What Can’t you Live Without?

Facebook is more important than having a flushing toilet. That’s the finding of a survey by London’s Science Museum. It asked 3,000 adults what things they couldn't live without. Facebook came in 5th while a toilet ranked 9th. The winner was sunshine, followed by being on the internet, clean drinking water and a refrigerator.

The tools of the digital made a strong showing. Email was 8th and possessing a mobile phone 10th. Google came in at 22, Ipods at 37, Computer spell-checks claimed the 41st spot and the last position went to Twitter. The Wii and Xbox made the list as well.

The point of the survey was to show that many people do not have access to fresh water.

The survey indicates just how much the essential things in life are taken for granted, such as water and fresh food, which so many millions struggle to find everyday to survive.

Another way to approach the question: If your house were about to burn down, what would you grab on your way out the door? And why?

See the complete list here.


Stephen Goforth

Flash Mobs

You’re walking through New York’s Union Square when thousands of people suddenly begin plummeting each other with pillows. This yearly tradition is part of a global fad known as flash mobs. Groups gather through social networking at a particular location. They may stop and remain still for one minute, offer synchronized applause or create some other harmless disturbance.

The man who started this phenomenon was Bill Wasik. He’s written a book called And Then There’s This.

Wasik suggests that our new internet world is moving at such a rapid pace we are wasting our lives on the trivial. We must “feed the beast” with our texting, blogging, twittering and emailing. Never able to pause without falling behind, we begin to “seize upon these tiny little things and try to elevate them into sensations but of course they can't bear up under the weight of it.. the challenge is to try to find ways to partially unplug ourselves. To carve out spaces in our lives away from information. Away from the sort of constant buzzing of the hive mind.”

Read more in a Salon interview with Wasik.

Stephen Goforth

Birds of a Feather

Two students in an MIT ethics and law class created a program that predicts whether someone is gay based only on their friend connections on Facebook. Our inner circle in some way defines us. If all your friends are over 30, you’re probably not a teenager. If all your friends attend similar churches or belong to the same political party, then you probably belong to the same religion or share the same political views.

A professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, discovered accurate predictions could be make about political affiliation based on music and group membership. But he also found just using Facebook friendship connections could also provide reliable results.

While it’s nothing new to predict who might be a terrorist, depressed or taking drugs by looking at who they hang around, only recently has so much information become available to make so many of those connections for so many people.

If social networks reveal who we are, then someone's personal information can be inadvertently shared online without realizing it. It highlights the risks of living online. Especially when potentially everything you ever do on the Internet will live forever.

Stephen Goforth

Stretching Your Head

"Becoming involved in new things and keeping your brain active are all hallmarks of activities that would tend to preserve your cognitive skills. And these are all things that searching the Internet for new information really does.”

Neuroscientist Susan Bookheimer in an interview with National Geographic News about a study that appears to validate the view that seeking out new ideas and interests helps to keep the brain stimulated and healthy. UCLA researchers found after two weeks of using Internet search engines, brain scans showed increased blood flow in areas involved in decision-making and short-term memory.

Stephen Goforth