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Are we selling our souls to social networks?
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2012 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Waterway robbery Countries must be stopped from seizing their neighbours’ rivers FRESH water is one of our most rivers. But despite this apparent vital resources, but some nations assent, only 24 nations have have much greater access to subsequently ratified it, 11 short it than others. That is partly of the threshold that would bring down to the geographical good it into force. fortune of being sited upstream Some countries’ reluctance on a great river. But it is also to ratify the treaty is laughable. because there is no functioning When questioned three years ago, international treaty governing the UK government claimed it the sharing of transboundary did not want to “burden partner waterways. In the age of mega“Almost half the world’s dams, downstream countries people depend on get water at the whim of their water flowing down upstream neighbours. international rivers” There should be a treaty. The UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of countries”, though it did not say International Watercourses was who those partner countries signed 15 years ago. It required were or how ratification would countries to ensure the sustainable burden them. At least China and equitable use of shared said what it meant, arguing that rivers. At the time, only three it has “indisputable territorial countries – China, Turkey and sovereignty over those parts of Burundi – voted against. All three international watercourses that are upstream countries on major flow through its territory”.
This week, we report escalating concern about China’s bullying tactics over five mighty rivers flowing out of Tibet, upon which downstream countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam depend (see page 8). There are many other festering disputes, including on the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. We also reported recently on a proposed dam on the Guinea stretch of the Niger river, which threatens vital wetlands in downstream Mali (New Scientist, 24 March, p 9). Almost half the world’s people depend on water flowing down international rivers. Yet twothirds of those rivers have no water-sharing agreements. This is a scandal that June’s Earth Summit in Rio should address. It should call for rapid ratification of the UN treaty. The world’s water bullies need to be tamed. n
Shark and awe SHARKS are awesome. For once, that much abused adjective is entirely appropriate: they provoke the mixture of wonder and terror that the word was originally meant to capture. That sense of awe reflects sharks’ status as the top predator in many of the ecosystems they inhabit – a status now threatened by human activity. All over the
world, shark populations are under huge pressure. This turns out to matter not just because their disappearance affects the numbers of prey species, as might be expected, but because it changes ecosystems in complex and unexpected ways (see page 36). In recent years, we have been encouraged to think about the health of ecosystems as a whole,
and about the humbler species that support them, rather than focusing on the “charismatic” species that most readily attract our attention, and rightly so. But charisma is not an entirely meaningless trait. Those animals that we humans find too huge, powerful or dangerous for comfort often exert huge power over the environments they inhabit. Sometimes, finding something awesome is a good enough reason to act. n
Selling souls to social networks
a Faustian pact – trading personal information in exchange for seductively useful services. How concerned should we be? If the information we reveal isn’t too sensitive and the marketers who buy it aren’t too intrusive, we might consider it a fair exchange for the services the social networks offer.
But the realisation that social networking sites can figure out details about us that we haven’t actually told them (see page 40) makes the deal’s merits harder to evaluate: the potential benefits and pitfalls are hard to grasp. Like Faust, we run the risk of not realising the real value of what we have sold – until it’s too late. n
IF YOU aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. So runs the mantra of those who criticise huge internet companies like Facebook and Google. They argue that we have entered into
28 April 2012 | NewScientist | 3
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2012 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Waterway robbery Countries must be stopped from seizing their neighbours’ rivers FRESH water is one of our most rivers. But despite this apparent vital resources, but some nations assent, only 24 nations have have much greater access to subsequently ratified it, 11 short it than others. That is partly of the threshold that would bring down to the geographical good it into force. fortune of being sited upstream Some countries’ reluctance on a great river. But it is also to ratify the treaty is laughable. because there is no functioning When questioned three years ago, international treaty governing the UK government claimed it the sharing of transboundary did not want to “burden partner waterways. In the age of mega“Almost half the world’s dams, downstream countries people depend on get water at the whim of their water flowing down upstream neighbours. international rivers” There should be a treaty. The UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of countries”, though it did not say International Watercourses was who those partner countries signed 15 years ago. It required were or how ratification would countries to ensure the sustainable burden them. At least China and equitable use of shared said what it meant, arguing that rivers. At the time, only three it has “indisputable territorial countries – China, Turkey and sovereignty over those parts of Burundi – voted against. All three international watercourses that are upstream countries on major flow through its territory”.
This week, we report escalating concern about China’s bullying tactics over five mighty rivers flowing out of Tibet, upon which downstream countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam depend (see page 8). There are many other festering disputes, including on the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. We also reported recently on a proposed dam on the Guinea stretch of the Niger river, which threatens vital wetlands in downstream Mali (New Scientist, 24 March, p 9). Almost half the world’s people depend on water flowing down international rivers. Yet twothirds of those rivers have no water-sharing agreements. This is a scandal that June’s Earth Summit in Rio should address. It should call for rapid ratification of the UN treaty. The world’s water bullies need to be tamed. n
Shark and awe SHARKS are awesome. For once, that much abused adjective is entirely appropriate: they provoke the mixture of wonder and terror that the word was originally meant to capture. That sense of awe reflects sharks’ status as the top predator in many of the ecosystems they inhabit – a status now threatened by human activity. All over the
world, shark populations are under huge pressure. This turns out to matter not just because their disappearance affects the numbers of prey species, as might be expected, but because it changes ecosystems in complex and unexpected ways (see page 36). In recent years, we have been encouraged to think about the health of ecosystems as a whole,
and about the humbler species that support them, rather than focusing on the “charismatic” species that most readily attract our attention, and rightly so. But charisma is not an entirely meaningless trait. Those animals that we humans find too huge, powerful or dangerous for comfort often exert huge power over the environments they inhabit. Sometimes, finding something awesome is a good enough reason to act. n
Selling souls to social networks
a Faustian pact – trading personal information in exchange for seductively useful services. How concerned should we be? If the information we reveal isn’t too sensitive and the marketers who buy it aren’t too intrusive, we might consider it a fair exchange for the services the social networks offer.
But the realisation that social networking sites can figure out details about us that we haven’t actually told them (see page 40) makes the deal’s merits harder to evaluate: the potential benefits and pitfalls are hard to grasp. Like Faust, we run the risk of not realising the real value of what we have sold – until it’s too late. n
IF YOU aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. So runs the mantra of those who criticise huge internet companies like Facebook and Google. They argue that we have entered into
28 April 2012 | NewScientist | 3