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An e-book morning
This morning rather than use the phone, check twitter, look at Facebook, or look at Instagram I took one of my two e-book readers. I have a Kobo and a Kindle device. I have both because I don’t want to lose all of my books if one company goes out of business.
Twitter and Facebook are filled with pushed content that we are not interested in. When we’re browsing our timelines it used to be to see what friends were doing or thinking about. For months now it has been re-shares and other impersonal content.
Twitter recently expanded the character limit and with this move, they also added threading, things that we had right from the start with Jaiku. I wouldn’t mind threading if it was designed in the way that forums had threading. Instead of writing a threaded tweet sequence why not take fifteen minutes to half an hour and write a blog post? With a blog post, you immediately say “I want to be verbose about what I’m thinking about”. It is also an opportunity for us to take back our right to the content we create because the adverts beside our content generate revenue for us.
Instagram is the latest “social network” to increase the amount of noise we get in our streams. They show images from strangers and companies instead of content from our friends. They also start to push hashtags to encourage us to follow topics rather than acquaintances.
Facebook,
The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that we felt in the past has been replaced by NAGO. ;-). We’re being nagged to follow specific accounts. Specific accounts post the same content in the morning and the afternoon, sometimes multiple days in a row. In so doing we have no compulsion to check our feeds.
We can dedicate hours to reading a book without interruption. We can leave aside our mobile phones and pick up the e-reader knowing that we are not missing out by not checking our feeds.
Mountain streams
Whilst some people are perfectly happy sitting at a desk chatting to others via webcams I prefer to be out and about streaming daily life. Today was one example of what I like to do. I went up to La Dole for a walk with the n95 and streamed a few landscapes for people following me on twitter to see.
We finally got caught out by some hail and thunder but my phone survived.
I want more people to do this type of thing. Come out and have fun, stream life as it happens. Show us what’s outside your living room or home office.
On the lack of Common interests and mobile phones getting the blame
On Linkedin and Facebook people believe that mobile phones are making people less sociable then they would be if phones were not around. They believe that the world in which we lived before mobile phones was an open and sociable place where everyone communicated with everyone. These people are forgetting the social context that brought them Home Alone, Problem Child and other films.
Society and social interactions have always been about finding the people whom you appreciate and those whom you prefer to keep away from. In the age before mobile phones I remember watching films and cartoons where certain characters were ostracised for being different. These people were seen as isolated or loners. Society does not like these people. We see it conversation and we see it in films.
If a group of people in the physical world does not want to spend time with you, does not want to listen to you because your passions are incompatible with theirs, because your tone of voice is not right then that is their right. These people though, are not satisfied with excluding you from their conversations, are not satisfied with having their monologues and showing no interest in you. They will go a step further. They will prevent you from entertaining yourself.
One of the most common forms of entertainment when people are not fully engaged with groups is the mobile phone. Mobile phone use is stigmatised by a lot of people. Just a few weeks ago I took a chance and met with a new group. As I am an ingress player and as I had nothing positive to add to the conversation I took the opportunity to farm from two portals that were in range. As I live in the countryside Ingress “farming” is a treat and I took advantage of the opportunity.
I was listening to the conversations taking place on both sides of me. On one side it was the stereotypical “What do you do?” International community conversation and on the other they were discussing a few topics. One of these topics was music festivals. I have had a lot of fun at music festivals but I also have some views that I share with facebook friends rather than the wider world as it would see me ostracised.
As I drove home from the meeting above I got a text message and felt that it would be bad. I read it when I got home and left the group. I won’t be told how to behave by strangers. I won’t be judged in a town by a group of people who hike and do via ferrata. If you participate in both of these sports there is a good chance that you will appreciate my company. When I am in the mountains one of the cameras I carry around is out but my mobile phone is in a pocket until I get to the end of the activity or the car.
I am a member of the Geneva Ingress Resistance as well as the Lausanne Ingress resistance. As a result of this I have access via Google Hangouts to at least 120 people in the Lac Léman (lake Geneva) region. These people are unique. What makes them stand out is that they’re always looking at their mobile phones and when you see the entire group is silent it’s because they’re “glyphing”. I like to spend time with these groups because we eat crisps, drink wine, eat ice creams, hike and do other activities. These people meet because of the game but you see that there are deep friendships that have benefited from mobile phone use.
I love the paradox. The paradox is as follows. Every user is in the Google Plus community, every user converses with other players in Google Hangouts and every player meets other players in the real world. The mobile phone is a link between those who are not present and those who are present. In effect whether you converse with these people from a computer, by mobile phone or in person changes little.
Last week at the end of one operation to field over Yverdon with blue fields and another operation to field another city a phone call was made via google hangouts and we all answered and put the phones to our heads for a conference call. Instead of the mobile phone isolating people it is doing the opposite. It is uniting people.
Look at the conventional social interaction. When two normal people call each other the people you’re with are isolated for a period of time. It’s the same when people in face to face conversations start talking about mutual friends, certain types of activities and more. Sometimes the conversation that two conventional people are having is more likely to isolate the people you’re in the same physical location with. More often than not small talk is frustrating because A) you don’t know whom they’re talking about and B) you don’t know the context. As a result small talk is less polite than mobile phone use.
I love the mountains and I enjoy via ferrata and hiking when it’s with the right people. I also enjoy spending time with ingress players. With these three groups of people I feel that I can be myself. I spend no time acting and performing. They appreciate the real me. Â When I go to towns and listen to normal people small talk I get bored and I feel isolated. It has nothing to do with the mobile phone and everything to do with the difference in interests and passions.
If we don’t have the same interests and passions then don’t blame mobile phones for our lack of conversation. Either we find something we are both passionate about or we co-exist in the same space without talking much… Sometimes the inability for people to accept silence when they are not alone encourages others to be alone.
replaced mother boards, the n95, press accreditations and qik
Because every day is not the same this one has been quite normal. At eleven in the morning I found out that the motherboard for the macbook pro needed replacing and this should be accomplished by Tuesday. In second the day of work was a good one so I was energetic enough to drop by the caribana for a second night, meeting a few friends.
It was also an opportunity to do some live streaming of concerts by Alanis Morisette, Stereophonics and last but not least (so far at the festival) Manic Street preachers.
Here is a collection of the streams.
If you tolerate this your children will be next
Something to do with Autumn
You all know this one: Your love is not enough.
Stereophonics, Dakota
Stereophonics, crowd having fun.
Alanis Morisette, broke but happy
Friendfeed and Jaiku
There’s so much hype about friendfeed because of it’s features but that’s something jaiku has been doing for months and months now. It’s a shame that silicon valley doesn’t look beyond their borders. Shame the hype is almost always around that part of the world.
The more I use jaiku the more I enjoy it. If anyone wants some invites I should have a few left. Just let me know and I’ll send you an invite.
Paris Seesmeetup – Once again :-)
This weekend I’ll be in Paris for another seesmeetup, an opportunity for French speakers to meet in person after getting to know each other online. They’re good fun.
Seesmeet’up a PARIS le samedi 6?
See some of you there