The rise of social networks, telecom providers, and monolithic information companies are built on an outdated value system. Clients are deceived into believing that they need the business to communicate with friends, family or to discover new folks to share ideas with.

The major information and telecom companies are racing to capture not only our address books, but all the analytics they can about individual and aggregate user behavior, in order to lock clients into their products and platform. This deep intelligence advantage acts as a virtual moat against potential competitors.

Data Discrimination

Group action can and will force businesses to change. A coordinated effort to cancel phone and data plans will drive telecom to deliver the cheapest bit independent of the color of data. Alternative free social platforms (open source) which are defined by protocols and interfaces, not by corporate boundaries, will drive competition in a different direction.

Where businesses can provide value is with software that improves the experience of communicating, by filtering spam and delivering timely high quality suggestions. Corporations can build more effective devices which act as mobile network hubs. The rise of ad hoc networks will eventually encapsulate and eclipse legacy client server hierarchies.

We will no longer be on the Internet, we’ll be the Internet.

Notes:

• Wireless ranges would gap fill far better than current wifi range. Broader bandwidths will allow for long range independent connectivity, which is required for full coverage.

The following is the introduction of the letter from Dylan to Google:

Dear Google,

I would like to bring to your attention a few things before I disconnect permanently from all of your services.

On July 15 2011 you turned off my entire Google account. You had absolutely no reason to do this, despite your automated message telling me your system “perceived a violation.” I did not violate any Terms of Service, either Google’s or account specific ToS, and your refusal to provide me with any proof otherwise makes me absolutely certain of this. And I would like to bring to your attention how much damage your carelessness has done.

My Google account was tied to nearly every product Google has developed, meaning that I lost everything in those accounts as well. I was also in the process of consolidating everything into my one Google account.
…
Why anyone would entrust anything to “The Cloud” after what I have gone through is completely beyond my ability to comprehend.
source

The author (if he is Dylan M.) goes on to describe the enormous dependence they have on Google products including contacts, synched bookmarks, docs, email, and reader, as well as how they migrated companies they worked for towards Google services and convinced friends to create Google accounts.

A worst case scenario is painted about account loss. Well it’s not quite a worst case scenario, at least the company doesn’t free up that identity for reuse immediately. Imagine having your accounts deleted and someone else legitimately receiving all email intended for your eyes only faster than you can hunt down and change all your contact information on dozens of services. That would suck, and I’m confident Google doesn’t re-release identities that quickly. If or when they ever do, it’s certainly not instant.

The Face of Google does damage control on Hacker News

Matt Cutts is a genuinely nice human being that I think of as the number one PR guy of Google even though that’s technically not his job (he wages a war against web spam and promotes search quality). It’s difficult not to like his relentlessly positive demeanor¹. In fact in the years I’ve been following Matt, the only time I remember even slight frustration in his writing or voice was when he talked with a representative from Bing search over copying Google’s results, and even then Matt was pretty calm.

To get a sense of community reactions to account locking, let’s turn to HackerNews (Reddit is another great source of feedback):

endersion
1 day ago | link

Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the termination of this individuals account, he still brings to light some very valid concerns.

I’ll quote terryb088 from reddit in saying, ‘The whole “cloud computing” model that companies like Google are pushing requires that we place good faith in the companies that provide these services. In my opinion good faith runs both ways, and any suspension of services needs to have a channel for dispute and resolution.’

The bottom line is, with so much of our personal information and other material invested in Google and its services, the opportunity to appeal (much less be given a reason for) account termination should always be available. It speaks volumes of Google’s attitude towards its users that there is not such an avenue already provided.

the discussion

Matt_Cutts
2 days ago | link | parent | flag

I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I’m sorry that I can’t go into more detail.

jellicle 1
day ago | link

Cutts, Google still doesn’t understand the problem here.

Let’s say I decide I have to break up with my live-in girlfriend, for good and sufficient reason. Perhaps she banged my three best friends, perhaps she literally killed my dog with an axe. Doesn’t matter – I have my reasons. I break up with her. I still have to give her back her stuff from my apartment. If I don’t do so, I’m committing a separate offense of my own. I lose the moral high ground.

Maybe something has to be worked out – maybe a friend of hers has to come over and get it, maybe I put her shit in boxes out on the porch.

