I’m very much looking forward to a conference this weekend in San Francisco, called PlaNetwork: Networking a Sustainable Future. I’m a big fan of any network research that is created to be socially beneficial. And i was even more fascinated when i saw a paper entitled The Augmented Social Network: Building Identity and Trust Into the Next-Generation Internet that will be presented there.

This paper argues for many of the thoughts that i have addressed (in my thesis most notably). In particular, they address an intelligent way to do identity management in a socially conscious way; they address the value of social networks when personally managed; and most importantly, they frame all of their arguments in the idea that you don’t change social norms, you build technology to help people be social in the way that they see fit. It’s a fabulous paper and i cannot wait to discuss it further this weekend.

Despite my distaste of clubs, i had to break down to see my favorite DJ and i had a nice little mindshift, where i just wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way of me having fun and bouncing crazily. With this mindset, i went all the way up front and actively demanded dancing space and disregarded any stupidity from the people around me (like the guy who thought to grind me from behind who i elbowed with joy in a flaling dance move). In the process, one guy smiled at me and started dancing goofily. After a bit, i kindly told him that i wasn’t interested but that i was having fun dancing and that i hope that he wasn’t hurt by this. He was disappointed but tried to keep dancing anyhow. Apparently, he wrote to Missed Connections on Craigslist and i have to admit that his note makes me smile:

Desert Storm fatigues at Infected Mushroom

You really are a kickass dancer! I keep thinking today the classiness with which you handled my advance. That was very cool. Everyone should be that cool. Hope you had a great evening…

Positive feedback for a needed shift in consciousness.

I ran into an old article from the NYTimes:

Patrick Coston has been keeping lists of everyone he knows since he was 16 — and he’s now 39. Several years ago he consolidated his paper lists into one online file, making public a tabulation of “People I’ve Known in My Lifetime” (patcoston.com/home/people.htm). “It’s a way of helping me remember the past,” he said by e-mail.

I can’t help but think about the relevance of this to the HICSS paper that Fernanda and i’ve been working on. We realized that the power of our email visualizations was in part due to their power to operate as an artifact for storytelling, to provide a prop for one’s memory. In effect, the visualization serves as a tabulation of email relations. I have to wonder what it would mean to be such a Connector that one would do this.

Of course, it also reminds me of friends of mine who take pictures every day as records and other systematic means of marking time, place and people. Of course, the irony of Patrick’s system is that the public archive is tapped into search engines and thus helpful to a wider range of folks.

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Trepia seems to have hit my social network, as i’ve received like 10 messages about it this week. It has also hit the press. I signed up in beta form but i’m very weary of it. For starters (as i’ve noted before), i’m never a fan of software that requires me to give age and sex information. I understand it in dating software (i.e. Friendster), but for general purpose meeting, why is this information required? So, i just tend not to log in. At least with Friendster, i can keep a certain distance from the strangers that write to me; in Trepia, i know that there in close proximity to me and i really don’t want folks to know that. Or at least, i want to be able to control it in a safe manner. Hmm.. i need to think more about what Trepia makes me uncomfortable.