Monthly Archives: March 2004

the freaks of san francisco

An old friend came to visit me this weekend. ::bounce::bounce:: She’s one of those people who i see as exceptionally similar to me. Overeducated, always thinking about issues of privilege, activist, queer, etc. We both came from the hippie-esque world of the coops.

Anyhow, we spent a few hours wandering around the Mission and it was such an eye-opener. She was so viscerally aware of the elements of CITY and of San Francisco in particular. She’s living in a town that looks like something Disney would create. She’s not blonde, not rich, not a prep, not a surfer; she’s an outright freak there. But she’s there because she’s kicking ass on the international activist scene and that’s where she needs to be right now. But talking to her made me really reflect on how much i value San Francisco.

I’m not a freak here. No matter what i wear, i will run into someone with a crazier outfit. And it doesn’t matter anyhow. My sexuality is also not a big deal. It is so strange to be in an environment where the straight folks are more tolerant of queerness than the gay folks. But again, no big deal. Whenever i want to meet new interesting people, it’s possible. In fact, there are so many intriguing people that i want to get to know, but just haven’t because of time restrictions on my part. I can see art events whenever i want; i can go dancing whenever i want. There are cool bookstores and clothing shops and street life.

I just received a note from a 15 year old somewhere in “WASP suburbia.” She wrote to tell me about how she’s tormented by kids at school, about how the administration does nothing to help, about how valuable the Internet was for finding people like her. I totally get where she’s at. When i was living elsewhere, i always felt so out of place and relied on technology to meet people more like me. But the funny thing about San Francisco is that i’m finally in a place where there are more intellectual freaks/geeks in everyday life than i ever found online.

I just had two different friends leave SF because they *hated* it. I still haven’t been able to squelch my immediate visceral response: how do i like you??? is there something about you that i don’t know about yet? ::laugh:: But seeing my beloved city through a friend’s eyes was so refreshing. I am so thankful for living here. For having 85 degree days in March. For having so many freaks, geeks, and queers that i can just be me and stop trying to exacerbate or repress my identity for others.

It’s funny because people have pointed out that i rarely write about personal identity struggles anymore. I used to write long rants about them. At first, i thought maybe it’s because my blog went a bit off the professional deep end. But then i realized that it’s because i’m actually doing AOK with who i am these days. Seeing my friend and hearing from a youth in suburbia is a clear reminder of how lucky i am. And for that i am very thankful on this Spring Solstice Eve.

trying out ecto

Trying to post from Ecto to my blog. I love the idea of being able to blog offline and just upload.

Although i have a feeling that this might also encourage me to revert to writing more semi-personal entries… It reminds me so much of my LJ days. Hmm… Is that a good thing?

visual representations of SXSW

OK. That is a fanstatically entertaining representation of the echo chamber. ::giggle::

Of course, someone pointed out to me that in both of my panels, the phrase “So, i have to disagree with X” was quite common. Still, i totally love this.

Abrams at SXSW: the MP3

I now have an MP3 of Abrams’ talk at SXSW. (Thanks Tom Chi!!)

It was actually really really good to listen to it again. Since i was so frustrated by the first time, my expectations were really low this time (as opposed to my high hopes before). This meant that i listened and ignored all of the places where i disagreed with him and focused on the fun anecdotes. There are many fun anecdotes embedded into the talk and that was good to listen for. If i had time, i’d go through and challenge different parts of the talk. That said, most of my disagreements are philosophical. For example, i don’t believe that the social awkwardness in Friendster is parallel to social awkwardness in everyday life. There are new issues and those must be addressed.

But anyhow, i wanted to pull out the section that really got my goat the other day.

“We’re all sick of the social networking thing”

Ryze: “It was a business networking site…” When he thought of Friendster, it wasn’t about dating. “I wanted to build a mainstream service. I thought… this isn’t business networking… this is *social* networking. Friends, dating, anything to do with that kinda of stuff. So that’s how i thought of the term social networking.”

Other people thought of businessy things… “And now there’s this whole kind of thing where people are talking about social networking. And they’re referring to any service or site that has these similar concepts.” Like Spoke…. “This is salesforce enterprise software deal – really quite different.” “And now they’re calling this a space.”

So, the problems are two-fold. First is the visceral response that i got when Abrams so casually described how he found the term social networking in his creative efforts. He then goes on to assumed a shared understanding of the term he’s adopted and is upset because everyone else is talking about social networks. He suggests that they are doing something very different to what Friendster is doing and that they should not be considered social networks.

When Spoke talks about social networks, they are actually using the term *far* more accurately to its definition than Friendster. People use their social networks to do business; social networks are about people and relationships, not simply networks that are used for social events. What makes Spoke far closer to the target is the fact that they are deriving behavior-based social networks instead of relying on people articulating them. Thus, they are actually representing social networks, not performance.

As i think about this, the reason that this got my goat was because it is a repurposing of a term that has lots of history and value because Abrams thought that he was the first to come up with it and capitalize on it. The most insulting part is that Abrams critiques sites using social networks to complete other tasks because they aren’t doing exactly what he did. These sites are not simply social networks by self-definition only; those of us on the outside saw them as such too. Take Ryze. Ryze isn’t business networking… it’s social networking for a business context. This section makes Abrams come across as ignorant. And that’s quite disappointing.

(de)wiring question

I have a little Mac and a really nice stereo with speakers. I keep meaning to buy long wires to connect the two so that i can spit out iTunes. But, is there any way to do this remotely in some fun configuration that i know nothing about? Like little Bluetooth devices that would make my stereo a wee bit smarter? Or?

Friendster usability analysis

Wow. This is quite old, but it is *fantastic*. Apparently, a whole class at MIT analyzed for their midterm and were asked to “… identify three usability problems with Friendster and write instructions to their programmers on how to fix them.” Needless to say, they have a lot of thoughts on the matter.

How fascinating is it that people all over the world, in classes and personally, are putting thought into solving Friendster’s problems?

[Thanks Jason]

my talks at SXSW

I did actually talk at SXSW. I’m so bad about posting recaps of what i talk about. But here’s a short overview.

Panel 1: Blogging Next: Where Personal Publishing Goes From Here [w/ Justin Hall and Anil Dash]

The only thing i remember talking about was the importance of storytelling in blogs. People want a way to share their stories with their friends and their future. They want to do so in a way where they can control the vulnerabilities that they’re faced with. We can tell people to get over the public/private concern until we’re blue in the face and it’s never going to work. People don’t get that public means persistent/searchable and they don’t get how they’re going to feel about this data in the future. It’s like asking Derrida to imagine IM when he talks about the differences between writing and speaking in the 70s. Never gonna happen. People don’t conceptualize this future, especially not when they’re 15 and trying to figure out their identity by screaming to the world “look at me!!” We all regret that. Luckily most of us don’t have it on record.

Jason Calcanis: Entry 1 — Entry 2

Fast Company (transcript)

Panel 2: The Aesthetics of Social Networks (with Jon Lebkowsky, Molly Steenson, Honoria Starbuck)

I brought up the Kant/Nietzsche approach that the only aesthetically pleasing thing is that which represents ourselves. I showed pretty pictures of Visual Who, Social Network Fragments and BuddyZoo. I talked about how people wanted to see themselves represented in relation to those that they knew. Articulated vs. behavior driven networks. Social networks stemming from anthropology and kinship networks. YASNS and the tendency to represent ourselves in context of friends… our representation being affected by our friends (including Clay turning me into a porn queen).

Fast Company (transcript)

I’m sure i babbled more; send me links if you blogged it.