Whatever. I still have to give her back her stuff. The courts agree, public opinion agrees, the police agree. Whatever she did, no matter how egregious the violation, my swiping her stuff is FUCKING FROWNED UPON and is not justified by whatever harm she did to me.

Google demonstrates no knowledge of this legal and social norm. That’s what is pissing people off. Implement a system to let people download their data from closed accounts and you can delete accounts with no explanation all day long.

Stealing people’s data – regardless of what they did to you – is something that most people consider to be evil. Nobody cares about whether the guy did anything wrong or not. He’s seizing the moral high ground from you because you, also, have committed a wrong.

ptman 1 day ago | link

Physical objects can only be in one place at a time. Data on the other hand can be backed up while it is still being used by the service. And Google collects information about how to do this for their services in one place: the Data Liberation Front http://www.dataliberation.org/

cynope 1 day ago | link

It is not realistic to expect all users to continually make backups of all their Google services.

It is however realistic for Google to solve this by putting a violating account in a “read-only” mode, where you are able to export all you data and not do anything else.

Orbitrix 19
hours ago | link

Yes it is realistic to expect all users to continually make backups of their Google services. Maybe google just hasnt made it easy enough yet… but that is what the goal should be.

Allowed access to banned accounts in “Read-only” mode is ripe for abuse by spammers and phishers who could benefit from still being able to access information in the violating accounts. Its the wrong kind of solution to a problem that really comes down to personal responsibility.

I think most people know deep down the responsible thing to do is have backups of all their important data… the cloud is just making people lazy. And providing a “read-only” access to a banned account will only make people lazier and more apathetic about it. “oh.. no worries..Googles got my back” But what happens when Google is hacked, or suffers a natural disaster, or other catastrophic failure? It only serves to make the problem worse. Losing your data, to even a wrongfully banned account, is nobody’s fault but your own.

There so many more reasons to backup your data before something bad happens, not after…. thats what we should be promoting

cynope 18
hours ago | link

Any improvements in exporting data from a Google Account that will make a daily backup actually doable are welcome. But Google should not place all responsibility in the hands of the users, since this inevitable will result in bad user experiences and therefore bad publicity.

Regarding spammers and phishers, these are users violating the law and they of course have no legitimate claims to their account data.

josecastillo
1 day ago | link

“Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.”
This philosophy, or at least the “out” part, should apply doubly after someone’s account is terminated in this manner. Google has determined that sinning against one service warrants terminating access to other services. That may be justifiable. But sinning against one service should not warrant loss of one’s data in other services.

Locke1689
1 day ago | link

No. The ToS applies to all Google services.

tarandeep
1 day ago | link

https://plus.google.com/u/0/104600580124930283388/posts/QBFa… He has
access to Dashboard #liar

Locke1689
1 day ago | link

4.3 As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Google’s sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform Google when you stop using the Services.

4.4 You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account.

I have no knowledge of what services he can or can’t access, just that it is within Google’s purview to remove access to all Google’s services.

P.S. This is not Twitter and we don’t use hashtags in our posts.
Please act as though you have a semblance of decorum.

HackerNews source for both quotes

We can see the divide between folks who believe in access to data after account termination versus those who feel clients should regularly back up everything. As one user of Google’s services, if I could regularly backup all the information I create and store with Google’s data centers, I’d have far less need of their account services.

I’d much prefer to use Google strictly as an anonymous data filter knowing only an absolute minimum about my true identity and simply providing an agnostic data service (email filtering, search, social dial tone). Right now Google is the centralized keeper of the vast majority if it’s users digital identities. This is something a distributed network like the Internet is designed to prevent.

Related Posts:

• Anonymity isn’t allowed on Google
• How much do you rely on one source for your digital identity
• Don’t Punish Everyone, or why rules based systems are flawed

Notes:

1. As an aside, the next time I have need of a super villain for an rpg or story, I’m going to base it on a dark facsimile of Matt Cutts with a sinister side

What if my gmail account was permanently inaccessible?

Update: this reportedly happens to folks on a regular basis, read Dylan’s story which is a mix of fabrication and truth

I use that email account as the ultimate key value store to the Internet. It is used as my login ID to a hundred or so different web services, and it’s the backup address where any password change links are sent. In a very real way Google owns my digital identity and I rely on it as much or more than my government assigned social security number.

