2009
09.27
09.27
Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp 15-42.
Hand’s ‘dystopian narrative’ seems be one where new technologies provide government and big corporations an increasing level of access to your life and data. What he didn’t mention is the other new digital battlefront: the boundaries between friends and family online.
‘Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids’
‘Do you want to be my friend? Confirm or ignore?’
‘What he didn’t mention is the other new digital battlefront: the boundaries between friends and family online.’
I think that this ‘battlefront’ is even broader Damien- the boundaries between the ’social’ and the educational, or between the present and the future (digital records being kept of content) etc. I think that in the last few years people have lept into Web 2 headfirst, with a focus on the social use, and we are still only coming to terms with both the possible applications and further implications of the technology.
I’ve been curious about our ‘digital footprint’ – half finished social netorking pages, abandoned blog pages and forgotten group memberships. Thing is, we may forget about these remnants of ourselves that we leave lying about the place, but Google doesn’t.
Hmm… Firstly a response to Damien’s comment above. Google doesn’t forget about that out of date ephemera but it does downgrade it’s importance over time. I’ve tried to find things I know exist in multiple copies on the net from 2002 ish and they are pretty much unfindable now. Real time search is increasingly important as real time networking comes to the fore and that will further mean that it will only be the regularly viewed/commented/updated stuff gets prioritized over forgotten spaces. Now other people may not forget an old post that they like but the odds of every part of your digital footprint remain forever seems unlikely. Even if they are there they will be like dusty old family pictures in the attic – you know they are there but if you had to find them it would take a while and they might not be in the condition you left them in.
Now, what I was actually going to post… I love the “Do you want to be my friend – confirm or ignore” video. Interestingly it’s not the jarring of online vs offline behaviour that stands out for me though, it’s the weird similarity to prepubescent ideas of forming connections in the world – there is something very playground like about publicly declaring your connections, ranking them, etc. Somehow exchanging business cards (online I guess LinkedIn and Academia.edu are the parallel) seems so much more mature even though it is, effectively, the same darn thing.
Facebook does occupy a strange place – somewhere between serious networking and playful nonsense. And I think that’s possibly what’s jarred with me recently. Updates telling me about serious issues (a friend’s health, what’s happening in Iran) next to quite frivolous ones (horoscopes and Top 5 lists). It doesn’t seem to know what it is and thus tries to be everything to everyone.
You’re on the money about pubescent behaviour. I’m sure any one of us can point to about five stories (personal or public) where the parameters of what FB does and is have been misunderstood, with either hilarious or woeful consequences.
I think that, as FB and social media in general filters up and down through the population, those of us used to spending time online away from family, workfriends and other folks from ‘real life’ find ourselves with requests from those same people for access to what are, for some anyway, highly personal spaces.
Boundaries and buffers many of us carefully cultivate during our early twenties, from family members or old school acquiaintances we hope to never see again, are suddenly not only back in your orbit, but able to see exactly what you are doing and when you are doing it.
Of course this is all about choice – leting this person see that and so on, but I can’t help but notice that technology seems to be breaking down, or at least challenging spaces and boundaries that most of might rather hang on to.
That, to me, is dystopian. The inability to get away from people.