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Spent time at lunch today investigating tv's on the internet.
( TV Advice Anyone??? )
Just finished scan-reading article in New Yorker - entitled, get this, "Me Media: How hanging out on the internet became big business." - by John Cassidy. It's basically about this kid at Harvard who designed a site not unlike live journal for the college crowd in 2003 - called "Facebook.com" - which basically does the same things lj does but is limited to college (and now apparently high school) students. The article describes it as similar to "MySpace.com" - the trendy blog site that the media knows about and keeps going on about. Wales recently told me she was thinking it would be cool to go on "myspace.com" and set up a blog and what did I think and would I do it? I sort of smiled and said, well, been sort of doing that for close to five years now on livejournal - which is a lot safer and less trendy and less video oriented.
The author's description of Facebook isn't all that different than lj. He interviews a sociologist at Columbia, Duncan Watts, who says - " If I had to guess why sites like Facebook are so popular, I would say it doesn't have anything to do with networking at all. It's voyeurism and exhibitionism. People like to express themselves, and they are curious about other people." Later he writes - "the best analogy for sites like MySpace and Facebook was hanging out at the mall or lounging on the quad - 'Like cruising around on Facebook/MySpace, there's a certain lack of purpose to just hanging out in public, and it's hard to justify if you don't have a lot of free time, But it serves the essential purpose (for young people without jobs, families, and other social responsibilities) of seeing and being seen. You're with your friends, but you're also creating the possibility that you'll bump into someone else, in which case you might meet them, or at least be noticed by them. So it's not about networking (which is more intrumental) or even about dating (which is far more specific), so much as it is as about just mingling. That's not to say it isn't a powerful idea. Given the apparently timeless appeal to youn people of just hanging out ...that might be all the business model you need."
The author of the article thinks it's more about peer pressure and competition than self-expression. How many friends you have. Whether you are on it. Much like Wales who suddenly feels compelled to join MySpace because hey it's what everyone else appears to be into. The trend.
While much of that is true. I think the author misses a few things and can't help but wonder if the author was ever into letter writing? I'm guessing not. Some people write long emails (raises hand), some write two words (Wales - she loves text messaging. Just using a word or two). The one's who write short emails won't get lj.
The people who spend their lives attached to the phone as if it is an extension of their body, probably won't either. If you like letter writing - you might.
While admittedly there is a bit of exhibitionist, voyeureustic, and narcisstic one-upmanship going on (let's face it our society is a bit like that - I know, during a quick run into colisieum - I saw several self-help books that focused more or less on just that), there's also a lot of people just getting together and exchanging letters and personal essays or bits of random writing. So not sure completely agree with some of this. That said, the article really doesn't focus on that bit - that's what I focused on - the article focuses on the business behind it. The developers of these sites and their potential financial gain. His depiction of the 20 year old who designed Facebook is a tad chilling. The kid mentions one of his interests is domination. And in a copyright infringement suite - he is described by the opposing party as egomanical. Found this bit rather boring, read it all before. Another kiddie mogul who wants to make it big before he's 25 and over the hill. (Once he's 25 he's going to realize how silly that all is, but try telling a 20 year old over-achiever that.) No, what interests me more is the author's attempt to understand a community of people who connect via a computer screen. Connection without connection. A metaphor for our weird tech heavy times. Where instead of interacting with one another - other human bodies on walks, in the subway, people are perpetually "plugged" in to some gadget or device, hearing something else - their body may be present, but their heads aren't. Virtual world 24/7. Hanging in a virtual mall. Even online dating - you determine if you have chemistry via words and pictures posted on the net.
A year ago, a friend, J, told me, that he felt you needed to have "face to face" contact to know a person. He wanted to speak to someone face to face. Physical. A year later his words haunt me. Because I agree. The blog world is appealing partly because we can show our best face, we have control over what the other person sees or not sees. We put out there what we want to be seen. While in person the interaction is somewhat harder. We have less control over what is seen. What we don't have control over in either situation is how others perceive or read what we present. I have no control for instance on how much of this post you've read, any more than Mr. Cassidy who wrote the article controls how much of his article I read or chose to focus on. Or for that matter any way of knowing what you read or not. Unlike Mr. Cassidy, I'm more likely to find out - because you can tell me with a response. For me to tell him - it would involve sending a letter that may or may not be read by the New Yorker. The difference, I think, between interacting in person, interacting in a real mall as opposed to the virtual one - where we do see each other, is we can see the reactions. We can see who sees us, most of the time. Granted some people may miss our notice. But we are looking back at the looker. They aren't as hidden as they are when they read us on the net. The appeal of writing on the net is partly the anynonmity - ability to put it out there, without the fear of someone seeing you. So you put more out sometimes than normal. And in some cases less.
If over-exposed, you can always leave, flock, or filter.
Okay off. To watch Lost. (Which was worth it. Again. Yes, I was right - the hatch thing is just a social psyche experiment gone wonky. Hee. The simple answer wins every time.)
[Would help if my post didn't get eaten when the cable modem disconnected me when I attempted to save last night and all that got saved was the above...sigh. Gadgets. Just can't trust the buggers. And didn't have a chance to review what did get saved until this morning.]
