Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Assistant Vice President for Partnerships in Strategic Defense Innnovation and Professor of Communication at Purdue University, Director of the FORCES initiative leads research teams that study the relationship between technological and social systems using big data, simulation, and mapping approaches. He published papers and articles in Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Information Society, National Interest, and Foreign Policy. He is the author or co-editor of several books. The most recent is Structural differentation in social media. He also co-edited Ethical Reasoning in Big Data,Transparency in social media and Roles, Trust, and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets: Theory and Methods (Computational Social Sciences) , all three the product of the NSF funded KredibleNet project. Dr. Matei's teaching portfolio includes technology and strategy, online interaction, and digital media analytics classes. A former BBC World Service journalist, his contributions have been published in Esquire and several leading Romanian newspapers. In Romania, he is known for his books Boierii Mintii (The Mind Boyars), Idolii forului (Idols of the forum), and Idei de schimb (Spare ideas).
The more data we generate about a target population, the harder to protect the privacy of the individuals surveyed. Sensitive information can be inferred most of the time if we have multiple data points or collection procedures for the same individual. For…
[tminus t=”14-03-2015 21:26:53″/] Today is 3/14/15 and at 9:26:53 the date/time corresponds with the first 10 digits of the famous number. The value is, as it is known, indeterminate, as the diameter of the circle does not fit neatly in its circumference.…
You probably knew that the Internet is inherently unsecure. And you probably knew that 80% of email is spam. But did you know that any appliance that is connected to the net and is running some sort of OS, can be taken…
“It’s theoretical” or “it’s soooo theoretical” or “this is just theory”… Theory and knowledge sought for their own sake are often seen as less than real, not quite true, and a waste of time. Considering the past of human knowledge adventure, which is…
If New York City never lacked for something, those are the immensely talented, greatly gifted writers, whose words flow from the keyboards like milk and honey and whose voices whisper in your ear things no one wants to pay attention to. There…
View image | gettyimages.com At approximately 17:15, January 9, the police assaulted the Dammartin-en-Goële printing shop where the two brothers were holed up. They were both killed and their hostage freed according to AP. At the same time, the police assaulted a…
The two brothers allegedly responsible for the killing of 12 people in a deadly attack against the editorial team of the satyric magazine Charlie Hebdo are holed down and surrounded in a printing plant in Dammartin en Goelle, 25 miles north east…
The first major publication of the KredibleNet project is out. The volume Roles, Trust, and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets: Theory and Methods discusses the emerging trends in defining, measuring, and operationalizing reputation as a new and essential component of the…
Google Maps just got the right to publish its “street view” of the roads surrounding the Great Pyramids of Giza, in Egypt. This means that you can walk around seeing the sights in near 3d format… View Giza PYRAMIDS IN STREET VIEW…
Agree or disagree? The Value of Admitting What We Don’t Know – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Educationhttp://chronicle.com/article/The-Value-of-Admitting-What-We/147983/All dialects are equal linguistically, in that they are regular, rule-governed, and just as effective at communicating as is standard English. They are not,…
Articles published in the same journals, resubmitted for review. Almost 1 in 10 articles rejected by 9 out of 10 reviewers. Only 8% o the editors recognized the re-submission… Cambridge Journals Online – Behavioral and Brain Sciences – Abstract – Peer-review practices…
Most important highlights of the latest Pew Internet Study – 18-24 year olds compared to 30 year olds are almost twice as likely to have smartphones 20% less likely to read newspapers 100% more likely to use Twitter Younger Americans’ Reading Habits…
There is much talk nowadays about the “wise crowds” that automagically emerge on social media to democratically decide what is news or what is knowledge. Some believe that the Internet creates a liberating “crowd edited” source of information. Some take the idea with…
I tried to watch the Apple launch with my Purdue Polytech students to show them how to introduce a product with a livcast… What we got out of the experience was how not to sell a product with an online livecast. First off,…
The next revolution in the digital world will not be on a desktop or in your pocket. It will be in your car… Maybe… The rise of the “connected” car. This is the coming together of communications technologies, information systems and safety…
This article claims that car thieves prefer American cars in Indiana. Absent a very important piece of information, this is a spurious claim. Why? On the Indiana list, the top spot — for the fifth straight year —belonged to full-size Chevrolet pickup…
Great art relies on the technique of the missing element, which your mind completes or puts into motion. The knife plunging behind the shower curtain in Psycho is probably the best example. You infer the horror in your head, thinking of what…
An awesome collection of “technology demystified” videos from the digital living magazine, Wired… Emphasis on special effects…
Dorothea Lange is a wonderful classic photographer just as talented as Ansel Adams. She criss crossed the United States during the 1930s documenting the poverty of the Depression in the rural South and California. Her migrant pictures are the visual companion of Steinbeck’s Fruits…
Do you only have the ASIN of your product. Enter the ID (ASIN) of the product and hit GO… A Short URL will be generated immediately…
An update from the Nieman Journalism Lab While high-level speculation continues on the future of news and information, research studies are providing a more under-the-hood look at the practices of journalists, outlets, and the digital networks in which they operate. Here’s a recent…
The preference of some Chinese sites to use numbers over letters in their domain names has something to do, as you might imagine, with the complexity of translating Chinese characters into latin characters. There is, however, a little bit more to it than…
In the enthusiasm for digital publishing and e-ink devices, such as the Kindle, the relative advantages of using old fashioned paper books has been lost. While there is nothing magical about paper, the tangible, physical object that is a book creates a…
Zuckerberg’s silly slogan “stay focused and keep shipping” was never more childishly immitative of the digital “big boys” (whoever those might be) swagger and style… Facebook […] has introduced and eliminated different designs and focal points of activity so many times over…
