Failbook

I must say my mind drifted a little in our lecture about social networking and self identity. "Differentiated Identities converging" I wrote down in my lecture notes to describe what social networking is doing to our identity. This could almost be a tag line for Failbook.

For those unfamiliar with this website, the general idea of it is users post screen shots of stupid statements put on Facebook by their friends, (block out their names and photos) and leave them there for the pleasure of the world wide web. There are some ridiculous comments on the site, which make just perfect examples of differing identities people have converging on Facebook because people forget they have added their relatives or work colleagues. Within the first page (at the moment) there are two statements where family members have found out more information about their loved ones than they needed to know.

I think the best one on there, has a girl bitching about her "fucking boss" who she forgot she had on Facebook. There is a wonderful comment under the statement from her boss who comments that she must have forgotten she was only under a 6 month trial, and as there was only 2 weeks left she might as well not bother coming in anymore to work. Although I laughed, its the kind of thing that could easily happen to me. I have my boss of Facebook.

It almost gets awkward if some of your work friends or your boss add you on Facebook, because they are going to see you everyday and will know that you have declined their request.. It becomes easier to add them, but then you run the risk of them seeing something on your Facebook which shouldn't have been put up there.

Are we all going to learn to adapt to this merged Identity or is Failbook going to have many more victims to come?

Google invading New Zealand

Google began in 1998 with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, ‘to organise the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.’ It is safe to say that Google have achieved this goal as the internet giant has grown rapidly with the development of Gmail, Google Maps, Google Buzz, Google Crome, Google Earth, and the android phone operating system.
This rapid growth which enabled Google to achieve their first goal, led to the creation of a new aspiration.CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal in 2007 that ‘the goal was to enable users to asks questions, such as what shall i do tomorrow and what job shall i take’ this goal has caused controversy around the world and locally in New Zealand around privacy, copyright and censorship.
The internet giant recorded and saved data from unsecure wifi networks via street view cars which take pictures for Google maps, and this occurred throughout the streets of New Zealand as well as worldwide. The data collated was actually the websites users where surfing the moment the cars drove past. Google assured that this data collection was accidental however some people became concerned about individual privacy, and this was left for the police to investigate further.
Tonight on TV3 news police came to the conclusion that no criminal offence was committed, and cleared Google of any wrong doing when they invasively collected information from peoples wireless networks. The only advice police have given is for people to make sure they have secure internet connections.

Social Networks luring us.

The phenomenon of social networking has become a part of our everyday lives. Being addicted to Facebook myself, I forgot what I used to do when social networking wasn’t around.
Knowing the pros and not the cons social network users constantly release information and material not knowing who is tracing it or where this goes back to.

As we discussed in tutorials many major social networking sites are leaking information that allows third party advertising and tracking companies to associate the web browsing habits of users with a specific person, researchers warn.

Not knowing any of this prior to our tutorial as I had a recent break up changing from “in a relationship” to “single” I had noticed for the past two weeks all my adverts were related to Internet dating sites. ‘Plenty of Fish’ stood out as there were many more dating site ads appearing on the side of the screen. As I was feeling a bit depressed, at the same time was laughing due to the rapid response of ads.

Craig Wills of Worcester Polytechnic explains that "In some cases, the leakage may be

unintentional, but in others, there is clever and surreptitious anti-privacy engineering at work," Through the survey of the 12 biggest social networks they discovered that 11 of them were leaking personal identity information to third-parties including data aggregators, which track and aggregate user viewing habits for targeted ad-serving purposes.

I figured that anything for “free” has a twist; in this case of social networking sites it is the motives and intentions in stealing your information in return providing a “free” service of a virtual world. Whatever the matter or purpose of the providers are they have succeeded in hooking me and many others in using their networks as I now enjoy the funny ad’s that pop up in the side of the window.

Michael

Are social networking sites taking over our lives?

I often wonder how the world would be today if social networking sites never existed. Would we communicate less? Would we use technology as much as we do now? Or would we take a more personal approach in maintaining our friendships? The existence of Facebook and other social networking sites have allowed people from all around the world to communicate, allowing new relationships to form. Social networking sites provide its users with an easier way to communicate, enabling people to maintain their social relationships.

Social networking sites also have their downside, by using them; we are choosing to take the personal elements away from communication. Instead we are now using new forms of technology to interact with our friends, family and loved ones. Alternatively we could make time to communicate and socialise with the person face to face, but sometimes face to face communication is not possible. It is these kinds of situations that make social networking sites an unexpected benefit. Facebook allows its users the chance to connect and communicate with people from all around the world. Giving its users the opportunity and an easier way to maintain relationships and friendships with people that they would not normally see on a regular basis.

If social network sites weren’t around then maybe people wouldn’t communicate as much. Facebook might keep millions of people around the world glued to their computers and laptops, but it does allow them to communicate and socialise with an unlimited amount of people with just a click of a button. It may create some negative outcomes, but overall I believe most social network sites have helped us communicate and socialise more.