( TV Advice Anyone??? )
Just finished scan-reading article in New Yorker - entitled, get this, "Me Media: How hanging out on the internet became big business." - by John Cassidy. It's basically about this kid at Harvard who designed a site not unlike live journal for the college crowd in 2003 - called "Facebook.com" - which basically does the same things lj does but is limited to college (and now apparently high school) students. The article describes it as similar to "MySpace.com" - the trendy blog site that the media knows about and keeps going on about. Wales recently told me she was thinking it would be cool to go on "myspace.com" and set up a blog and what did I think and would I do it? I sort of smiled and said, well, been sort of doing that for close to five years now on livejournal - which is a lot safer and less trendy and less video oriented.
The author's description of Facebook isn't all that different than lj. He interviews a sociologist at Columbia, Duncan Watts, who says - " If I had to guess why sites like Facebook are so popular, I would say it doesn't have anything to do with networking at all. It's voyeurism and exhibitionism. People like to express themselves, and they are curious about other people." Later he writes - "the best analogy for sites like MySpace and Facebook was hanging out at the mall or lounging on the quad - 'Like cruising around on Facebook/MySpace, there's a certain lack of purpose to just hanging out in public, and it's hard to justify if you don't have a lot of free time, But it serves the essential purpose (for young people without jobs, families, and other social responsibilities) of seeing and being seen. You're with your friends, but you're also creating the possibility that you'll bump into someone else, in which case you might meet them, or at least be noticed by them. So it's not about networking (which is more intrumental) or even about dating (which is far more specific), so much as it is as about just mingling. That's not to say it isn't a powerful idea. Given the apparently timeless appeal to youn people of just hanging out ...that might be all the business model you need."
The author of the article thinks it's more about peer pressure and competition than self-expression. How many friends you have. Whether you are on it. Much like Wales who suddenly feels compelled to join MySpace because hey it's what everyone else appears to be into. The trend.
While much of that is true. I think the author misses a few things and can't help but wonder if the author was ever into letter writing? I'm guessing not. Some people write long emails (raises hand), some write two words (Wales - she loves text messaging. Just using a word or two). The one's who write short emails won't get lj.
The people who spend their lives attached to the phone as if it is an extension of their body, probably won't either. If you like letter writing - you might.
While admittedly there is a bit of exhibitionist, voyeureustic, and narcisstic one-upmanship going on (let's face it our society is a bit like that - I know, during a quick run into colisieum - I saw several self-help books that focused more or less on just that), there's also a lot of people just getting together and exchanging letters and personal essays or bits of random writing. So not sure completely agree with some of this. That said, the article really doesn't focus on that bit - that's what I focused on - the article focuses on the business behind it. The developers of these sites and their potential financial gain. His depiction of the 20 year old who designed Facebook is a tad chilling. The kid mentions one of his interests is domination. And in a copyright infringement suite - he is described by the opposing party as egomanical. Found this bit rather boring, read it all before. Another kiddie mogul who wants to make it big before he's 25 and over the hill. (Once he's 25 he's going to realize how silly that all is, but try telling a 20 year old over-achiever that.) No, what interests me more is the author's attempt to understand a community of people who connect via a computer screen. Connection without connection. A metaphor for our weird tech heavy times. Where instead of interacting with one another - other human bodies on walks, in the subway, people are perpetually "plugged" in to some gadget or device, hearing something else - their body may be present, but their heads aren't. Virtual world 24/7. Hanging in a virtual mall. Even online dating - you determine if you have chemistry via words and pictures posted on the net.
A year ago, a friend, J, told me, that he felt you needed to have "face to face" contact to know a person. He wanted to speak to someone face to face. Physical. A year later his words haunt me. Because I agree. The blog world is appealing partly because we can show our best face, we have control over what the other person sees or not sees. We put out there what we want to be seen. While in person the interaction is somewhat harder. We have less control over what is seen. What we don't have control over in either situation is how others perceive or read what we present. I have no control for instance on how much of this post you've read, any more than Mr. Cassidy who wrote the article controls how much of his article I read or chose to focus on. Or for that matter any way of knowing what you read or not. Unlike Mr. Cassidy, I'm more likely to find out - because you can tell me with a response. For me to tell him - it would involve sending a letter that may or may not be read by the New Yorker. The difference, I think, between interacting in person, interacting in a real mall as opposed to the virtual one - where we do see each other, is we can see the reactions. We can see who sees us, most of the time. Granted some people may miss our notice. But we are looking back at the looker. They aren't as hidden as they are when they read us on the net. The appeal of writing on the net is partly the anynonmity - ability to put it out there, without the fear of someone seeing you. So you put more out sometimes than normal. And in some cases less.
If over-exposed, you can always leave, flock, or filter.
Okay off. To watch Lost. (Which was worth it. Again. Yes, I was right - the hatch thing is just a social psyche experiment gone wonky. Hee. The simple answer wins every time.)
[Would help if my post didn't get eaten when the cable modem disconnected me when I attempted to save last night and all that got saved was the above...sigh. Gadgets. Just can't trust the buggers. And didn't have a chance to review what did get saved until this morning.]