Wandering into the future

down the garden path
There’s some interesting predictions in this article on the shape of things to come. I was particularly struck by peer-to-peer lending, reverse knowledge migration and virtual identity managers. More predictable, of course are guesses about the growth of social networking. And on an amusing note there is digital housecleaning which will require more than a virtual feather duster. I quote: MySpace pages will be cleaned up and mass "Facebook suicides" will soon become the norm as young people try to agree a bond of forgetting by deactivating their profiles in unison. Companies will spring up like Reputation Defender, an American firm that promises to search out and destroy all inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful and slanderous information that exists on its clients…that’s identity management for you!

Blogs bloom

lilly flower
Blogging seems to be as buoyant as ever in the UK. This article reports that 'of Britain's web population of 26 million,15% kept a blog.' That’s a lot of blogs, a lot of writing on line, and a lot of posting! Much of the blogging boom is attributed to Facebook and MySpace, and of course commentators are caught up with defining the boundaries between blogs and other online formats. And so you get: 'The line between a blog and a website has finally blurred enough it's often hard to tell if you're a blogger or not,' said Jon Silk, of the PR firm Lewis. 'Users of sites such as Facebook and MySpace are all bloggers.' But I suppose the main message is worth re-stating digital literacy is becoming a central part of many people’s lives, and education is only just starting to catch up.

La fracture numerique

caged in
La fracture numerique (digital divide) is exposed in a survey of young adults in the US. The survey looked at patterns of use with respect to the social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster. The main headlines are that “gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background are all associated with use, but in most cases only when the aggregate concept of social network sites is disaggregated by service…” So, as we suspected we have a picture of unequal participation related to user background. The author concludes, here, that differences in the adoption of social networking services will contribute to digital inequality. A similar theme was identified here by Jackie who refers to the social graph (here).

Always with camera

Hannah and Amy
Here’s Hannah and her flatmate Amy who came up to visit last weekend. They’re very polite and wait until us old-timers start falling asleep before they turn on the laptops to start instant messaging and updating their MySpace. At other times they’re more discreet, maintaining their networks with text messaging (it’s less intrusive). I was interested to read in this report on how text messaging is taking off in China – the report suggests that it appeals because it is ‘short, fast and conversational’. We need to know more!

Where I'm coming from

Autumn walk
Social networking sites provide rich examples of what Giddens describes as the ‘trajectory of the self’. My daughter, Emma describes how Friends Re-United never did anything for her, and MySpace was ‘too young’ whilst Facebook, not only thickens her existing social ties but also networks her with old acquaitances – friends who have moved abroad, people she knew at school and so on. This, she explains, 're-defines who you are' and ‘how far you’ve come’. As Giddens says: ‘The trajectory of the self has a coherence that derives from an awareness of the various phases of the lifespan. (1991:75). Interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook (interviewed here) says: ‘We're talking about the set of connections that everyone has in real life. All we're trying to do is take those connections and map it out. Once we have an accurate model, we can help people to share their information more effectively. But it's going to take 30 years – or at least tens of years – before this becomes a really mature platform.’ You can view this project as an attempt to establish personalization through commodified experience resolving one of Giddens’ dilemmas of the self. An ambitious project (...and I’m not on Facebook, yet).

About Ruth

Sometimes I wish it was punk or Pink, thrash metal or breakbeats, but anyway this is Ruth (in the middle), doing her thing with Brown Eyes Blue. I went out to get a 2Gb expansion card for my PDA so I could watch her at work, and on the move, only to find it only takes 1Gb – how sad is that? And here, Sigrid shows these beautiful forms that are made of sheet metal filled with sand. It looks like writing, but it’s not!

Rip-mix-burn

DSC02116
In his 2001 book, ‘The Future of Ideas’ Lawrence Lessig envisioned a world of free digital creativity – ‘Digital technology has radically reduced the cost of digital creations.’ (p.4). These creations would be exchanged free of charge in peer-to-peer networks. But, Lessig also saw how corporate capitalists would try to fight this as much as possible and particularly through copyright laws. Remember this report on how ‘the music industry has reacted angrily at a decision to give away the new album by US musician Prince with a tabloid newspaper’? And of course, we have regular stories of new music artists who launch themselves on MySpace. Despite this, anyone who’s ever tried to get a good music soundtrack for a digital video that they intend to distribute will know the difficulties. So let’s hear it for Moby who’s offering a bumper crop for exactly this purpose (you have to sign up to mobygratis, but it’s free). But that’s not what I’m listening to at the moment though, because I’ve developed a taste for breakbeats – here’s DJ Rob Focuz, on MySpace, naturally!

