Social Hacking

No, I have not died.. (yes, I got that question). The reason why I don't update my blog is that I simply don't have time to write. As soon as I get some more free time I will update this blog more frequently.
Anyhow, I will write a little more this time...
So this weekend I ran the Cologne (Köln) Marathon. For you who don't know, a marathon involves running 42 km or 27.1 miles. I completed the race in 3 hours and 53 minutes, which means that I had a lot of time to think.
The main thing that I distracted myself with was to think about how the human body handles pain. After 41 km, my legs were really stiff and my brain told me to just stop. However, I was still able to continue and even run faster the last kilometer. The interesting thing about this is that even though our brain tells us that we should not be able to do something, our body can still go through with it. However, the next day it was quite clear that I should have listened to my brain since my whole body was aching.
The same thing (not as interesting though) can be applied to when our brain tells us that we are thirsty. We do not have to drink, however, if we ignore it long enough we will surely die.
In some way we humans can affect these signals that our brain gives us and to some degree choose to ignore them. So my next though was; what would happen if we were able to completely turn of these signals? This could be compared with turning of our basic survival instincts. If it would be possible we would probably die pretty quickly because we would forget to eat or drink.
In the marathon running case, without any signals from my brain, I would probably have been able to finish the race in a better time. I come to this conclusion because I was still able to walk after the race, if I had used all my energy I would not have been able to stand. However, a more realistic conclusion would be that I'd died before the end of the race since if I was able to use all my energy without restrictions, my heart would not have the energy to beat.

I am currently on the bus on my way home from school. It's 11.30 PM and the bus is almost empty. I usually listen to my mp3-player during the ride home, however, today I forgot it at home. The reason why I started writing this post is the girl who is sitting a couple of rows behind me. She is talking really loud on her cellphone and without trying I can hear every word she is saying. There are a few things that I started to think about.
Withing the first minute I knew her name (only first name), where she lived, and where she went to school. Just this information can be used in many ways as a social hacker. It also reminded me about one of my favorite quotes: The quieter you become the more you can hear. I got all this information without even asking for it.
Another thing that was interesting was how she was talking in the phone. She talk just like the person on the other line was sitting in front of her. She was shaking her head when she did not agree and making gestures with her hands. I have seen this many times and I am probably a victim of it myself. Body language is something that we use sub-consciously. Somehow we don't need the confirmation of someone standing in front of us to start using body language. This also shows how important it is to pay attentional to someones body language because it could provide us with information that we otherwise would not get.
The last thing that caught my attention was what the conversation was about. It was between her and one of her friends. In short they were talking about a guy that she somehow knew and maybe liked. The interesting thing was the mind games that she was playing with this guy. She tried to figure out if this guy liked her by for example seeing how long it took for him to call her a second time. Then she had tried to reject him just to see how much he was willing to put into their relationship. She had all these unwritten rules and ideas about what people to when they like each other. That is another interesting topic that I will talk about another time. Now I need to get some sleep. Good night!

We talked a little more about unnecessary content in written text today in my language technology class. We looked statistics from written Swedish. It turns out that you can remove 67% of the words and still understand the meaning. Insert conclusion here.
What is important to realize though, is that this extra information does help us when we talk. So in a optimized language you might have to differ written from spoken text.

Over to something new that I have put some though into; prejudgment. I have been trying to advice people to be less judging when meeting new people and in other social situations (conflicts?). However, I have also realized that we will never be able to not judge people. Prejudice comes subconsciously. The only way to not judge someone is to know everything and do you know anyone who is all knowing? (besides God or Santa or whomever you believe in). We all live in our small bubbles. No matter how much you explore or learn, you will only make your bubble a little bigger but never pierce it (nice metaphor?). However, what we can do is hold back our prejudice, try not to act upon it.
Try to consider how prejudgment affects the decisions of others. One easy example is when getting a bank loan. Does wearing a suit improve your chances of getting the loan?

It's been a long week, too long.. but it's been interesting. I am currently taking a course that is called språkteknologi (language-technology) where we analyze the Swedish language. We look at spelling, grammar, and such. However, the interesting part is what makes this so hard.
You have probably used Word's spellcheck (or openoffice) and one can quickly realize that it's not very good. Well it has gotten a lot better during the last years but it still has a long way to go. The correction of spelling of single words is actually quite good, but looking at spelling in a context it's still bad. For example if I write “where” instead of “were” the spell check wouldn't complain. So the social hacking point I wanted to make out of this is all the unnecessary information we use when we speak. This information makes it harder for the spell check and does not really add any value to the text.
Someone could argue that these extra words give the text or speak extra volume, or makes it easier to understand. However, I believe that the world would be a better place without all these synonyms and litter in our speech and writing.
Let me give an example: We have the sentence: “I am going to the store.” Wouldn't you be able to understand me if I just said “me go store”?.
By only changing the order of the words I could make it into a question: "go me store" ("Should I go to the store?")
English might be the best language to make optimal.

However, as a good social hacker you need to be able to handle your language. You need to be able to express yourself both in text and speech. For now it does not look like there ever even is going to be an attempt of making a optimal. But wouldn't it be nice?

Random side note; the spell checker marked “spellcheck” as misspelled, it wants to change it to “spell check”, even though it says “Spellcheck..” in the tools menu.

Time to finally start writing again then. I have gotten a couple of really nice mail msgs from people who have tried to encourage me to start writing again. So, thanks to them (and my will to write?), I will now continue my exploration (struggle..?) to conquer the human mind.
I have talked about changing my blogging style a few times before and this is what I will do right now: Instead of long lessons like I have done previously I will keep my entries short and hopefully more frequent. The reason for this is that I don't have the time to sit down and write these long lessons anymore. This means that the this blog will probably take a more philosophical direction (yes, it's possible).
I will also talk about, what I consider to be, more random things. For example: My definition of “Social Hacking” was taken off wikipedia the other day. The reason that was listed was that I only used the term hacking to generate traffic to my homepage. Think whatever you like, but I think that social hacking should different from social engineering.
To the first actual social hacking thing of this.. season (?) (if you don't like my writing style complain!). I would like to focus on personal improvement in social terms. You need to know what you would like to be better at to improve. It is also more fun if you think about your current abilities and then see improvement. So I'll start of with myself. I would like to be less afraid of doing things that might put me in awkward positions. I am talking about calling people, holding lectures, and such (yes, I have problems with talking to unknown people over the phone). I would like to be improve my vocabulary (won't happen). Lastly, I would like to be better at keeping in touch with people.
So, there is my list, have you got yours?

As always, I really like to get comments. Good or bad doesn't matter, just tell me exactly what you think.

Lastly I have to mention that I won't spend as much time with every post as I did before. This means that the spelling and grammar will be worse than before. If I take it too far; please tell me.

Good night for now..