When i first read the cyberculture literature from the late 80s and early 90s, i was left with an impression that early social technology was all based on the assumption that everyone had multiple personality disorder. Worse: if you didn’t have it, it was going to give you MPD. There were even references to the idea that everyone was partially MPD. This was all wrapped up in the rhetoric of be whoever you want to be – race, sex, sexuality does not matter. I found it horrifying and my repulsion grounded my demand to separate between digital fragmented identity and the process of maintaining a faceted identity.

I have a funny feeling that social technology is back to developing software based on disorders and instigating new ones in people. Only, we’ve move away from schizophrenia and onto autism. Did you ever get the sneaking suspicion that this new wave of “social software” is not really making social life easier, but permitting the kind of social awkwardness that is recognized in Asperger’s?

I wonder if this is intentional or a by-product of the tech culture. I’ve been fascinated to see a strong increase in the publicity of autism and Asberger’s lately and an even more noticeable increase in the number of people mocking others’ autistic tendencies with respect to the lack of social appropriateness.

[also posted to many-to-many]

Update: followups from Weinberger and jluster

For those who are interested in the Gmail story, reading Tim O’Reilly’s essay is a must. By and large, i agree with him on the privacy issue. The only place where we diverge is that i don’t fully agree with: “No one is going to be forced to use gmail. If you don’t like ads in your mail, don’t use the service. Let the market decide.”

People will use Gmail because the incentives are high, but their participation in Gmail is not because the ads make them feel good or because they like ads in their mail. This goes back to my rants on the ickiness factor. Just because it’s being used doesn’t mean it’s being loved or even the right move…

First, i can’t help but laugh every time i hear the name G-Mail. It’s really the g dash that gets me. I spent years working on a site called the V-Spot. It was explicitly supposed to be directed down there. Well, G- to me automatically signifies the G-Spot. So every time i login, i giggle.

People truly have their panties in a bunch over G-Mail and this *kills* me. My favorite, as noted by master Heer, is that a California Senator is drafting legislation to stop Google. My roommate and i, who met when we were running a workshop on privacy, had a grand ole conversation about G-Mail today. Here’s where i stand.

On a technical level, Google is not doing anything more than any other free-mail site. They are searching through your email for keywords using automated robots only; spam filters on Hotmail and Yahoo do the same thing. The difference is what they do with that information. While spam filters just move your messages to a different directory, Google calculates a metric in which to automatically present you with ads. (For those who haven’t seen the ads, unlike banner ads, they’re uber small and so not invasive; in fact, i couldn’t find them at first.) By default, the ads are given to you and assuming you ignore them, the client knows nothing about you. If you click, it’s your prerogative and i still haven’t figured out what all ends up being sent. But Master Heer is correct – the cookies shit that Hotmail/Yahoo leave behind are *far* more invasive and you can’t get out of them simply by not clicking.

So, on a technical level, i don’t think that poorly of G-Mail. Then, there is the social level. Once again, Google has made me smack my hand to my forehead and scream up, praying to the goddesses to send them a few socially-minded people.

The hysteria should be a first good clue. It doesn’t matter that it’s less technologically invasive – it’s a fucking sociological terror. It makes you *FEEL* invaded, used, vulnerable. At least with banner ads, you can’t make any connections between the ad and your messages. You don’t feel icky. Of course, everyone felt icky when Amazon.com started announcing “Hello, danah” on their front doorstep. There’s a slight similarity here… Both Amazon and Google are making the fact that they have your data transparent to you, reminding you that you’re being watched. Both are using your data to sell you something. The difference is that you go to Amazon to shop… you go to Google to personally communicate. And you don’t want to feel invaded in that process. No one wants the feeling of Big Brother sitting around. And it doesn’t matter if that’s not true. If people _feel_ that way, it sucks. This is the point of a Panopticon. (If you don’t get this, read Bentham’s “The Panopticon Writings”… or, since that’s out of print, try “Discipline and Punish” by Foucault – a must read.)

A friend of mine at the EFF gave me a perfect example of why this makes people feel gross. Imagine that you’re talking about a sensitive topic with a loved one… Imagine that you’re talking about abortion or adoption. Can you imagine the ads that would come up and how you would feel? ::cringe::

My frustration is that people are talking about G-Mail as a privacy issue. This word is super super loaded (right Paul?). This isn’t a privacy issue. This is a vulnerability issue. This is an issue of how people _feel_ not what is actually going on and how it differs from other services. The fact that this feels more invasive is all that matters. If Google thinks that they can educate users, they’re probably in for a big surprise.

Note: That said, i truly believe that lots of people will sign up for G-Mail anyhow. Google appears far more trustworthy than Yahoo or MS. 1 Gig is a super incentive. And i’d bet that everyone screaming foul has their own domain, doesn’t use freemail and doesn’t get that most of the world will give up all of their data for the chance of winning a Porsche. That doesn’t make it right… and i truly hope that Google considers what it’s doing to its brand by this move. While it won’t impact the sign-up rates, i believe that the grossness will affect later inventions and diminish the “do no evil” tagline at Google.

