The Social Dilemma

Over the weekend we watched the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma.” Through interviews with numerous individuals who helped design and implement these internet giants, the film looks at the effect that companies such as Facebook and Google have had over billions of people around the world. Interestingly, most of those interviewed have since left the companies they helped to found and/or fuel due to their concerns about the influence of these tech giants.

Interspersed between the interviews are two other “fictional” pieces. The first involves young teenagers who are obsessively linked to social media and their parents desperate to return them to civil society, and the second is a reenactment of how we might imagine the thought processes and machinations of the creators and drivers of these web giants. Both provide rather frightening images.

As the credits roll, the interviewees recommend taking the following countermeasures to protect oneself against social media (my thoughts are italicized below)

·        Turn off notifications or reduce the number of notifications you receive

·        Uninstall social media and news apps that are wasting time

·        Use a search engine that doesn't store search history

·        Use browser extensions to block recommendations

·        Fact-check before sharing

·        Obtain sources of information with different perspectives, including sources one might disagree with

·        Do not give devices to children (age limit is unclear); no screen time (does that include Sesame Street?).

·        Never accept recommended YouTube videos

·        Try to avoid any clickbait material (I am not sure what that is)

·        Keep devices out of the bedroom after a certain time (probably good advice for adults as well)

·        Do not allow social media use until children reach high school (not easy for sure)

 

Here is the cast list (in credits order):

	Tristan Harris		Self - Google, Former Design Ethicist / Center for Humane Society, Co-Founder
	Jeff Seibert		Self - Twitter, Former Executive / Serial Tech Entrepreneur
	Bailey Richardson		Self - Instagram, Early Team
	Joe Toscano		Self - Google, Former Experience Design Consultant / Author - Automating Humanity
	Sandy Parakilas		Self - Facebook, Former Operations Manager / Uber, Former Product Manager
	Guillaume Chaslot		Self - YouTube, Former Engineer / IntuitiveAI, CEO / AlgoTransparency, Founder
	Lynn Fox		Self - Apple, Former Director of Corporate PR / Google, Former Corporate Communications
	Aza Raskin		Self - Firefox & Mozilla Labs, Former Employee / Center for Humane Technology, Co-Founder / Inventor, Infinite Scroll
	Alex Roetter		Self - Twitter, Former Senior VP of Engineering
	Tim Kendall		Self - Facebook, Former Executive / Pinterest, Former President / Moment, CEO
	Justin Rosenstein		Self - Facebook, Former Engineer / Google, Former Engineer / Asana, Co-Founder
	Randy Fernando		Self - NVIDIA, Former Product Manager / Mindful Schools, Former Executive Director / Center for Humane Society, Co-Founder (as Randima 'Randy' Fernando)
	Jaron Lanier		Self - Founding Father of Virtual Reality / Computer Scientist
	Roger McNamee		Self - Facebook, Early Investor / Venture Capitalist
	Shoshana Zuboff		Self - Harvard Business School, Professor Emeritus / Author, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
	Anna Lembke		Self - Stanford University, School of Medicine, Medical Director of Addiction Medicine
	James Fetter		Self - Anna's Son (as James Lembke)
	Mary Fetter		Self - Anna's Daughter (as Mary Lembke)
	Jonathan Haidt		Self - NYU Stern School of Business, Social Psychologist / Author, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
	Cathy O'Neil		Self - Data Scientist / Author, Weapons of Math Destruction
	Rashida Richardson		Self - NYU School of Law, Adjunct Professor / A.I. Now Institute, Director of Policy Research
	Renee DiResta		Self - Stanford Internet Observatory, Research Manager / Data for Democracy, Former Head of Policy
	Cynthia M. Wong		Self - Human Rights Watch, Former Senior Internet Researcher

I cannot say I have yet shut down my Facebook account but I am thinking about it. Fortunately, in addition to the handful of people I “follow,” I primarily receive ads for clothing, and I try not to let that do too much damage to my credit card. Given that I barely leave the house these days, that is not so difficult.

Meanwhile, stay well!

Love,

Rebecca

You know you’ve been together a long time when…

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Ours, of course, was quiet, although we did manage to have a full family Zoom call, albeit a poor substitute for enjoying the day together. We did not have turkey but we had all the side dishes, including “stuffing” (made with challah, almonds, walnuts, celery, and vegetable stock), sweet potatoes mashed with maple syrup and a little sour cream, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

And speaking of being together, Barry and I now seem to be sharing dreams. He often has, and more importantly, remembers rather vivid dreams. I, on the other hand, rarely seem to remember whatever dreams I may have had. But for some reason on Friday night we both dreamt, and both of our dreams related to the same thing: travel. Despite travelling relatively infrequently over the years, Barry has had some trips that were definitely the stuff of nightmares. This time, he dreamt of struggling to finish packing and arranging a ride to the airport, and then missing a flight that, unbeknownst to him, had been rescheduled. I, unfortunately, cannot remember the details of my dream but I know it had to do with travel.