This passing thought is the primary motivation behind distributed identity systems such as OpenID. Anyone with a domain or unique url can leverage OpenID to provide a digital identity.

Without consideration, I casually added an OpenID plugin to this WordPress powered blog last year. I wanted to see if I could log in as me at StackOverflow¹, and it worked as advertised. This year I’m going to make a concerted effort to shift my digital identity to one I own and control, and make VictusSpirtus.com synonymous with other identities I have spread across the web. I suppose it’s time for me to setup email through the domain as well (even if it’s just forwarded to gmail).

Reliance on a single third party to verify who we are is another fractured piece of the digital identity puzzle. Late last year I commented on how Internet Identity is Broken. It’s surprising that we rely on something as fragile as our memory and an entity outside of ourselves to prove to other applications who we are.

Notes:

1. While I appreciate StackOverflow as a transient knowledge source, I’ve always been a much bigger fan of questions and discussions than answers.

Marshall Kirkpatrick – So Google Plus is a place of public discourse, with gradations of privacy, but with no anonymity or pseudonyms (allowed)? How Google-like; I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.

I can understand why social web utilities want to attach an account to an identity to promote responsible usage and reputation, but I feel like these goals can be achieved while still allowing pseudonyms for progressive discussions. Two comments struck me as influential and characterizing why I value anonymity with digital identity. I’ve included them below.

Oscar Fröberg – One thing that would be great would be if you could choose a pseudonym for each circle. That way you could for example interact with “internet-people” anonymously but still be available in search to interact with friends under your real name. There are subjects I’d like to be able to discuss which I don’t necessarily want perpetuated on the internet under my real name, even if I want it to be a public discussion!

Joshua Jeffryes – Sacrificing anonymity sacrifices honesty, risk taking, and entertainment.

You won’t get whistle blowers, people fighting oppressive regimes, or FakeSteveJobs or DeathstarPR here. I think g+ is lessened by that.

Some of my favorite social networks condone pseudonyms and various levels of anonymity. Both Twitter and Disqus enable accounts to exist without forcing them to be exposed as belonging to a specific individual.

The title eludes to the inspiration behind the post, the inexhaustible rolling waves of the ocean. I was drawn back to ocean for the second time in as many days in hopes of having a solitary morning stroll. I was rewarded with a couple hours of listening to nothing but the crashing waves of the ocean, and aware that the same sounds existed a billion or more years ago. The waves are a precious reminder of our planet’s timelessness.

Today’s riff revolves about the art of instigating community kernels and inspiring other perpetual forms¹ that may exist for only a fraction as long as the oceans. The masters of this art are the inventors of ancient customs and economies, the founding fathers of nations, and the pioneers of today’s massively connected networks².

Self perpetuating systems are not so much made as they are born. A turbulence in an dynamic environment establishes sufficient conditions for a novel form to take shape. Either by design or by chance the new system is capable of growing without requiring continual resources from its origin. The system leverages existing dormant potential within the environment to sustain itself and spread far beyond its humble beginnings.

Is life so different, is human propagation? We begin as a single fertilized egg and after a dozen (or two) years we can fend for ourselves. Whether we propagate DNA, pass knowledge and ideas to students, or create communities the patterns for self sustaining systems is strongly correlated with life. It should come as little surprise that I turn to life for guidance on how best to identify and prepare for the presence of perpetual systems.

• It’s easier to begin within an environment that is rich in energy
  
  Self sustaining systems don’t grow in a vacuum, they are nourished and grow from latent resources that were dormant prior to the system’s existence.




• Select an area where communication comes easily
  
  Life relies on water to transport rich nutrients and cells within organisms. When working to inspire perpetual communities success will come far more quickly in areas where communication is fluid, and feedback is encouraged. Ideas spread through open communication channels, the easier and more prevalent these paths are to access the better.




• There should be an inherent gravity that continually moves and pulls the system
  
  The social gravity within budding communities is the cause of both the friction and the fuel which drives it forward. Without gravity the essential elements of new forms tend to expand and separate.




