Author Archives: zephoria

Scoping “Social Tools”

[From OM]

I’ve never enjoyed coming up with pithy terms, labels or titles. While i loathe this form of production, i recognize that articles need a title and a phenomenon needs a label. We need common language to talk particular issues or sites. For this reason, i have acquiesced to the term “social tools” even though my deconstructionist tendencies cringe at the limitations of this particular term.

Instead of deconstructing the term, which will inevitably lead to dismissal, i think that it would be proper to begin this project by scoping what i believe we are addressing. I would like to begin by scoping “social tools” in the context of this blog’s intentions. Perhaps doing so will provide a framework for future discussions or at least articulate the boundaries that i will use in constructing my posts.

Let me begin by acknowledging that this term has striking parallels in intention and consideration to “social software.” For this reason, i think that it might be prudent to consider Christopher Allen’s attempt to trace the evolution of the term, my concerns with the term, and Clay’s disagreement with me. This should provide the right amount of angst and echo-chamber behavior to begin. Now let’s add the positivist spin.

When one is social, one is inevitably interacting with other people, whether they are intimate friends or strangers. Sociability may include (non)verbal communication, shared behaviors, movements towards community creation or productions that lead to the creation and maintenance of a society. To be social is not simply to communicate, but to engage in practices dedicated that will affect the relationship between people.

Social tools (or software, technologies) are fundamentally the tools dedicated to helping people be social. Tools for instant messaging, blogging, emailing, social networking, photo-sharing are all tools to help people be social. One could argue that tools that help people create content generally may help them in sociability. For example, if emacs helps me build software that … I respectfully disagree with this approach. In scoping social tools, i am only interested in the tools that not only allow for and encourage sociability, but are designed for such. Furthermore, social tools are seen by their participants as first about sociability and second about content production. Of course, there are always exceptions – there are certainly bloggers who have no intention of being sociable. For this reason, i see social tools as a radial category and i am only interested in the prototypical tools and behaviors. When appropriate, i will address the non-prototypical cases, but that is not going to be my emphasis.

There are a series of features that many prototypical social tools have: – textual, audio or visual communication capabilities – opportunity for identity formation and projection (not limited to profiles) – social networking (exposed or unexposed, articulated or behavioral) – “speaker”/audience relationships (and thus, power dynamics)

In most social tools, the content might be the most visible production, but for most participants, it is these features that motivate participation, as these allow for sociable interaction. These are also the features that signify the context in which content production is occurring. For this reason, my posts will be centered on these features first, the social tools’ participants second and the actual technologies third.

the mourning after

I voted in SF before heading to LA to watch the returns with Justin, Mary, Barlow and Friendz. As the night progressed, depressing returns made it hard to engage. I watched Jon Stewart instead.

I went to USC where i ended up in an intersection with ecstatic Bush/Cheney fans celebrating. Onlookers hung their heads or scowled at their audacity, shocked at their value system. I just started crying. I boarded the plane which was on its second leg with folks from Ohio, Move On folks were on board, somber.

DNA sampling deteriorating innocence until proven guilty, institutionalized homophobia, a country divided. This land is not my land. The free are no longer home here and what does braveness have to do with war?

My friend Jo Guldi sent the following to me this morning. I thought it would be good to share.

In one of those sunset-rosy history-channel specials, the imperially-jawed Simon Schama says that in the 1930s the British could see the specter of history stalking among them like a wooly mammoth, parading down the streets of London, as soldiers and civilians blinked and realized that their world had changed.

The fairy-tale beast doesn’t belong among most Americans. Maybe some people always know what this beast of history is. Children of immigrants and journalists, children of politicians, children born in revolutions or depressions have prescient intuitions of change as children born in leafy suburbs never do.

I saw the beast of history for the first time last night. It was slinking through our electric city of San Francisco, marking the doors of hipsters and intellectuals with ram’s blood.

They didn?t know it; by morning many of them were back to talking about ideals that had to come true, even if it takes a hundred years: gay marriage, a multiple party system. No, my darling angel-haired idealists, those days are over. Your parents and grandparents fought for pluralism and civil rights. Your own children will inevitably be able to marry their gay lovers. But this is not the time. What passed in front of us was ever so much more complicated.

Hold on for a moment and tell yourself that you’re still in the same world. The slant of light across the electric stove where my teakettle sits will return tomorrow. The bad man in the white house can’t do that much, even in another four years.

But what happened last night was that the last feather of hope floated away. The last soft imagination that we had just enough consensus in this country to fix the forces that are pulling us apart, gone. Common sense isn’t going to triumph over sentimentality and melodrama. Neither security nor intelligence nor welfare are going to be fixed; all will be handed over to the security billionaires of San Diego and the economists in the pay of DC.

Do you remember the towers going down? The freshmen in college this year don’t; they were fourteen and barely paying attention. But in the cities, the urban youth in their twenties and thirties remember wondering what had happened, remember waking and getting a cup of coffee and first seeing the frozen looks on the faces of strangers, then the terrible faces, then the reports and months of analysis. Something had started then that wouldn’t finish for a long time.