I wonder how much this has to do with the impending approval of vaccine(s) that may enable us to travel again in the foreseeable future. Of course, we recognize that it will still be some time before we and our extended family are actually able to be vaccinated, but at least it is seeming within the realm of possibility.

Meanwhile, stay safe and healthy. We keep trying to do the same.

Love,

Rebecca

I hope you will indulge me…

 

Dear readers, I hope you will indulge me by allowing me to share two very sweet images, both of which speak for themselves.

The first was taken on Friday morning. Dina posted it along with the note

Should we tell her the tooth fairy doesn't come to our house on Shabbat?!?

 

The second was posted by Dina after Shabbat.

 

We spent today talking about what the kids want for Chanukah.... And Noah said "I want a set of Nana and Sabba because I miss them" 

 

To say we miss him, too, would be an immeasurable understatement!

I hope these bring a smile to your faces.

Love,

Rebecca

 

Good news

 

This past Tuesday we headed over to the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Care. This facility opened at the beginning of this year. I may not agree with the late David H. Koch's politics, but I have to say that he enabled the construction of an incredibly beautiful building. 

You can see a short video of it at

https://www.mskcc.org/videos/take-look-inside-david-koch-center-cancer-care-msk-cancer

But I should not allow the chance to experience having my medical appointment in the lap of luxury cause me to forget the best message of the day, which came via communication on the MSKCC patient portal from the Nurse Practitioner who works with my oncologist, Dr. Gopa Iyer, 

The scan resulted and says unchanged and no evidence of metastatic disease. Dr. Iyer will review with you on Friday as well but just wanted to give you a heads up since it looked good.  

I am "scheduled" to speak with him at 1:00 pm but this is MSKCC so I know better...

Other than that good news, the last couple of days have been somewhat annoying. My laptop had been on its last legs for some time now and we finally broke down and bought a new one. But for reasons I cannot fully explain, there have been some problems getting things fully functioning. Right now, while I can access the internet, I basically have no software (Word, Excel, etc.) but fortunately I can do this post (which I usually do in Word and then copy into Blogger) as well as work crossword puzzles and play Lumosity games without those tools. Barry has been working with the support team at Dell and they told us to wait a couple of days before reloading the software. So we're giving it a Shabbat rest, so to speak.

Have a healthy and enjoyable weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

A legend passes

We just heard the sad, albeit not unexpected, news of the passing of Alex Trebek, who hosted more than 8,200 episodes of “Jeopardy!” over 37 seasons, the most by a presenter of any single TV game show. In March 2019, Mr. Trebek revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. While the show had been on hiatus due to the pandemic, it returned about six weeks ago without a studio audience and with the contestants standing quite a bit further apart on the redesigned set. We also noticed that nearly all of the recent contestants have been from California, presumably a reflection of travel difficulties and restrictions over these months. They have apparently recorded enough episodes to go into December, although it will surely be strange to watch these during the coming weeks.

And the Final Jeopardy question is…. who do we hope will rest in peace?

Love,

Rebecca

  

Incredible fireworks display

 

I meant to add video of the absolutely incredible fireworks display that took place over the skies of Wilmington, Delaware last night.

Simple words

Congratulations to President-Elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris! May they be blessed with good health and wisdom to help us remain a beacon of freedom and peace to the world and to become a more perfect union and a more United States of America.

Love,

Rebecca

 

Election updates

 

In early October I wrote about phone calls we had received from candidates for political offices in various cities. In particular, Cal Cunningham, a candidate for the US Senate from North Carolina, and Desiree Tims, a candidate for the US House of Representatives from Ohio, left messages on our voice mail. As I noted at the time, they were almost assuredly looking for a different Barry S. Rosenstein, the one who is described in Wikipedia as a “former billionaire hedge fund manager.”

When the phone rang and Ms. Tims’ name showed up on the caller ID a few days later, I picked up the phone and had a lovely chat with her, explaining that she had reached the wrong Barry Rosenstein. Afterwards, I made a small donation to her campaign. So, I thought I’d check and see how she fared. Turns out she lost her election to Mike Turner, who received 58.5% of the 356,332 total votes.

Cal Cunningham, Senate candidate from North Carolina, had a more complicated story. He had been in a fairly strong position until a few weeks before the election, when it was reported that he had engaged in an extramarital affair. Now, with 93% of precincts reporting, Mr. Cunningham has received 46.9% of the votes versus 48.7% for his opponent, Thom Tillis. The winner has yet to be finally determined.

We are, of course, still waiting to hear the results of the main election. Who knows when that will be?

Meanwhile, have a nice weekend, and stay safe and healthy!

Love,

Rebecca

 

Finally

 

These past seven or eight months have felt like years: so much news, so many changes for so many people. Whatever happens today and over the coming days or weeks that it may take to decisively determine the results of this election, I only pray that a valid and lawful decision will be made and will be accepted by the American people. That may well turn out to be an extremely tall order, one which I am not even sure that I can promise to meet. But we all have to try!

Stay safe and healthy!

Love,

Rebecca