Tag Archives: luddite

From Social Spotwelding to Data Stream Contraception

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File this under questionably relevant observations:
I just, for the first time ever, made an online social media connection with someone I’ve not first met offline. I realize many people do this habitually but I am a privacy junkie and am pretty cautious about such things. I must’ve been feeling reckless today (all that caffeine). So I’ve lost my virginity again, but am I a stud or a loose skank? (My feminist friends will no doubt immediately snap to the male/female assumption built into that dichotomy… rant on my friends!)

Anyhow, what struck me was that the connection process felt like spot welding…

First I posted a comment on this guy’s blog thanking him for a nice experience I had.

He emailed back thanking me for thanking him.

I emailed him back once more with a short quip.

Secretly delighted that he’d responded to my humble comment, and enjoying the brief exchange of emails, I then Facebooked him and requested a friendship.

He hit me up through LinkedIn nearly simultaneously.

We both accepted each other’s requests.

I’ve not logged into Twitter yet but my guess is that that weld will be next.

Anyhow, this series of welded connection points set me off to thinking again (never a good sign)…

First, if you’re ‘in’social media, you’re in in a number of places (FB, MS, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. etc.) which is pretty freakin’labor intensive I must say. It seems that all this talk of pervasive connectivity seems to miss the point that it’s through MORE not fewer devices and channels which makes maintenance a real drag on personal bandwidth.

Second, the whole spot welding process had an interesting tempo. If it were an EKG it showed a few small, preliminary spikes (the blog comment and email back) and then a flurry of activity (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and will now settle into a stable, if weak, pulse (we’ll both be broadcasting out to our little baseball card collection of friends and  will occasionally see something from one another). Such is the nature of the low maintenance relationships online. It also feels a little like ‘hooking up’in college. A few flirtatious glances, some heavy petting, and the next morning, well, there’s less to say and we’ll probably smile as we pass each other on campus.

Lastly, I am wondering about making a connection with a ‘stranger’this way. Not that this fellow aroused any suspicion in me. On the contrary he seemed very much on the up and up and frankly from his blog, I’m guessing we’d have much to talk about over coffee or whatever.

But let me extend the college hook-up metaphor too far here (as if going from spot welding to a tryst wasn’t an abrupt enough jump)…

Remember the old AIDS-scare idea that when you slept with someone, you slept with everyone they ever slept with? In a way, personal data streams work similarly. In friending someone you expose yourself, even slightly, to all that person’s friends.

The ‘privacy settings’allowed by most of these applications are at best flimsy [insertcheap condom metaphor here].

Now, lest I sound like a conspiracy freak, I’m really not. But, think about running for President. Right now, in 2009, our lovely bipartisan system digs up a lot of dirt on candidates and these tend to be old white dudes without much exposure in the socialsphere (though the Big ‘O’is changing that). Can you imagine how much easier we’re making mudslinging in the future?

No doubt if I continue to connect with people online I will eventually be tied to Al Quaeda, Acorn, a religious cult that poisons acolytes with Kool Aid, gun runners in Congo, a street gang with impossibly violent initiation rights and a porn star.

I will also, of course, be connected with a future mother Theresa, the doctor who finds a cure of cancer, and the selfless hero who walks into a burning building to save a sleeping child.

It’s fascinating. And scary. And the more that I think about it, it’s also pretty much out of my control. If I don’t participate in the socialsphere I am a disconnected Luddite and the world moves forward without me. That’s no good.

If I do connect, I commit to the work involved in maintaining that online ‘self’and I am climbing in bed with everyone I connect to and everyone they’re connected with.

I realize it probably isn’t as extreme as I’m making it above, but you can’t tell me there’s not a LOT to think about as we all feverishly spotweld ourselves together. Spot welds might be weak bonds, but they’re bonds nonetheless.

As that EKG of this spotwelding frenzy of activity settles into a weak pulse, my question is: Is there a sleeper cell of good fortune or big trouble forming out there for me? And if it comes, will the bond be strong enough to take advantage of it, or weak enough that I can get away from it if I want to?

This inquiring mind wants to know.

The World Needs Fewer Digital Evangelists

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While shoveling the driveway this wintery morning I was musing on the number of ‘digital evangelists’I know. This got me to thinking about the term ‘evangelist’. Of course it’s tied to religion and has associated with it images of faith healers and stadium-sized ministries. Many religious evangelists speak of Creationism and Intelligent Design. They disdain theories of evolution or inquiries of science that aim to explain those phenomenon they believe to be the work of a higher power.

Most popular religious evangelists are of extreme faith. It is all consuming. And of course, it you don’t share their faith, there is great judgement.

