PC. The default setting for the app is as follows:

• It activates as soon as you turn on your computer.
• It tells all of your friends that you are online.

So what happened multiple times was that if I didn't set my status to "busy" soon enough, an extrovert friend would ping me and want to chat right away when all I wanted to do was check my email (an asynchronous method of communicating that I initiate). When it became clear that the messaging services--AOL and MSN--were not wired for my type of behavior, I shut off one and uninstalled the other. If I want to have a real-time chat, I'll call you and talk on the phone.

The bottom line is that the internet is reducing the number of places and ways for introverts to get the space and privacy we need to function well. There are ways to push back without depriving yourself of human contact or useful gadgets, but you have to work at it. And maybe it would help to find some programmers who are willing to design applications with introverts in mind.

Something to think about.

Potpourri CXVI

The week's pile has gotten thick again, so 'twould best if it were done, that it be done quickly...

Another good find from Tracy on outreach. This article suggests that the problem with outreach isn't with audiences connected to the internet, but with the technologically and educationally underserved. Meanwhile, people who already have access to the web or decent education are likely to already be familiar with the state of space exploration, nanotechnology, or other developments. As Darlene the Science Cheerleader puts it, "the rich get richer." The trick seems to be to reach underserved audiences through nontraditional means.

Here's a slight way to participate in your space program...you can go to this site and select the design for a patch to commemorate the final Space Shuttle launch.

None of us is as dumb as all of us: One of my graphics buddies at NASA pointed out some artwork developed by guys who gathered surveys in several different countries, asking what types of art people liked, what subject matters, what colors, etc...and then also what types of art they didn't like. This is as close as one can get to art by polling data.

From my NASA PAO feed, a notice from Glenn Research Center that there's a competition for high school students to put an experiment on a "BalloonSat."

I got on this mailing list awhile back, and occasionally it comes up with useful stuff. Here's a blog on the effective use of Twitter as a communication/outreach/sales tool. Bottom-line question any organization should answer before jumping into this social networking technology is: "What are you trying to accomplish?" If you can't answer the question coherently, you're just following trends without analysis, and that's a Bad Thing.

I saw this posted by one of my technophile English major buddies, Rudy: it's called SIKULI, and it appears to be a graphic user interface (GUI) of sorts. There's a YouTube attached that speaks ins Programmerese, which is completely unintelligible to me. If it makes sense to you, congratulations. It's supposed to make YOUR life easier. For those of us struggling to remember what we named and how we filed a document, it's a little advanced.

From Douglas Mallette: an article on using carbon nanotubes to make batteries from fabrics. Cool!

The internet is now in space--the International Space Station, that is. What's next?

From Regina, an interesting do-it-yourself experiment in tea bag rocketry (political pundits, keep your nasty comments to yourselves).

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• An interesting article from Der Spiegel entitled "The World Bids Farewell to Obama." It's a summary of German perspectives on the Obama administration's future reaction to the Republican taking of the late Senator Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. I wouldn't count out Mr. Obama just yet. It's not that I'm rooting for him, it's just that anyone who can take down the Clinton machine is not someone to be taken lightly.
• A Financial Times article on the United Nations waiving the first deadline for meeting carbon emissions.
• The Times of London is reporting that a U.N. official is apologizing for saying Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

The Senate of New York is increasing the amount of legislative information available to the public on the internet.

The OpenNASA folks have a blog about "how little information is available via our agency-wide employee directory." The types of information that interest the writer (Jessy Cowan-Sharp) include "who you are, what you're working on, trades or skills, and side projects." Well, good luck getting anyone over 40 or so to fill in that type of information, my friend. Sometimes it's sensitive/classified, and sometimes the over-55 crowd at NASA doesn't take all that tag cloud stuff seriously, nor do they necessarily want to share the information.

NASA data suggests that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record.

I have some other stuff in my inbox, but I think I'll punt for now. Have a pleasant evening.

Potpourri CVII


My fellow (and much higher-profile) space blogger friend Jeff Foust has a great lineup of editorials today on The Space Review. Topics include:

• The potential impact of "ClimateGate" on NASA's scientific reputation.
• A good defense of the Ares I-X flight test and a plea for civility in the pro-space community.
• A discussion on safety and the Ares I crew launch vehicle based on Jeff's observations of the House subcommittee re: space safety last week.
• An editorial discussing other uses of the soon-to-be-happening suborbital spaceflight industry besides space tourism.

There's a Washington Post article on the environmental impact of rockets.

Speaking of the Washington Post, they wrote an article recently on a competition the Department of Defense created to see how social networking could be used to gather information. This is pretty wild.

This appears to be a clearing house page that provides links to a variety of astronomy-related blogs.

A Popular Mechanics reporter recently visited Marshall Space Flight Center and got access to a lot of the work the Ares Projects has been doing.

The White House is pushing for more math and science. Good. Where's the money coming from? Though I suppose one could ask the same thing about NASA, NSF, and the rest of the stimulus. Hate it when my conservative spending habits get in the way of my scientific/space habits.