If the latest trendy phrase in cybersphere, Social Physics, should refer to anything, that should be an emergent social scientific approach to characterizing social systems as if they were particle aggregates, each component unit moving according to laws dictated by their intrinsic…
Big data is seen by many as a panacea, while many are skeptical of its ability to solve our most pressing problems. What is the real problem with big data? Blind empiricism. All…
Failure is a gift from the gods, who want us to earn the privilege of success. Yet, those that fail too many times the first time they try something should change their approach. They should consider the following suggestions: You have no…
Lethally funny mock-ups of newspaper front pages inspired by the Game of Throne series. Humor and parody at its best. http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/if-the-media-reported-the-events-of-game-of-thrones [amazon template=banner easy&chan=default&asin=0345535529,B00C8CQTJY]
Ronald Burt, a pioneer in the field of network analysis and inventor of the “structural hole” concept, published in 2005 a seminal book that finalizes the conversation about the nature of social capital, which he defines, a la Coleman, as the capacity…
The location of flight MH370 sinking is under dispute, but in the last few days of March 2014 the search focused around an area the size of Alaska about 1400 miles west of Perth, Australia. Yet, despite much debate and hypothesizing, the…
The extent of the ice cap in 2014 was not much larger than the mean for the last 30 years, despite a long, bitter winter in North America. Surface-wise was only 1 standard deviation under the mean for the past 30 years.…
Australian rescue authorities boosted worldwide hopes that MH370 will be eventually found announcing that some debris was identified on FOUR DAYS OLD satellite pictures in an area off the west coast of Australia over Naturaliste Plateau, much further south to the last known…
A credible sighting verified from several sources in Maldive Islands of a large jumbo jet crossing the Indian Ocean at low altitude where no jets usually come might shed a possible light on the ultimate fate of…
A sea debris field at 5°39’08.0″N 98°50’38.0″E north of the tiny granite outcropping Pulau Perak is being examined on the crowdsourced site TomNod as a potential location for the crash of lost flight MH370. The debris field was reported by a Twitter…
The origin of dark color in human skin is strongly connected to our African roots. However, it is puzzling how different we are from the great apes… SHAVE a chimpanzee and you will find that beneath its hairy coat its skin is…
The map below and the KMZ file of Lost Flight MH370 , summarize in real time the story of the search and hopefully eventual finding of lost flight MH370. Come back often or bookmark this page to get the latest geographic news. Or…
The disappearance of flight MH370 two hours into its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 continues to baffle the world. Objects spotted in the water by the Vietnamese navy at the closing of the day on March 9, could…
LATEST UPDATES ON MH370 DISAPPEARANCE KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – MARCH 09: Malaysian Air Force Chief Tan Ssri Rozali briefs the media about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on March 9, 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing…
It should be no secret to anyone that Chavez’s populist campaigns ruined the economy by spending money it did not have. Inflation is always the result of spending more than you make. One year ago, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the death…
While the news flow focuses on what the US or EU leaders did or did not do to prevent the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the crisis suddenly deepened with the Crimean Parliament’s announcement that this autonomous province of Ukraine will join the Russian Federation.…
The great lakes are about the beat the 1973 record of winter time ice coverage. Currently over 91% of lake surface is frozen solid, only 3% under the 1973 record. The record might be beat, however, as the cold pattern might continue…
This writing aid is AWESOME… Finally, a writing coach with a brain…. AI at its best (and simplest)… This writing support app shows you where to trim the fat and where to drop in those strong verbs. The algorithm for smart editing…
A balanced view on net neutrality… To make sure consumers benefit, we need to solve the network capacity problem. Yes, we need to ensure broadband providers can’t do something nefarious to kill off new services. But we also need to ensure content…
The brunt of the big winter storm of February 04-08 2014 will fall on upstate New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Chicago, northern Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania will also be significantly affected. This storm should be watched carefully. The map…
New York Times reports that a successful YouTube broadcaster with 1,000,000 subscribers to multiple channels, who posts at least 20 new video segments a week may expect a little bit more than 100,000 dollars a year in revenue. This is about $10…
A redditor atrubetskoy cobbled together this map of amount of snow needed to trigger school cancellations. Green – Any amount of snow is reason for school cancellation…. Methodology described here
A new concept, practice capital, which extends the concept of social capital to collaborative projects is proposed in my chapter to the upcoming volume on the research significance of the C-Span Video Archive. I should mention that the archive is hosted in…
Who am I, when I am online? Why to I do the things I do? Who suffers? Who is right and who is wrong? This classic essay preceding the Internet is absolutely fascinating and oh, so well written…. They say…
Systematic migration is defined in the study as “coordinated” migration in these terms: We formally define a coordinated migration as the movement of population from a hometown h to its most likely current city c(h) such that: At least 100 users have listed city h as their hometown.…
Why I will not buy another Android phone anytime soon… The opinion of this programmer is worth his weight in gold.
Do you buy into this explanation? Xbox effect: Dinner bells that summoned children from the great outdoors have long gone silent, and youths and young adults are spending more time on indoor pursuits involving high-definition TVs, gaming consoles and computers. That,…
One of the most daring attempts to restore the industrial era as a heaven for post-modern architecture. A cement factory was turned by this imaginative architect into a post-post-apocalyptic Hogwarts. The author: Ricardo Bofill. In 1973 Ricardo Bofill found a disused cement…
This is the modest, “it just works” Samsung TV the your mom always wanted in her bedroom. Crisp image, great controls, no fuss… Bestseller on Amazon.com I would get it today for my mom if she wasn’t so far away.