Note 2: I’m definitely with Kevin that there are still too many outstanding questions. (Some of his have been answered here.)

I would love to opt out of Plaxo, but i can’t. People send me Plaxo requests to *so* many email addresses. And i have zero desire to go through and do each one. Unlike Joi, my complaint is not about the amount of work i’m asked to do. Hell, every few months, i send a spam to my friends saying that i lost/broke some technology and need numbers again. (I actually have most people’s numbers, but this way i get updates, birthdays and catch people who don’t send me info in previous times.)

My complaint with Plaxo is multi-faceted. One branch of it comes down to a complete lack of trust. It’s not that i don’t think that the organization isn’t trying to be privacy-centric. It’s that i think that any mass collection of information is inherently vulnerable. Shall we talk subpoenas?

But, frankly, the main branch of my complaint comes down to the lack of intimacy. Almost everyone who has ever sent me a Plaxo request is someone that i barely know. They have my email address and they want everything else. Channeling a friend, i can’t help but scream in a British accent with an obscene gesture, “well, fuck off.” If i don’t recognize someone’s name, why should i give them stalker material? There are different emails for different purposes. For example, the word melopy is an anagram for employ. That’s the address for recruiters. If you only have that address, you have no right to more information.

Finally, there’s a respect issue. I *hate* mass emails, ad-hoc mailing lists (even when i guiltily create one once a year). Turn that behavior over to a company and i hate it ten times more. There’s nothing personal. And i have too much email as it is. I find it lacking all respect. I find it to be disrespectful of my time, my privacy, my attention and me as a person. Anyone who sends me a Plaxo request falls deep into my pit of disrespect because they’re not being considerate of me.

Of course, i’ve come up with my own solution for this. When i get a Plaxo request, i always go and update my information. I remove as much as possible. And i change my address to a personalized address that goes directly to /dev/null. If the person is particularly unfamiliar (i.e. the melopy people), i will give them something fun like webmaster@plaxo.com. This has dramatically reduced the number of Plaxo messages.

On Craigslist, an angry seller declares his dos and don’ts. The post was marked best-of. This is a fascinating little piece to analyze. It’s an attempt to demand normative digital behavior.

– The writer is trying to demarcate his audience in a digital environment. What he is selling is meant for those in his region, but he cannot be sure that only those in his region get access to it, like he would if he posted it in a store. He’s upset because the broader readership wants him to expand his distance of distribution simply because they can read it.

– The writer assumes that there are commonly shared norms about the buying/selling process. He can only imagine that the reason people don’t get his norms is because they are foreign (revealing his xenophobia). This reminds me of road behavior. I have a socially constructed set of rules about how people should behave on the road and everyone else should’ve come to the same conclusions, even though they are not the same as the legal road rules.

– The writer attacks “cryptic messages” like: “i liek it plz can u do $5 lolz k.” He critiques this behavior using an anti-mentally handicapped slur. This is going to be a fascinating generational divide because SMS/IM-speak like this is just going to get more and more common.

– The writer attacks “girls” for using overly formatted emails. Here’s a cultural and generational divide. I’m still amazed at the messages i get from friends in Mexico. Flair, color and bouncing things are in.

– I don’t even know to begin to address “I hope your dick falls off. If you’re female, I hope you grow a big, beautiful black cock and it falls off and gets eaten by wolves before you have a chance to enjoy it.”

The whole thing boils down to “that is NOT HOW WE DO BUSINESS.” I find it utterly fascinating that this guy extends his practices out to everyone with such an irrate tone. Of course, it resonates with enough people to make it a best-of. What business practices are universal? What can we take for granted as we move into a worldwide commerce environment?

Must check out when i’m back in the States: dodgeball.com

Blogged: I think my ex’s online rantings are hurting my chances with other women. OMG… more humor.

I’ve heard people quote Viegas’ survey pretty regularly and i find the tendency to generalize quite dangerous. As she notes, this cannot be done because of the snowball methodology. Please note what she states in her caveats:

Respondents to this survey were not selected on a random basis. Announcements for the online survey were posted to mailing lists within MIT as well as on a few high-traffic blogs published by people known to the author of this survey. The viral nature of blogs meant that the links to the survey page quickly spread to many other blogs. Nevertheless, this does not qualify as a random sample of the blogger population and, as such, the results from this survey cannot be generalized to the entire blogging community; instead, these results are representative of the state of affairs in certain portions of the blogging world.

This pilot study is a great first pass at these questions… I really hope folks follow up on them rather than generalizing from them.

When i read an aversion to mail on Foe’s blog, it made me smile. And then i found myself repeating the story in diverse social settings all week. So it must be blogged cause i know this is something i’m going to want to re-read a few years from now.

“When he died, piles of letters, packages, and manuscripts sent by admirers were found, none of which he had opened. In fact, the only letters he did open were letters from publishers, and then only very cautiously: he would make a tiny slit in the envelope and then shake it to see if a check appeared. If it didn’t, then the letter would simply join all those other things that can wait forever.”

