June 18, 2007
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i am a member of…
OK, so I have accounts on….
slashdot, youtube, linkedin, friendster, facebook, wikipedia,
sourceforge, various google, various yahoo, various msn, skype, aol,
amazon.com, icq, xanga, blogger, ebay, livejournal, del.ico.us,
schtuff, librarything, bookmooch, paperbackswap, zagat, digg, blip.tv,
uncyclopedia, everything2, snapfish, fatwallet, SecondLife, and
swaptree.And you know, those are only the ones I can remember off the top of my
head and the ones I am willing to own up to. It also includes only
primarily internet/networking based applications that allow you to
connect or share in some way. And it doesn’t take into account the
fact that I keep multiple accounts on some of these services in order
to achieve a certain degree of pseudo-anonymity at times. It’s an
illusion of course. We are destined to have everything about us
scattered to the winds for all to know. That much is pretty much
inevitable. Still, I like to segment off aspects of my personality into
various identities as well. This helps keep me sane and makes it easier
to write without having to worry about if I am contradicting myself too
frequently.Anyway, many of the sites I have listed fall into certain categories ie
‘blogging sites’, ‘social networks’, ‘forums’, etc. But really the
differences between this plethora of applications seems to grow smaller
every day. More and more are adding social networking capabilities,
blogging capabilities, wiki capabilities, video sharing capabilities,
reviewing capabilities, instant messaging capabilities, cell phone
integration, etc. etc. Currently most cater to a specific crowd or a
specific area of expertise, but all are also trying to expand their
membership to be as inclusive as possible. The more membership an
application has, the more useful to users it becomes the more members
it gets and so on. I didn’t event mention any online gaming
applications which can often be just as immersive and include as many
of these connecting and sharing features as these other sites that
focus only on those things do. (I am also a member of world of
warcraft, guildwars, magic: the gathering online, xbox live, whatever
that wii network is called, and I used to be on final fantasy xi)So eventually many will ask the obvious question, when exactly is
enough enough? One could spend a life type traversiing the internet
joining groups, building networks, meeting and interacting with people.
You could have memberships in hundreds of sites not even counting the
necessary financial sites and online store memberships and online
memberships in real world groups and organizations. One wonders, do we
really need so many?Actually, it doesn’t really bother me that much, at least as far as the
social sites go. They are all competing with one another and so far it
appears that the best of class applications have been bubbling to the
top and people just jump ship from the old apps to the new ones. They
don’t get rid of their old accounts though, they just spend all their
time on the newer better apps. Hence we end up with lots of discarded
pieces of our identity scattered amongst decaying applications. That’s
a little disturbing, but not particularly so. As long as the
competition is fierce people will derive great benefit from these
various tools to re-imagine and re-organize their lives and they will
keep getting better. I do have a personal objection to how these apps
in general lack decentralization and don’t even try to provide the
option for anonymity. They’ve gotten better at letting you filter what
you make visible to others, but there’s still much work to be done in
that area. But all of those are minor details. Overall the applications
are extraordinary and I say the more the merrier.But speaking of merry, one thing that bothers me is this. Why do so
many of these apps seem so dang cheerful? I mean they’re all so bubbly
and bright. Light and happy and pleasant in virtually every way. You
would think from perusing the surface of these networks that the world
is made out of sunshine and lolly pops. No suffering. Even the most
serious of subjects is brightly serious. They exude the aura of “we’re
all friends here, we get along with absolutely everybody!” And on top
of that there’s an added aura of “We’re all happy successful people
without a care in the world.” That’s why I feel a kind of cognitive
dissonance when I peruse these networks. I like the atmosphere
and I can’t for the life of me see a thing wrong with it, and yet this
one aspect of it bothers me so.Probably the heart of it is, that the more main stream these software
become, the more they reflect standard norms of social interaction.
That is to say, you put your best foot forward and try to make a good
impression and all that. So there’s a kind of carefulness, a respect
and concern for appearances and interpretations that it seems to me
that I have been rebelling against ever since I was a very small child.
And no I don’t want to even begin to analyze the reasons behind that.
Suffice it to say, I like it when people really don’t care what anyone
thinks, rather than simply giving the appearance of being carefree. I
would rather that people adapt to the uniqueness of others rather than
try to make themselves less obviously unique in order to cause the
least dissonance.This is not a criticism, just an observation, and perhaps even a flawed
limited observation. As I dig deeper into these kinds of newly forming
institutions I will find that they really are just as varied and
complex and interesting as the real world upon which they are based. It
may gall me to have to peal away the surface glitter, but it really is
only the most minor of hardships.One thing for sure all of this is just one other aspect of how utterly
extraordinary the internet really is. It is a unique new world that
spawns a plethora of unique new worlds. I mean really what could
possible be more awesome?I am convinced that if humanity were to end tomorrow, a future species
that evolve on this planet were to look back and study our
accomplishments the one thing that we did that would most awe and
impress them would be the creation of this amazing thing called the
internet. And if by some chance we as a species do survive for a few
more millenia, I have little doubt that future historians will look
back and determine that the major turning point that changed the future
of humanity was of course the invention of the internet. Not traveling
to the moon, not mastering electricity, not the invention of writing,
not the establishment of governments and democracy. No. The internet
and all that spawned from it. That will be the lasting most profoundly
important development in the history of humanity so far. I am proud to
have lived in such times as these, observing the creation of this new
world order. And I can’t wait to see what happens next.
