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).
From The New York Times – MEDIA DECODER BLOG An organization formed by Congress to market the United States to international travelers is moving ahead under a new name. They need to know about http://alterpode.com
From The New York Times: CULTURE AND CONTROL: Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper “Murong Xuecun, a popular Chinese novelist, often runs afoul of censors, which has pushed him to become a vocal critic of censorship in China and…
Amazon’s investment in the new Kindle Fire, which includes almost free access to books that it bought on its own dime, seems to be for the long haul, which although a surprise, might or might not work. “Amazon is giving away books,…
Ai Weiwei, whose artistic vision partially inspired the iconic “bird’s nest” stadium, which changed the image of Beijing from a cookie cutter apartment building factory to an emerging world metropolis , has also been known for his vocal opposition to official Chinese…
The El Hierro volcano of the Spanish Canary Island Archipelago has started bubbling again, this time under the sea. The locals have discovered with amazement that their turquoise sea has turned dirty green and bubbling like a jacuzzi. The sad part is…
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current events I am sitting in a wooden hut in a forest clearing near Tusnad, aware of a distinct tingling in a delicate area – the part of my body that touches the plank forming a seat. It’s…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesReal problem are the homophily assumptions built in the selection filters (birds of a feather ought to flock together), not the filter themselves. What prevents us from creating filters that promote heterogeneity? “Eli Pariser…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies MANY mocked, but the money rolled in.Via www.economist.com
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current events“Researchers have discovered an underworld of genetic exchange among bacteria, one more vast than previously imagined.” Bacteria exchange genes to create superbugs, sometimes at very great distances. According to Wired Mag “A comparison of thousands of bacterial…
A list of principles for designing on-line communities created by Dr. Sorin A. Matei and his students registered in various versions of the Online Interaction Graduate Seminar at Purdue University Online / virtual community design principles Design guidelines are not guarantees. Many are necessary for…
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and Society Astronomers suggest that artificial illumination creates a signature that could point to the existence of civilizations on other worlds — and they say we should get started on a survey of…
This is the title of the opening theoretical chapter of Francesca Comunello’s edited book “Networked Sociability and Individualism: Technology for Personal and Professional Relationships“. The chapter is the product of my collaboration with my former PhD student, Robert Bruno, now Assistant Professor…
Gaddafi’s hometown and loyal city Sirt has fallen to the rebel forces and Gaddafi was killed after being gravely wounded while trying to escape in a convoy. Death is confirmed by this cell phone image and by the Al Jezeera video below.…
“It’s staggering to contemplate how much the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs understood about modern America that those who govern it still don’t.” Steve Jobs was a master at simultaneously goading our sense of individuality and fueling our yearning for community (a topic…
At $199, the color Kindle Fire is less than half the price of the Apple iPad. It’s browser Silk, partly living in the cloud, is very fast and turns the device in something like a phone tethered to a very clear set…
UPDATE: Gaddafi was shot and killed on October 20 in Sirt. See Gaddafi killing video and map. The news from Tripoli, Libya is not good. Mass graves of over 1000 prisoners killed in cold blood 15 years ago are uncovered around the…
A quiet, almost rural street in Monroe, Michigan (about 35 miles south west of Detroit) was rocked by a violent explosion on Tuesday, September 20th, around 5PM. The explosion damaged a car and injured a lawyer and his two sons. Early results…
Authors: Sorin Adam Matei, Eric Kansa, Nicholas Rauh. Abstract: The paper presents a platform for supporting academic collaboration and publishing created by flexibly linking Visible Past, a web collaboration and digital-print publishing with Open Context, a geo-historical data archiving and publishing service.…
Marc Smith, cyber sociologist, product developer, Connected Action Chief Scientist, and leader of the Social Media foundation will visit the West Lafayette Purdue campus between September 22-23 and will give a talk about one of his most important projects, NodeXL, on Thursday,…
A P-51 Mustang WWII plane nicknamed “Galloping Ghost” piloted by Jimmy Leeward (74) crashed in the stands of an air show at Reno-Stead airport, Nevada on September 16, 2011. There were 11 known dead and over 50 wounded. Reno Nevada Ari Crash…
Image by wolfgang.wedenig via Flickr The patent claims that a belt connecting to a network device “creates a sensation for a user similar to having guests in a remote location to be physically present as virtual guests,” allowing people to “concurrently experience the…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign Affairs Let us talk about the best tools, books, tricks and ideas for building online communities and fostering online interaction that is meaningful for people everywhere.Show original
Abdel Majid Mlegta is the man who single handedly turned the siege of Tripoli by the rebel forces from a stalemate into a quick, over night victory. Operation Dawn Mermaid, a joint operation of rebel forces on the ground and NATO bombing…
Image by Joshua Kaufman via Flickr About 1/4 of Americans use some sort of mapping or location based information service via mobile. This includes mapping and location aware services alike. Only a small proportion, @ 4% of adults, use services such as…
Reuters reports that a large Libyan army convoy arrived on Monday in Agadez, Niger. The troops were until recently part of the southern Libyan military contingent. Local authorities claim that Gaddafi might be somewhere close and is also considering joining his troops…
A very bright and concise way of explaining the economic implications of the peer-review process Open science, Freedom of Information and the Big Journal monopoly | by Martin Robbins @mjrobbins | Science | guardian.co.uk Peer-review is a privatized industry in which public…