Will Online Social Networking Sites Make Us Smarter?

Based on the whole Dunbar’s number concept, I did some extra reading on this idea and found that Robin Dunbar looked at primates and compared the size of their brains with humans. To cut a long story short, the larger the brain (or at least the neocortex area of it), the larger the average size of groups one can live in.

Human’s brains are larger than the primates obviously, yet with Dunbar’s number being around 150, does that also mean that Human brains hit a certain limit? That it simply cannot get any bigger? Perhaps with Social Networking sites it will. Perhaps the average size of groups with the online social networking addition can be 200, 500 or even 1000. Nevertheless, we may have to start measuring the average size of groups with a Dunbar 2.0 figure of maybe 700 (according to Dan Tapscott in “Grown Up Digital”, 2008).

You might think that maybe one doesn’t get smarter simply by having more friends surely? Well, think of it this way, say you have a group of friends called ‘group 1’, in ‘group 1’, you have two friends, friend A and friend B. In this group, you are unconsciously managing 3 relationships; your own relationship with friend A and friend B and what you know of the relationship between friend A and friend B excluding yourself. Simple enough so far, but what if you increase the number of friends in that group to 10, you now have to manage your own relationships with each individual and the pairs of relationships between your friends. As you can see, this will get horrendously exponential very quickly.

This applies in today’s world even more, with so many people flocking to online social networking sites and learning of ‘friends in common’ just adds to this. Making the concept of 6 degrees of separation a reality, perhaps not even 6 degrees, maybe less, perhaps 4 or 3 degrees, some suggest 2 degrees. With this smaller degree of separation, will this push our Dunbar number even further?

Like the song the Sherman Brothers once wrote for Disney, “It’s a small world after all”.

Suppression orders and the net

Cameron Slater is now in court here in Auckland charged with breaching court suppression orders. As right-wing blogger Whale Oil, he has argued that some suppression orders are against the public's right to know and/or free speech.

This brings up some tricky issues. Does an accused have a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty? Does someone in the media have the right to decide unilaterally that a law is wrong? Should suppression orders that apply to trad media apply to new media? Has the horse already bolted?

There is an undeniable charm about this current period we are all living through in the infancy of the internet (I'm taking a long-term view here). Anarchy appeals and virtual anarchy appeals even more as theoretically no-one gets hurt, not like the bad old days of anarchy when people got killed in real life.

But I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of someone remotely famous falsely accused of a sex crime in New Zealand right now. Chances are I'd be outed by the Cameron Slaters of this world and my reputation slashed before I even got near the chance to defend myself.

Which is not an argument for censorship or other forms of control of the net. I suspect that our current laws can be seen to be working as Slater is now in court. The judge has described Whale Oil's blogs as "like a shotgun blast, it hits the person and then other people he doesn't want to hit". Slater is arguing semantics, saying he published pictures (clues to the accused's identity) but he's not telling people how to interpret them and they're really just random online doodles. I wouldn't put money on the judge seeing it his way.

In the meantime, just for entertainment, Slater is going up against Andrew Williams in a North Shore ward in the upcoming Auckland elections. His first pledge: I will not piss on any trees.

Says it all really - about both him and Andrew Williams.

Attention

It has taken ages to write this post. I keep getting distracted. It has resulted in rambles. Luckily, you don’t have to read it. Scroll up to the next one, or down to the one before. (The blog is a great equalizer. assuming you are like me and read a paragraph here and there like a bird randomly pecking for seeds).

The problem is attention. I don’t have enough attention to read all the posts (I'm editing this post-publish because I saw someone else already published an "Attention" blog, citing Mark Bauerlein), much less keep up with the one-decent-sized-paragraph-a-week assignment. It’s not too much, I just keep forgetting, and then there isn’t much that has not been said by everyone else. I’m almost certain that you don’t want to read a bulleted confessional, but I also suspect that the 1 or 2 people who have made it to the centre (even past the half way mark!) of this paragraph—its deepest darkest depth—must be bored. Perhaps I lack creativity, or brain space. Maybe I’m just tired, but I have this growing feeling in the back of my mind that I’m forgetting about something.

A bunch of brain scientists went walking through the woods. ( I don’t know the punch-line to this joke). They have suggested the possibility that technology is over-taxing our brains, and spawning a class of forgetful and worried people. Technology produces anxiety. The anticipation of emails takes up brain energy. They suggest we take a hike to clear our minds (assuming that we go somewhere relaxing, away from the lions and tigers and gun-runners, etc.). I’m not averse to physical activity, but who has the time?

The next thing is to study people’s brains on meditation because those people can focus. Or maybe they already have. No surprises, those people also have bigger brains, especially in that attention span area of the brain. Somehow, they have found the time. I’ll think about adding that to my to-do list, right after “remember what it is that I’m supposed to do before Monday. sell all my stuff, do whatever it is I'm supposed to do before Monday, and not to forget, take a hike.”