From an account of Faulkner in The Threepenny Review.

Like Foe, i despise the phone. With a passion. But i can’t say that i like mail that much more. In fact, i just got an email from a dear friend asking if i was going to attend her wedding. And i felt super uber guilty because i could bank money that her invitation was probably sitting in the pile of mail that i haven’t checked since November. It was. I rely on changing addresses so regularly that mail doesn’t follow. I read all of my bills online (i won’t sign up with anything that doesn’t have an online account system). I’ve also opened mail so late that the checks have expired. Then i feel stupid. Of course, that’s what direct deposit is for.

As i get older, i learn to despise all forms of mediated communication. The problem is that context is lost. When i look focused, my roommates know not to interrupt. With mediation, i can usually cue people that i can’t IM. But then there are the spammers. They’ve invaded. Every. Aspect. Of. Mediated. Communication. We’ve got the telemarketers and the junk mail. Email is crawling with them. I turned off SMS because of them. Hell, i have to do blog cleansing more often than car flyer cleansing these days.

The brilliant Master Shirky offers a stunning critique on the limitations of RELATIONSHIP (with clarifications).

Key Shirky views:
– “a formal and explicit ontology for human relations is unworkable”
– “most human relations cannot be made explicit without changing the nature of the relationship”
– terms for classifying relationships are unbounded (and hell, people can’t do do it anyway)
– FOAF developers can’t develop their own ontology because of their insider role

Not only do i agree his views on the matter, i think that they need to be affirmed. I’m also SUPER psyched that he referenced that AI debates because this historical precedent is crucial for understanding why so many of the discussions around social software are flawed.

I would also like to add a few additional points to why this problem is unsolvable:

Relationships are situated within a CONTEXT.

Think about the times when you’ve introduced somebody differently to different people. Here’s an example. Said to boss: “Alex is my friend.” Said to best friend: “Alex is this girl i’m fucking.” Said to mom: “Alex is this nice girl i’m dating.” Which is it? All? None? Context!

Another context: time. Your relationship with someone changes over time. Duh. But guess what? It also changes over local periods of time. For example, i can label the person in my kitchen right now as my ex. I can also label him as tonite’s chef. When i’m done with this entry, i’ll probably label him my confidante. His role is not consistent.

Relationships are defined by CULTURE; their types are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS.

The term “friend” means different things in different cultures. Hell, even the term cousin differs. In fact, if you want to have a field day, check out anthropology kinship research. For some cultures, what we might call “uncle” another culture would call “father” (an individual would have multiple fathers). To define a universal relationship structure is to project our cultural norms onto other peoples. Yet, without a universal structure, there’s no common language.

On a more personal level, how many of you have ever called your step-mum mum? Are you lying? How would you categorize her here? What about your adoptive mum? What are the implications for you, for her, for others? People label their step-mums and adoptive mums as mum as a social construct to indicate the value of the relationship, not simply a reflection of the biological term. Likewise, there’s nothing worse than telling someone “you’re just my step-mum” or “you’re not my real mother; you just adopted me.” What are the implications for using those terms in an ontology?

Relationships do not exist without POWER.

No relationship exists without power (see Foucault’s “History of Sexuality v1”). Power can be shared via turn-taking, but there is no such thing as pure equality in a relationship. There are times when one person has power over another; sometimes, the reverse is true. Relationships are a negotiated process.

While labeling some relationships, the power dynamic is unveiled. For example, i cannot be the mother of the person who is the mother of me. Inherently, there’s a mother/daughter relationship, marked explicitly by its power. Some such relationships are only 1-way: fan/stranger. The obsessed doesn’t know the obsessor.

Then there are the relationships that we’re determined to define equally. Friend-Friend. Do both people get the same thing out of the relationship? Does “Friend” mean the same thing to each person? Hell, think of all of your friends. Do you really mean the same thing when you label dozens of different people with that term? (If you do, please seek therapy.) We throw that word around because often the process of making explicit the power dynamic is neither socially acceptable nor something we want to own up to.

Relationships are often built on an undiscussed meeting of each other’s needs. “She’s my friend because she always gives me a ride home. In return, i listen to her bitching about her job.” Both people are getting something out of the relationship that they each need/want. It’s valuable to each of them, but neither really wants to make that explicit.

The best debate on this inevitably surrounds sex. Sex workers have the negotiation down. Money for sex. People may scoff at this explicit negotiation, but many of us have had sex for far less honorable reasons. Ever had sex with your lover so that s/he’ll go to sleep? Ever had sex to spite someone? To get what you want? Sexual relationships emerge from power dynamics. Rarely do people engage in sex for the exact same reason. To get off? To feel loved? To feel validated? The BDSM community recognizes this power dynamic and makes it explicit; most of us do not.

Given that most of us aren’t really able to address our power issues, how are we supposed to label them?

Update: Ideas Bazaar discusses this in terms of kinship terminology, anthro style. The focus is on lack of quality terminology. [via Foe]