And yet for those years there was a possibility of it turning into something else, less destructive; a chance to reach across the aisle to the other party, a chance to reconnect across America, a chance to reapproach the problems of global poverty that lead people in strange lands to become terrorists; a chance to reaccount Israel: all of this was possible.

But for four years none of these rifts of possibility turned out anything better than the grim world from which they had come. And still, resentment and anger and hope brewed across the country. Watching from the coasts, we were convinced by the Michael Moores and Deaniacs and the force of our deepest desires that something could be done.

But I assure you that it cannot, now. Not after the dark noises I heard winding through the streets last night. On the West Coast we watched as polls closed in waves, the shadow of night spreading across the country, until we in California should have been the last. As the lines continued to stand in Florida and Ohio, as newscasters measured the possibility of any Democratic chance remaining. But it was too late to influence anything. We sat around with glasses of Cabernet in a warehouse by the ocean, watching DC and New York reporting on New Mexico and Oregon, feeling horribly like it was too late. Now neither the church, nor ideology, nor science, nor economics, nor foreign policy, nor pressure, nor hope, nor organization could save us. No angry Marxist professors, no brilliant editorials in the Times could reach what needed to be reached.

The beast of history is in. Lovers in each others’ arms, wake up and look. Poets and anarchists, put down your pens. Stop all the clocks, put down the indy rock music, stop reading psychology. Move to Vancouver or Paris. Get a degree in political science or advertising or business. Because whatever we were doing isn’t working, and the deadline is past. If there were a practical way to build something out of what has happened, we’d turn to that, but the moderate conservatives have already been exiled from Washington, and none of our friends will have influence for a long time yet. What has happened is too big for us, too big for our loose ideas of a hundred-year-plan for peace and happiness. There is no more road by which to get there: the storm of the last four years has swept it away, and the wind in the street last night blew out our last bridge to safety.

All day long I had been praying, calming myself with old psalms about how the universe was all one, how God had made it, all of its corners and controversies, how providence would follow us all the way through the shadow of darkness. When I woke up this morning the only psalm I could remember was this one: Lord teach my fingers to make battle, and my hands to make war.

Vote!

I will be voting tomorrow morning. I realize this election is going to be absurd, but i feel as though it is my duty as a patriot to cast my ballot. I hope everyone else who has the privilege to vote in this country takes that responsibility seriously. What we do here will affect us and the world we live in for years to come. It is a pity that so few people stand up for their values and beliefs. My hope is that everyone who can will join me in voting tomorrow, in saying that our future does matter to us.

If you witness any trouble at any voter center, call 866-OUR-VOTE to report it.

I support John Kerry. (See Technorati).

Happy Birthday Internet

The Internet turns 35 today. I have the fortunate position of being the youngest speaker to present at the Birthday Party. I spoke about what it meant to grown up with the Internet being a given and what it is that youth are doing with the tool today.

It’s amazing to sit in a room full of people who completely revolutionized my life and those of my peers and of the generations to come. Being here has reminded me of how much we have taken this technology for granted. The stories have been beautiful, full of the chaotic process of creation, including crashes.

Happy birthday Internet… we’re glad you’re alive and well.

Secret Service follow up on LiveJournaler

Apparently, anniesj wrote an anti-Bush post on her LJ. Someone else on LJ reported this to the FBI and the nice Secret Service people showed up at her door. While they didn’t arrest her, she now has a record. She documents the full situation on her LJ.

People often ask me why i’m opposed to sousveillance. I believe that giving everyone the right to surveillance will not challenge those in power who have such ability. I believe that it will legitimize them. Furthermore, i believe that people will use the power of surveillance to maintain the status quo. Worse, i believe that it will be used to create more hate, distrust and fear. Sousveillance in the hands of the masses will not be used to challenge authority because most people believe in the legitimacy of that authority, whether it be corporations or the government. Furthermore, they believe they should fear when those authorities tell them that they should fear everyone. Even when they are not told, when the media consistently reports on all the terrible things that individual Islamic people do, they believe that they should fear all Islamic people. Fuck Brin. A transparent society would mean complete marginalization of already oppressed peoples in this country.

peculiar synchronicity

After work, i stopped by to see a friend. We talked at length about research and she told me that i needed to track down a NYTimes Magazine article from about two years ago that discusses the Pro-Ana community. She thought i’d find that report fascinating.

I went home, poured some OJ and picked up the magazine on the top of the magazine stack to read some non-theory before going to bed. On the top of the stack was a NYTimes Magazine with a discussion of the architectural replacements for the WTC site. I groaned since this was one of the topics in my theory reader that i was avoiding. I noted it that it was an older Magazine, thought it odd to be on the top of our stack, put it down and went to bed.

My roommate woke me this morning when the cable modem guys came. He said that it was really strange that there was an old NYTimes Magazine in the kitchen. I told him i’d seen in too. I poured some cereal and picked up the same Magazine, avoiding the cover story. The first page i turned to after the cover story was the Pro-Ana story.

I didn’t live in that house on the date it was printed. No one in that house at that time had a subscription to the NYTimes. I had cancelled my subscription to the NYTimes after their dreadful coverage of Afghan bombing. We only have about 4 other NYTimes Magazines in that stack. Strange strange strange.

revisiting Walmart and Starbucks Nation

Liz revisited my Walmart/Starbucks Nation piece. In doing so, she reminded me that this piece failed to make its point. So i thought that i’d retry.