• Be ready to be surprised
  
  Like life, perpetual systems can grow in directions that their originators never imagined. While we may plan and hope for one direction from a new system, it is much more likely that the character of the artifice will evolve over time taking a shape that was impossible to predict beforehand.

Notes:

1. Perpetual forms coming to life as communities, memes, stories, apps, frameworks, etc.
2. Think more along the lines of the telecommunications backbone, the Internet, email, and the World Wide Web. Large proprietary platforms (AOL, MySpace, Facebook) will survive only as long as their controlling agency sees fit.

I reconnected on Facebook and rediscovered the network of everyone is pure noise

I’m pretty active online and enjoy reading, commenting, coding, and contributing towards topics that spark my interest and enthusiasm. Last year I decide to cut ties with Facebook, because each visit there felt like a net loss of my precious free time. After warming up to Google+ my interest in large connected networks was renewed and I decided to give Facebook another try. After all, it couldn’t hurt to catch up with old friends.

This time I friended a small kernel of folks that I wanted to reconnect with, but didn’t see, email, or talk with regularly. It spiraled out of control far too quickly as the Facebook friend suggester kept feeding me like a starving hippo at an all you can eat buffet. My friend list grew quickly beyond a tight group and now I’ve received, accepted, and even sent friend invites to dozens of folks that I haven’t seen or talked to in years. Individually I’m confident I could have a fun conversation with anyone I’ve friended on the network, but all their updates combined felt like a meaningless mess. On Facebook, the sum is certainly less than the parts.

Worst of all, very little of my self created Facebook inbound hell is close to anything resembling an area I’m interested in. No web hacking or design, little tech, no startups, and a few terrible Facebook game updates shared by friends. It is clear to me that following a broadcast stream which is the sum of all people I’ve ever known is not valuable, and that I’ll need to take drastic filtering action to make better use of the weakest information graph.

Polite hiding

First off I’m going to try ruthlessly hiding posts from anyone who’s updates have little chance of resonating with topics I’m interested in. The topics that catch my fancy are fairly broad so I likely won’t achieve much with this first effort. I assume there’s a view all option so if mood and free time both coincide I can once again dip into the fire hose of everyone.

I’m a firm believer that each of us can have only a handful of meaningful close relationships in a lifetime. I find it socially satisfying spending greater time with fewer people. It can take years to ease folks into my snarky wiseass remarks, and for me to recognize their finest attributes .

There have to be additional tools which can help me harness the pearls buried within my friends news streams. I’d like to extract the fascinating posts topically, and differentiate them from updates which fail to register. I’ll turn to KnowAbout.it and other social filtering tools to help at this level.

Photobook?

I’ve considered filtering out all updates but images. That would transform Facebook into another flavor of Flickr or Instagram, and it may prove to be a viable alternative. I could quickly glance at a wall of images and explore further when a picture grabs my attention.

I’m open to suggestions of how others have adapted their Facebook usage to derive maximum value from the app. If you have any Facebook advice I’m all ears.

If you were to ask for my day one review of the new operator social destination, I’d say It’s like 2008 all over again circa Friendfeed. This time without aggregation, with easier groupings and default private instead of public posts.

That’s a compliment. I enjoyed the heck out of Friendfeed and nothing has come close to it’s smooth real time updates, comments, messaging, and aggregation. If I think about where Friendfeed is now for too long, my head will do this:

Scorched Earth is an undeniable pattern in fields as diverse as 16th century sea exploration, blogging, company building, and client services directed by fire breathing Dinobots.

Why did Steve Rubel nuke a few of his blogs and wipe the slate clean? To declare a new flag ship for his thoughts. (blogging link above)

In military circles, a scorched earth policy – according to Wikipedia – is a strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from a given theater of operations.

Perhaps its symbolic, but that’s exactly the approach I took to my digital presence this past Memorial Day weekend. I started a fresh new site on the future of media over on Tumblr. Then I promptly turned around and slashed both my TypePad-powered blog, which I ran from 2004 to 2009, and my Posterous blog, which I started with some fanfare back in 2009. With just two clicks of a mouse I rid the web of literally thousands of blog posts, some of which I am proud of – others less so – and redirected the URLs to the new site.