The vanishing subject

underwater frisbee
Technological change not only offers new sites for research it also provides new ways of conceptualizing research, alternative identities for researchers themselves, and different relationships with participants and audiences. When I worked at the University of Nottingham, the biggest put-down of all was to refer to someone as more of a ‘journalist’ than a researcher. But now in academic blogging the boundaries are beginning to blurr and many of us are creating an academic/researcher/journalist hybrid. I gave a wry smile when reading Gergen and Gergen (2003: 599) on the ‘vanishing subject matter’. They say ‘the condition of vanishing subject matter invites researchers to envision themselves more as journalists than as traditional scientists – commentators on the contemporary as opposed to stonemasons at the edifice of progressive knowledge.’ That was affirming…and this is Ruth new band ‘Brown Eyes Blue.’

Networking class

Roadmark#2
I suppose it’s inevitable that class affiliation is evident in social networking – after all we’re not all wired into some kind of utopia. Nevertheless it’s not received much attention and of course it is hard to research. Here’s Henry Jenkins commenting on something said by Danah Boyd. Now earlier this week I made some observations about the rise of Facebook in the UK and commented on it’s elevation to the status of “cool”. I’m not suggesting that everything American can automatically be read on to the UK scene – in fact, to the contrary, we have very different stories to tell about the technologies we take to. Yet it is interesting how the MySpace v Facebook thing is differently nuanced in the two countries. Of course you could say that what’s cool is related to class, but my hunch is that it’s a lot more subtle than that. Gender, age, race and occupation are probably just as influential in our social networking choices…why wouldn’t they be?

Trends

Longhand

We’re hearing much more about Facebook in the UK now. When I first came across it, it was something for American college students, as this article recalls. Now it’s the cool place to be, and alongside this, the commercial interests in social networking are becoming more apparent. The bullet points at the end of the news article are interesting – in summary Facebook is described as a social experiment; it’s described as having ‘viral power’; that it ‘taps into innate real life traits - curiosity, sociability and sharing’; and promises to save you time but ends up eating it.

What's it for?

it
Where next with virtual worlds? There’s amazing potential here, and they’re springing up all over the place. Colin and Michele have this on Sony’s 3D virtual world. It’s called Home! Read more about it here. Colleagues are experimenting with the educational potential of Active Worlds for developing young children’s literacy, universities are buying land in Second Life - but we still hear the question, what’s it for? The same question is often asked of blogs and wikis. It’s tempting to say, social networking – you either get it or you don’t – but I reckon there’s a lot to be done to explore the possibilities, let alone the educational applications. On the other hand I can confidently say that MySpace is rapidly becoming the place for music trading. Here’s my daughter Ruth, here’s a link she sent me (French Movies), but I must say I prefer the inimitable Dimitri from Paris, with his wonderful ‘French’ lounge music.

Trash the blog

blinds2
Originally uploaded by on-the-run.

There’s been a whole week of blog-bashing in the media. Bouncing off the ‘code of conduct’ story, journalists have been quick to suggest that blogs have had it – the newsmakers are telling us that blogging is old news! Blogs we’re told, are pointless, the territory of bores and backbiters with nothing important to say. No content only contact. Statistics apparently show that the rate of growth is slowing up and the average shelf-life of a blog is getting shorter. But, I’ll be keeping on, because I believe in circulating ides, keeping a record for myself and whoever else is interested - and I’m interested in having a voice. On Friday, the Rachael Bell story about a teenage party advertised on MySpace which ended in mayhem was the latest internet scare story (there’s an intelligent comment on the issue, here)…and today Death in Cyberburbia uses the depressing story of an online suicide to launch a strong attack on the dangers of spending ‘too much time’ in the unreal world of new media. Today I was looking at some of the exciting work that teachers are doing with blogs and wikis – and that made me think how easy it is to criticize the channel of communication rather than the content. Isn’t it a bit like blaming the development of speech for offensive language, or the invention of writing for fascist literature, isn’t it?