1. Both rural areas and cities have brands that they ascribe to; these are very different brands. There is a bi-directional disdain for the brands of the other group. Certainly, the brands bleed into both regions, but those brands tend to resemble certain class/regional expectations. Yes, i can get to a Walmart somewhere in the Bay Area, but i see a Starbucks on every corner. I’m always humored when my city friends go home to their parents and bitch because they can’t find a Starbucks. These are the same people (self included) who groan at the ever-present obviousness of Walmart.

2. Consistency of brands allows for easy mobility between regions. At this point, suburbia in most regions resembles the suburbia in other regions, provided that we’re talking about the same socio-economic level. Cities start to bleed together (and god knows airports do). What keeps most of this consistent has to do with brands. No matter where you go, you can find the Walmart/Starbucks of your choice. This provides for security in the shifting.

3. The tendency of city people is to critique the brands in the rural areas AND vice versa. There is a great article in my reader from a Kansas paper bitching about those Starbucks people. What i was trying to do was expose my own bias while realizing that there are branding wars on both sides. I have immediate disdain over Walmart, thinking that i have choice, but realizing that i live in a culture that moves from Starbucks to Safeway.

3. Historically, the image of the rural area was precisely what Liz is getting at – beautiful houses, streets with sidewalks, community. For most of the country, i don’t think this is as true as it was 20 years ago, mostly because of the consumption culture that is present. It certainly isn’t true where i grew up. When you don’t go to the corner store, you don’t talk to everyone in that small geographic region. When you go to the Safeways, you do your shopping without a community (unless we’re talking the Castro Safeway). Big corporate shopping institutions become very de-personalized, very anti-community in all regions. There’s often talk about how people in cities don’t know their neighbors; it saddens me that this is spreading.

4. My concern over consumption culture is connected to my concern over this election. There is a divide in this country and it falls along city/rural lines (with the suburbs trapped in the middle). When i’m visiting Walmart Nation, i’m visiting predominantly red nation. When i’m in Starbucks Nation, i’m visiting predominantly blue nation. It’s unbelievable because it is both a class and regional division that has resulted in entirely different lifestyles. It’s even more painful because historically the rural areas were as Democratic as it gets; today they side with the wealthiest Americans under the pretense that they have the same values.

More than anything though, the moral division in this country is branded on all sides. We have companies that cater to each of our values. They’ve figured out how to identify with us so that we’ll identify with them. Rural America used to pride itself on mom & pop everything, but that’s no longer the case.

My post was not supposed to be a judgment against rural/suburban culture. It was intended as an exposure of my own biases as i evened the playing field in conversation. I life in a “lifestyle consumption” culture which is just as despicable as a “bargain shopping” culture – they both play into the desires of corporate consumptions by playing on the moral views of two different groups.

Anyhow, i hope that clarifies what i was getting at.

eminem’s mosh

Eminem’s video for his new song Mosh brings me to tears. Regardless of what anyone things of Eminem, i’ve always loved his willingness to fight, to be resistant to contemporary society even while being framed as mainstream. This video, put out by the Guerrilla News Network shows the anger and frustration of poor and marginalized populations, upset with Bush for the way that he’s destroyed the fabric of this country. It is a call to action, urging people to get out and vote. It is a rhythmic composition of completely radical and political rhetoric. It is a call to action for youth and for the disenfranchised. I sure hope that the youth get out to vote this time. They need to stand up for themselves before they become yet another group abused by this regime.

Update: The lyrics are in the extended entry for those who want to know what is being said.

Continue reading →

educating ourselves

When i moved to CA, i was startled by the absurd number of Propositions. So, as an excuse to see some friends that i haven’t seen as a while, i brought 25 people to my house tonight to discuss the ballot. Everyone had researched an issue so we took turns explaining the pros/cons of each Proposition, joking around, and drinking whenever Starchild’s name was invoked. It felt good to be more informed as a voter and to have the opportunity to share amongst friends. A further plus is that we spent a night in political discourse without any fights breaking out. Everyone was conscious to present both sides of the argument instead of demanding solidarity in voting.

I strongly encourage other Californians to gather their friends for an evening of discussing the different issues. It’s a great opportunity for socializing and engaging in civic responsibility. For those in SF, there’s a ballot party at Commonwealth tonite, the 27th – it will be an opportunity to learn the different sides.

Also, if you’re in California and you’re supposed to vote on an electronic machine, ask for a paper ballot in case of recall. They are required by law to let you vote on paper, but they won’t give you the choice. Check out this animation: Paper or Plastic.

structured procrastination

I hate cleaning my room, but it is wonderfully clean for the first time in months. Why? Because i have a two mile long To-Do list that makes me shudder. Reading email is no longer a procrastination devices for me because it is full of stressful reminders of what i haven’t done. So, it is on the to-do list. Thankfully, in blog procrastination, i found an essay on Structured Procrastination, kindly validating my procrastinating tendencies. (Tx Caterina)