Let’s change gears from readers, to customers. Join me for a quick stroll down memory lane with Seth Godin circa 2006 on the topic of firing customers: (company building link above)

The answer might surprise you. It’s the unwritten rule 3 on Stew Leonard’s famous granite rock:
If the customer is wrong, they’re not your customer any more.

In other words, if it’s not worth making the customer right, fire her.

Successful organizations (and I include churches and political parties on the list) fire the 1% of their constituents that cause 95% of the pain.
Fire them?

Fire them. Politely decline to do business with them. Refer them to your arch competitors. Take them off the mailing list. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, don’t be rude, just move on.

If you’ve got something worth paying for, you gain power when you refuse to offer it to every single person who is willing to pay you.

A wise friend Fake Grimlok, with an uncanny sense of humor, wit and wisdom, paints the Scorched Earth client model, enriched by Denton Gentry’s colloquial unixism.

THERE COME TIME IN EVERY PROJECT WHERE REWARD OF FIX BAD CODE LOWER THAN REWARD OF KILL CLIENT AND BURN PROJECT TO GROUND.

June 5, 2011 5:41 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@FAKEGRIMLOCK

FAKEGRIMLOCK

@FAKEGRIMLOCK I call it the "rm -rf moment", the point where you seriously consider nuking it all and starting over.

June 5, 2011 5:45 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@dgentry

Denton Gentry

@dgentry @FAKEGRIMLOCK scorch the earth strategy :)

June 5, 2011 6:28 pm via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@VictusFate

Mark Essel

@VictusFate @dgentry ME, GRIMLOCK, NEVER MEET EARTH THAT NOT LOOK UNDERCOOKED.

June 5, 2011 7:19 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@FAKEGRIMLOCK

FAKEGRIMLOCK

My 2 cents

The mental image of burning the ships is an indelible shadow etched into the walls of my subconscious ¹. It’s strength is such that whenever I see anything resembling no retreat, no surrender, I can’t resist being inspired by the boldness of the act.

Eliminating the path of retreat steels nerves and focuses attention forward. It eliminates fear induced distractions, such that our full cognitive and physical potential is liberated. For a man who seeks to experience unbounded freedom, I should pay heed to environments where retreat is an impossibility.

Words are such fragile constructs, yet they suffice to carry our hopes and dreams. Virtual objects such as this blog post are malleable and ephemeral by their nature. It takes very little energy to boil them back down into the primordial ooze of disorganized bits. On the other extreme it takes significant effort to build a reliable platform for self expression, mnemonic enhancement and critical discussion².

The strategy I take when building a reliable resource (this blog/a company) is to maintain a few ground rules. Above all else I try (but don’t always succeed) to maintain URLs so that the address to a specific article or product is stable. In addition public interfaces are sacred, and I’d bend over backwards to maintain old interfaces. An interface like a URL is a promise to the future that this resource will be available and reliable. Both reliability and availability ultimately depend on cost and revenue.

If a link to an old resource (discrete information bundle) is broken, it’s a lost opportunity. If a public interface is broken it’s a potentially lost client. I’d hate to inhibit or end a curiosity fueled, web browsing, link jam session. It’s been far too long since I’ve enjoyed one of those. Even worse would be to leave a customer stranded without additional developer support. You keep your promises, in the network economy reputation is more precious than gold.

Notes:

1. Last year I took a lifeline offered graciously at my day job, increasing my financial stability, but causing a rift between the world I desire (startups/web dev), and the world I live in (big c++ sims and apps) .

   At the time I was concerned my web development skills weren’t adequate to cover our living expenses (wife and I share a small home). Since that compromise I’ve had that fear confirmed by tasting a couple of rejections.

   Fortunately none were so bitter as to have the slightest affect on my stubborn determination to succeed as a tech entrepreneur. Patience and study are becoming welcome allies on the long road ahead.




2. I believe it was Seth G. who suggested his blog took on a life of its own around 1500 posts (I’ll verify the source once I’m back online). I have under a couple of years before I hit that mark, giving me plenty of time to refine my craft.

   I’ll need every entry to practice coalescing abstract concepts into cogent posts, on the diversity of topics that I feel strongly about.