Humankind’s most ambitious science projects. Space station – 2.3 billion to run, 4.5 billion to build Hadron collider – 1.2 billion to run, 7.8 billion to build Ion collider – 160 million to run, 671 million to build
Hormones turn nursing mothers into fearless fighters with low blood pressure and calculating minds… Husbands, stay away… Scientists studied nearly 60 women, a third of whom were breast-feeding, a third who were bottle-feeding and a third who did not have children. Each…
88 percent of women, versus 84 percent of men appreciate their college education… Apud Resource Shelf and Pew Internet. Half of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the U.S. higher education system excellent or good marks for the…
ESRI has published a very nice map that shows Irene’s impact as captured in Flickr photos, Youtube clips, and tweets. If you get over the clutter at lower levels of resolution, it looks like a very nice idea. For some years ESRI…
Irene might’ve not destroyed the Manhattan skyscrapers with over 100 mph winds and 10 foot high tide surges, as some Godzilla-meets-King Kong extreme weather scenario aficionados dreamed, but it did do a lot of damage in the coastal areas of many seabord…
Irene landed in the New York metropolitan area with less force than expected but it still carried a punch. Various areas of the city were flooded, from Battery Park, to Hoboken and parts of Long Island. Manhattan took the hit, however, in…
Update: Sandy related map and article Pictures of Irene flooding in Manhattan Irene has made its first landfall last night in North Carolina at a weaker than expected intensity 1. As the cone of probable impact covers much of New York…
UPDATE: NYC Evacuation and Hurricane Irene Possible Landfall Map NOAA predicts that even if it remains an intensity 1 or 2, hurricane Irene might flood a good part of lower Manhattan, including Battery Park and Ground Zero (World Trade Center). The later,…
The Libyan Civil War battle for Tripoli continued on August 23. Gaddafi loyalist troops were reduced to smaller pockets around or near the former center of power. A dangerous situation has developed around Rixos Hotel, which has been occupied by Gaddafi’s elite…
One of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif, was seen by the CCN correspondent Matthew Chance in person at Rixos Hotel, despite rebel claims that he had been captured on Sunday, August 20, 2011. And he has the picture to prove it… MSNBC reports about…
Since the beginning of the libyan rebellion, the foreign press has been forced to stay at the Rixos hotel, in Tripoli, not far away from Gaddafi’s residence and headquarters, at Bab al Aziza (See map below for details). Until recently, the hotel…
The girl walks down the street defiantly, clutching her shawl. Young, and not so young, men stare, catcall, and grab their crotch. The place is Florence, the year is 1951, the photographer Ruth Orkin, and the mood is of budding feminism fighting…
The federal gas tax, which amounts to about 18.4 cents a gallon, is set to expire and it needs a special act of Congress to be renewed. The tax was created to fund the Federal Highway Administration and to maintain the inter-state…
MSNBC opines that the recent massive stock sell-off reflects the panic that dominates the small investor scene. If truly irrational move, this panic might indicate that this is also a good time to invest. Thursday’s big sell-off, which saw the Dow Jones…
“Flash mob” phenomena, which were heralded early in the day as a harbinger of a new civic spirit, have been subverted by some nefarious minds and are used for committing criminal acts. A “flash mob” is a group of people who do…
Japan tried desperately to pump billions upon billions of yen into its economy during the 1990 to jump start an economy ailing after a terrible real estate bubble that popped at the end of the 1980s. Twenty years later, Japan has a…
An US intelligence official confirmed to Financial Times that Pakistan shared with China samples of material and photographs of the US stealth helicopter that crashed during the raid on Osama bin Laden. The helicopter seems to be engineered to avoid radar detection.…
Via Scoop.it – Media convergence“[Our] results suggest that processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology. Just as we learn through transactive memory who knows what in our families and offices, we are learning what…
Iceland surprised the world when it announced that it will include in the draft of its new constitution suggestions made by the citizenry via social media. A website and a special Facebook page were used as main means for collecting public input. The…
QR codes, which are a type of barcodes that can call up multimedia on cell phones (see Around the World in 80 Days example to the right), are now embraced by the art world. The MOMA art exhibit ““Talk to Me: Design…
A recent high speed Chinese train crash in Wenzhou highlighted the inequities ordinary Chinese face in everyday life. The actor Ge You comments poetically on the neglect with which the victims were treated: “If a higher-level leader died,” he wrote, “there would…
Air Canada AC34 reported a fire in the galley shortly after take off, on July 28th. The airplane dumped most of its fuel before it landed back safely in Sydney. Partial flight path, as reported by flightdata24.
An Air Canada Aircraft on its way from Sydney, Australia to Vancouver and Toronto had to interrupt its flight and dump its fuel over Hornsby, Sydney due to a fire on board that could not be contained immediately. The fire seems to…
China announced in a semi-official way that it has two aircraft carriers under construction in Shanghai. This is a surprising piece of news since the two new ships seem to be in addition to the “Shi Lang,” which is under refitting in…
The first surprise is that for the past two years 3D movies earned over half of box office revenues. Yet the technology dissappints. My son said it the best: “There was only one scene in Captain America that deserved to be shot…
If convicted, Anders Behring Breivik, the Norvegian accused of killing over 70 adolescents and adults in a series of terrorist attactk, will probably serve a limited sentence (20-30 years) term. He might even end up in Halden prison, where the inmates cook…
Taking a page from McLuhan, who charged modern electronic media with not leaving anything to imagination, Roger Ebert lays it all out for you when it comes to his distaste of 3D movies. They aim to make that which was supposed to…