To that end, I think ‘digital evangelists’are as potentially dangerous as the religious sort. They too have extreme (and in my opinion, blinding) faith in new technologies. Using blogs and other channels they try to build stadium-sized ministries of believers. They assume, as do religious evangelists, that everyone is or wants to be like them. Convinced they have an insight into a ‘universal truth’they are compelled to preach it to the lost masses around them.

Digital evangelists are also of extreme faith. It too is all consuming. And of course, if you don’t share their faith, you are judged to be an unenlightened Luddite.

But like Intelligent Design, digital evangelists tend to select small pieces of information, often provided by sympathetic sources, which they present in a manner that supports an idea they hold to be true.

In terms of the adoption, usage and impacts of digital social media, I have found it exceedingly difficult to find simple statistics these days. There is no shortage of hype or exaggeration. There is an avalanche of hyperbole and plenty of ‘sponsored’survey information, but there are no (that I could find) readily available attempts at scientific rigor.

Where are the seekers of contrarian information? Where are the myth busters and devil’s advocates (to use a religious allusion)? Where are the academic, unbiased, reasoned inquiries into exactly how all this new-fangled technology is impacting us?

For example, we’ve had RSS for years, and yet its very hard to find statistics as to how many people a.) know what it is b.) know how to configure it and c.) use it in any meaningful way.

Similarly, Twitter, Second Life, Facebook, and Delicious all receive volumes of press, speculation and evangelical froth, but it is very hard to find attempts at objective analysis of the usage patterns of these technologies. (Obviously you can’t take the company’s self-published information at face value.)

Without knowing for sure how people are using the technologies we already have, are we well-informed enough to improve on them?

Does anyone know an academic institution applying scientific rigor to the study of the use of social media among differing ethnic and socio-economic groups? I would be very interested to hear about this. Most of what I find readily available is either sponsored (and therefore immediately suspect) or purely opinion dressed up in scientific language (a la ‘Intelligent Design’).

The world needs fewer digital evangelists and more digital scientists.

Off-switchless.

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I’ve only gotten to write about this today, but its something I’ve been thinking about for some months now. With the iPhone my iPod application really has no ‘off’switch. It’s always there, and only needs to know whether to play or not to play (how Shakespearean).

As a human interacting with the device I noticed a brief adaptation interval pass in my mind. Ultimately, I like the efficiency of not fiddling with on/off options, but I did note my own pause, literally phone in hand, to adjust to this concept.

This leads me to an idea I’ve had brewing for some time now. My college mentor and I would often discuss the huge shifts happening in the world as technology is introduced to society. For example, on the one hand we have people controlling their media intake like never before. We’re literally 100% in charge of the media we consume. That’s huge both on our personal ability to grow and broaden our horizons and in terms of the havoc its creating in the advertising and entertainment industries. We’re talking billion of dollars of havoc. And a lot of jobs lost and company’s restructured. Big, big stakes here.

But, it also happened with barely a noticeable ripple in the lives of we people using these technologies. We all adapted pretty quick to the TV remote, the VCR, the DVD, TiVo, on-demand media, the Internet, TV on the Internet, social media, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe we had a brief pause like the one I had with the iPod app on my phone, but we basically took hold of the new technology, charged on with life, and never looked back.

This is amazing (and possibly a little troubling). On the one hand, entire business models are undermined, and social structures (like courtship in the case of social media) are transformed. On the flipside, people just sort of say, “hey, cool”, and move on integrating this incredible (and to businesses, highly disrupting) technology into their lives.

Now think about all the things we interact with daily. Think about how seamlessly we engage with new media, new ideas, new ways of thinking, new cultures, new art forms, etc. Many we’d never have occasion to contact even 20 years ago. It’s right here in front of our keyboards. And its happening on a global scale.

Who knows what tectonic shifts are really taking place, we’ve not had enough time to learn and it doesn’t seem anyone creating the technologies is pausing to think about it. We humans just adapt and integrate as the trappings of our world (businesses, culture) feel the aftershocks.

Now, lest I come off a Luddite, I believe that by and large most of these innovations are positive and for the better of us all – personally, culturally and economically. But I think there are growing pains to be experienced in the process, and opportunities for abuses as well. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder what the limit of the human mind’s ability to adapt is. How fast can we cope with change? Future Shock to a swipe at this 3+ decades ago. I’m sure more people have since. It’s an important question.

I once read an article where the microwave was blamed for undermining the family dinner. Silly on the one hand. Some ‘truthiness’to it on the other. And regardless, what has the impact been on families that are spending less time talking to each other over dinner?

Exactly.