Author Archives: zephoria

The Year in Phrases: Friendster

While i don’t have a lot of respect for Fox News, i’m quite humored that they included metrosexuals and Friendster in their year in phrases:

Friendster: Like an online dating site … but for friends. The site allows people to form networks with their friends, their friends’ friends and so on, and is largely used as a hook-up vehicle for single, urban 20-somethings. Several celebrities have confessed to being Friendster addicts, and the site was so popular this year that it was often impossible to sign on.

competition vs. collaboration: events, people & ideas

An old lover of mine once told me that there are people who talk about events, people who talk about people and people who talk about ideas. Combine this with collaboration vs. competition and here is another set of axes along which we can consider bloggers.

A friend of mine conveyed a story to me of an incident when he and another pundit blogger were talking about a concept. Suddenly, they both had a look in their eyes, read clearly by each other as a battle cry to see who could blog about it first. Time and trackbacks are the classic weapons used by pundit idea bloggers. They want to get their ideas out there, validated and linked to. The pundit blogger is competing for attention, for validation, for uniqueness.

The sociable blogger talking about life is not in a race against time or for greater trackbacks. S/he knows that there are a million different perspectives, all of which are valuable. There is no one truth, only opinions. What makes an event or a person or an idea more valuable in this community is that variety of different opinions on the matter, the variety of different perspectives. Together, as a community, this brings life to something.

There are two different ways to talk about events, people and ideas and you see this played out by bloggers. Some events are discussed because each parrt of the community wants to bring life to their perspective on the matter. Nowhere is this more true than something that affects everyone differently. Take 9/11. Everyone blogged/journaled about it, each with their own voice. What was powerful was to get a fleshed out view of the event from so many different perspectives. Some events are published in competition. How many bloggers do you know who speak of a private event to prove that they were there, to draw attention to their status?

There are a variety of reasons for which bloggers talk about people. Bloggers show their respect and adoration through links to other people (or their ideas). Bloggers compete with others through similar mechanisms. In some cases, bloggers mock others to prove their self-importance, to increase their stature. The list can go on and is awefully similar to RL. Just as we name-drop in RL, we name drop on blogs.

Then there are ideas…. Blogs are a public forum. For some, they are a publishing forum. As such, people want their ideas to be unique and first. For others, it is a space to flesh out ideas and thus they put their ideas out there to be discussed, improved upon and dissected. Others put their ideas out there to help shape other known theories. The latter two approaches are collaborative while the first is very much competitive.

Anyhow, cross collaboration vs. competition with events, people and ideas and you have an interesting lens through which to consider different blog posts. Of course, most bloggers cannot be simply labeled as competitive or collaborative, but a combination of both. Still, there are trends, and this helps explain some blogging habits.

die puny technologists

On Die Puny Humans, a selection of folks have created statements for 2004. I was pleasantly surprised to read Cory Doctorow’s call to the toolmakers of 2004:

Stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations (“A total stranger asserts that he is your friend: click here to tell a reassuring lie; click here to break his heart!”) (“Someone you don’t know very well has invited you to a party: click here to advertise whether or not you’ll be there!”) (“A ‘friend’ has exposed your location, down to the meter, on a map of people in his social network, using this keen new location-description protocol — on the same day that you announced that you were leaving town for a week!”). I don’t need more “tools” like that, thank you very much.

Now, i don’t know much about science fiction, but i read it once in a while to understand the models that technologists are trying to mimic. When i asked Cory about the relationship between scifi and technology, he told me that scifi is not supposed to be prescriptive. Scifi is modeled after what exists today and is not a representation of the future. Quite often, very little in the way of technology is fully fleshed out. In this regard, he’s quite accurate. Even his own Whuffie (which i hear about in way too many meetings on reputation) is barely detailed in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.” Still, while scifi shouldn’t be prescriptive, many technologists interpolate the ideas presented and flesh it out to be beyond problematic. Often, they have the nerve to refer to the fiction books as their model for why it is a good idea.

Given his role as a science fiction writer, i’m quite pleased to see him call out to technologists. All too often, the omniscient technologies that appear in the science fiction novels are not representations of good things, but embedded in a discussion of the pros/cons of changing social interaction through technology. Take Cory’s Whuffie and his examples of people scorning others because they are not worthy enough of interaction. C’mon now. All of us geeks have experienced a form of that, being chastised for not being cool enough, good looking enough, whatever enough. Why on earth would we want to develop a technology that encourages that? Oh, right, because if _we_ build it, we can be the ones in power, right? Hrmfpt. Seriously now, such a creation creates a whole new level of social awkwardness, new hierarchies that constrain us. Just because it’s an idea for a novel does not make it an idea for life.

So, in fleshing out Cory’s call to technologists, i’d ask all technologists to consider not only what problems a technology solves, but what new ones could emerge. Start thinking like a writer or an abuser of technology. Imagine how people could misuse a technology to hurt others. Consider who gains and loses power from such technology. It’s a fascinating exercise and far more fulfilling than just thinking about who benefits from something. And besides, then you won’t always be thinking “but the users shouldn’t do THAT with this technology.”

inappropriate blogging

As i meet more and more of the uber-bloggers, i continue to get more horrified as they play out their catty games in a public forum. It’s one thing to critique a product, an idea, someone’s politics and philosophies. It’s another thing to pull up private matters into a public forum or to mock people’s struggles to overcome their own self-defeating habits. What’s worse is that i watch bloggers write this material to elevate their own position in the eyes of the person they are mocking. So counterproductive and insulting.

I’ve been trying to tease apart the difference between LJ folks and the uber bloggers (particularly those who blog about people, not simply ideas/links). At first, i thought it had to do with content, but the more i think about it, the more i think it has to do with audience. At this point, i expect journalers to talk about their STDs, their cheating, their love life and all other made-for-Jerry-Springer content. But i expected public bloggers who make a name out of blogging to be a bit more sophisticated. Unfortunately, their content is often just as catty, only its self-importance tries to make it seem otherwise. The bloggers want the whole world to see their opinion of other bloggers… so that the hierarchy is created publicly. Thus, rather than just creating personal content for friends, the bloggers are going for others’ public throats.

Erg. I’m a bit too cranky from reading my RSS feed this morning. Of course, here i am, feeding into the flurry by talking about what i observed in a meta-fashion. I just don’t feel right directly pointing at people. But seriously, if you read this and you write about other people, think about it for a moment. Get out of the “this is truth” mentality and really question how others might read what you just said. Is it really necessary to lambast people’s personal shit on a blog meant for the world to see? It makes me cringe and it’s not even about me!