Genuine Comfort and Confidence

Communities who’s members exhibit authentic comfort in their role and confidence in their team are an obvious signal of a healthy group. The community may be chillaxin’ or working tirelessly, but they continue to exude an aura of quiet confidence in just about everything they do. To me, there is no trait more attractive in a community than the unspoken bond of trust between it’s members.

Members by Choice

It almost goes without saying that the healthiest communities are comprised of voluntary members. There’s strong internal friction in groups forced together by external forces, and those communities last only as long as they absolutely must. Involuntary organizations include the likes of drafted soldiers, prisoners, and slaves.

Tightly Coupled Locally, Loosely Associated Globally

The implicit distance metric I refer to above for local and global relationships is not bound by geography. The separation between community members today is the alignment of personal and sub-group goals. The larger community is loosely associated through broadcast web, email or occasional video communication. The local group is tightly bound through more frequent personal exchanges of information, as well as in person meetings. One mind, lots if adjacent neurons.

Belonging

Belonging is being able to disagree with your community without fear of excommunication. It’s a healthy response to voice opinions and be heard. Strict hierarchies are only as smart as a single leader, and often much dumber . Empowering individuals to make expert decisions with periodic peer review strengthens individual skill, team productivity, and enhances community perception. By accepting individual feedback the whole becomes smarter than the sum of its parts.

Enduring communities know when to at least temporarily go out of book, and buck any of the above trends. Instinct guides us as individuals to survival actions which we’re not necessarily proud of, the same holds for social groups. Cognizance of community health helps balance group demands with individual needs.

We finally succeeded as a culture at breaking down communication and human attention into fragmented gibberish. The product of billions of bite sized messages is a grand sucking sound of our cognitive ability swirling down the drain. Quiet contemplation has been ousted by mass consumption, gossip mongering, and trivial conjecture¹.

I’m not suggesting our culture was a bastion of reason 20 years ago, nor am I condemning the democratization of publishing. Polarized interviews on television have been replaced by 30 second streaming clips. News editorials have been buried by status updates, and written correspondence is drowning in IM speak². In our efforts to induce broad participation, we have failed to promote quality.

Light at the end of the tunnel

The minimalist design trend is finding its way to information consumption habits, based on personal consumption shifts (follow zero), a refreshing read by Bill Keller, and Dave Pinsen’s weekends offline.

@alexisgoldstein Signing off. Checking e-mails & iTunes Connect in the morning, then off the Interwebs for the weekend -- give it a try.

May 13, 2011 11:04 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@dpinsen

David Pinsen

But there’s a serious issue of handing over the reigns of quality filtering to third parties. By forgoing our ability to select content, we empower remote entities to act as our defacto bias. The same can be said of search algorithms, as they introduce a bias based on the company’s proprietary algorithms outside of individual influence. I can change the inputs, but am unable to tune the algorithm. Do I trust third party services to maintain a balance of perspectives? No. They struggle to optimize revenue by providing the greatest value, at the cheapest cost, to the most people³. Not many web companies try to perfect quality for a handful of users, it’s just not financially practical.

Bon Voyage

Take an Information Vacation.

Going offline isn’t a novel concept. Sensory Deprivation is the conscious reduction of input stimuli, and is an extreme form of information filtering. Years back as a kid, I’d leaned back with a float under my neck in the pool and allowed my ears to be covered by water with my eyes closed. It was an unforgettably soothing experience and calling it meditation would be an understatement. Preserving attention is an area ripe for disruption.

Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing respectively, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch, taste, thermoception (heat-sense), and ‘gravity’. Sensory deprivation has been used in various alternative medicines and in psychological experiments (e.g., see Isolation tank).

Short-term sessions of sensory deprivation are described as relaxing and conducive to meditation, however, extended or forced sensory deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts and depression.
(source)

Notes

1. Trivial pontification, as in this blog post
2. The smiling wink above, or a comment I witnessed on my wife’s Facebook status not long back: “Yur not finished yet LOLOLLLL!! ?!?!??”. I assume the additional question marks and exclamation impart a sense of shock, but they send a different signal to me
3. Web companies push the boundaries of Pareto’s principle, by achieving greater than 80% value for less than 20% of the resources of legacy companies, and monetizing with low priced subscriptions or ad revenue. This quality to cost ratio is good enough for significant client populations.