the love of change
One of my favorite people that I follow on Twitter is Genevieve Spencer. Her tweets are extremely brief, and she writes pretty much exclusively about her day to day life. Sometimes she just comments on the weather (“Snowed a little bit today”), other times she talks about school (“Played “I Spy” at school to-day. Teacher was late. I was the first one there.). She never comments on current events or responds to other people’s tweets.
That’s because she’s dead.
Paul Carr at TechCrunch as a long and thoughtful post questioning triumphialism about the real-time web. Carr ties together experiences at a recent Weezer show (similar to the mobile-phone-armed masses I wrote about in this post) as well as his discomfort watching how social media seems to be driven in the wake of disasters, and how perilous Twitter and other real-time communications can be in an environment like a jury room (an issue I’d like to see some lawyers respond to like this). It’s well worth reading the full piece, which I’ll pull a few large chunks from here:
[The] real-time mentality – pictures/tweets or it didn’t happen – continues to seep into every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. Whereas once we might attend a conference to watch the speakers and perhaps learn something, today our priority is to live blog it – to ensure our followers know we’re on the inside; first with whatever news might be broken. And it’s not just journalists doing the live-blogging, but anyone with a laptop and a wifi connection.Worse still, we’re told that this is the future. The real-time web – a web where every single thought that enters our head, or image that passes our eyes, can be instantly captured, shared and archived for the approbation of our friends and followers. [..]The assumption at all of these events is the same: real-time is where we’re heading; real time is good. Newspapers were good, cable news was great, blogs were better, instant attention bursts are best.
Hmmmm.
[...] it’s not just a question of micro-ego: when a juror is tweeting teasers from the jury room, part of them must know that a guilty verdict is much more exciting to their audience than one of innocence. How can that not subconsciously influence them? Likewise when we – the real-time generation – watch someone being attacked in the street or a plane crashing into our building and instinctively reach for our phones, can we be sure that our first impulse will be to dial 911, rather than firing up Tweetdeck or clicking the camera icon to ensure we get props for being there? I mean, really sure? In a perverse twist on the uncertainty principle, knowing that our behavior is being observed inevitably changes it for the more dramatic. Just look at reality TV.
And that’s when the real-time web – for all the attention it’s getting right now – starts to look less like a brave new world, and more like the path to a hideous dystopia. A world where our reaction to any event, no matter how serious, is influenced, not by what’s right, but by how it will play with our micro-audience. An audience that, thanks to Google and Microsoft’s wholehearted support of the real-time web, is about to get even bigger and more tempting.
When I wrote about some of these difficult questions, I defended those who would tweet and share and document their experience online out of the belief–one I still hold–that the enriching experience of the social web is our ability to be many places at once and maintain an ambient awareness (Jarred brought this term to my attention, and I love it) about the activity of those we love and those with whom we wish to be connected. Ultimately, understandings of balance and moderation fuel this debate. Journalists try their hardest not to “become the story.” That mandate is hard to follow when we can all be at times documentarian, entertainer, friend, expert, citizen, community leader, the subject of news or the target of criticism. The ubiquity of self-publishing tools (in other words, the social- and real-time-web) demands that we define for ourselves how far we will go, and at what cost (if at all) we will craft our reality to draw pageviews and re-tweets.
I think it is absolutely correct and important to question the real-time web. But at this point, the “real-time generation” that Carr describes has arrived. It is incumbent upon us–content creators and, perhaps more importantly, consumers–to embrace technology in ways that enrich our lives without detracting from the offline obligations that ultimately define our relationships with others and our commitments to values like integrity, honesty, and justice.
Hey folks. I’m back after a long day-job-driven haitus. Things have been hectic, and the best way to jump back in seems to be some quick-blogging of items I’ve found intriguing over the past few weeks.