Patterns of use

Barking Market at Dagenham Market
I’ve been down in London visiting family. I noticed that Emma and Sammy use mobile conversations to co-ordinate social arrangements and the net to get information. Ruth and Hannah, who are younger, use SMS much more and overlay this with MSN chat. Ruth’s probably the most connected, using MySpace to check for updates, MSN to maintain presence, SMS and mobile conversations for more precise co-ordination and YouTube for entertainment.

Peaches?

string1
The Geldof girl writes in the Guardian about MySpace today, mixing up two popular ideas, narcissism and addiction. In the first, publication on the internet is seen as the ‘new vanity’ produced by an inflated sense of self; in the second the internet is a drug that ‘takes over’ our normal self. Here’s a link to the article. It’s interesting reading down the comments. The majority are quite hostile to the article. And how, I wonder, will the Guardian read this? Favourably because it attracts attention or unfavourably because it seems unpopular? And what I wonder of the commenters are they vain, addicted or both?

Watching social networks

light play
Here’s the Digital Ethnography project at Kansas State University, explaining it’s work on YouTube to the YouTube community. Their blog is here, and it seems like a project worth keeping an eye on. I’ve been so busy this week that I completely missed the Danah Boyd rant on MySpace and narcissism. I can’t really relate to this – maybe I feel ill-equipped to comment on cultural life in the US, but I’m just interested in the take-up and the identity performances on MySpace in the UK. I can’t get that bothered about it, but then I’m biased – I think this is OK – or am I just an ageing liberal?

Goes both ways

Leicester sculpture
Today I read Fade to Play’s report on a Cory Doctorow lecture about privacy and surveillance in the new media age. This is not a direct note but comes from that blogger’s notes, and it made me think. It goes something like this: ‘We are sleepwalking into a surveillance state (eg CCTV cameras). A CCTV camera only records. Only stops muggers that don’t have good judgement to stop because they are on camera. Parents can track kids with mobile phones and Myspace. Technology can serve us or enslave us.’ But I’m not so sure it’s a simple choice. I think both happen, both are happening simultaneously, but of course we still need to be watchful. Web 2.0 isn’t all a bed of roses.

MySpace (again)

Souvenir table
At last some common sense! Sameer Hindujar’s study shows that teenagers are more alert than they are often given credit for. He says ‘some of the threats allegedly posed by MySpace and its ilk may be a bit overhyped.’ There’s also this on social networking, and an interesting look at tagging as an online social practice (here) Many thanks to Sarah for these!

GreySpace

door1
Not that I have a problem with it, but I found out that Neil Diamond has a MySpace page. In fact, according to this report, more than half of MySpace visitors are now age 35 or older. Why even my old friend Harry has his own page. But despite the demographic shift you can see a whole different look to these pages – different design principles are at work - and, for the most part, there’s a different business sense or purpose at work. In fact it seems less like social networking and more like putting down your marker in cyberspace.

Sisters online

Stylish
Here’s an interview with Danah Boyd. There’s a bit that just seems to sum up what I wrote about Hannah yesterday. ‘Most of what's happening is they're building relationships, they're engaging socially, they're seeking validation, they're seeking negotiation of status, and this is happening both on and offline in a very fluid way.’ I think that’s accurate. Now whether Ruth (in the pic) uses MySpace in the same way is a moot point.

Friends online

Me and my bag
This is Hannah when we met up in London last night. She’s going out with two MySpace friends on Saturday night. ‘We’ve known each other for over a year..’ she says – but of course that’s only online. ‘The first few minutes is a bit weird..’ she says, commenting on the initial face-to-face contact – but then ‘it’s like you’ve got so much in common..’. So this adds to all that stuff about new social networks. ‘Anyway I need to meet more people…’ is the final comment. It’s interesting that MySpace is the glue (or more accurately the gluepot). Both her new friends are same age, same sex and live within a twenty mile radius. (Reference back to this).