David Roberts at Grist offers a great primer on power grids, including the important distinction between a wide grid: “a new high-voltage backbone, with lines spanning the length and breadth of the country, able to carry electricity from anywhere it’s generated to anywhere it’s needed” and a smart grid: a transmission system that allows for distibuted production (think rooftop solar panels) and is capable of adjusting in real time to compensate for heavy usage, increased production, etc. This is a recommended read to get a basic grasp of what David describes as two key power grid issues:
[O]ne grid issue is getting more power (transmission lines to new places) and one is using power more efficiently(smarter distributions systems). The politics around those two issues are quite different
Related, also courtesy of David: here’s a list of articles on my to-read list related to smart grids.
Jason Calacanis sent a long and thoughtful email about the ways in which anonymity online can be harmful to the extent that it erodes our empathy for other people. Jason goes so far as to call this trend a “disease”–”Internet Aspergers Syndrome”:
This disease affects people when their communication moves to digital, and the emotional cues of face-to-face interaction–including tone, facial expression and the so called “blush response”–are lost.
In this syndrome, the afflicted stops seeing the humanity in other people. They view individuals as objects, not individuals. The focus on repetitive behaviors–checking email, blogging, [and] twittering…–combines with an inability to feel empathy and connect with people.
This is a provocative thought, and it does seem to me that the next big trend online (web 3.0?) will be authenticated identities driving the social media we’ve taken for granted. Calacanis mentions that social networks in South Korea require a social security number to sign up. There will inevitably be a tension between the norms that have developed in the web’s infancy and the changes that will be necessary to combat what is moving from a medium where goodwill and trust could be taken for granted toward an anything-goes medium where accountability is virtually (pun intended) nonexistent. How we choose to make that shift–requiring social security numbers, for instance, might be a bit invasive by American standards–is unclear, but I think many of us are starting to feel fatigue with unaccountable spammers and trolls ruining the web for everyone else.
I’ve come across a fair amount of criticism recently of URL-shortening services (like tinyURL, bit.ly, Digg, others). As TechCrunch explains:
Nobody really likes [URL shorteners], but they are a necessary evil. How else are you going to share links on Twitter without having the URL take up half the message?
The criticisms focus on a number of issues:
I worry about the Digg/Facebook model gaining traction, since “link juice” for original material is what feeds the web’s content producers. But I think in the future you’ll see more of this type of functionality: an interim landing page where visitors will see a full URL before continuing to the source material. If content aggregators (I’m looking at you, Digg) can add value by previewing pages and layering social rankings or other features, this could be a win-win-win proposition: People clicking shortened links are protected from spam; the URL shortening service has an opportunity to advertise and lure visitors to other material; the content provider receives a direct traffic boost.
That’s all for now, though I should be blogging regularly again next week.
Jarred and I are proud alumni of a small, prestigious liberal arts college in North Carolina named Davidson. As soon as we left, the college eliminated loans in financial aid packages, the men’s basketball team made a storybook run to the Elite Eight, and the notoriously underwhelming Spring concert suddenly became a venue for one of our favorite bands (though, to be fair, Ben Folds and Bob Dylan’s band both rocked).
For further proof that Davidson is improving by leaps and bounds without me and Jarred around, one need look no further than the college’s latest use of social media.
Davidson’s application for admission is notoriously extensive. In addition to the common application and long essay, prospective students must solicit teacher and peer recommendations, write essays on topics ranging from the college’s honor code to characteristics of Davidson that inspired the individual to apply, and provide a list of books they’ve read the past year. The admissions counselors I’ve known at Davidson have often commented that these application portfolios are often a source of inspiration, humor, wisdom beyond the applicants’ years, and tremendously interesting stories.
Now some of these nuggets of wisdom, humility, hilarity, and inspiration have found a home on (where else, for nugget-size wisdom?) Twitter. Here’s a sampling from @DCAdmission, a Twitter feed compiled by admissions counselors quoting quasi-anonymous applicants from around the country:
Continue reading ‘How Twitter Content Can Be Simple and Compelling’
Subscribe by feed
Subscribe by email
Follow on Facebook
