Ten years ago if you met someone and they gave you their visit card you’d put it away somewhere and eventually you might have come back to it but the information would need updating. Over the years social networking tools on the web have evolved from simple mail clients to web forums and finally to Myspace and Facebook. With Facebook we find what I think of as an enhanced phonebook. When you meet someone at a party today there’s a good chance that this individual has a facebook presence.
Back in 2000 I arrived in the South West of England as an 18 year old who was used to watching 24 minute documentaries on a range of subjects and I wanted to do the same thing. For the course I was doing when I was told that I had to do one minute pieces I was dissapointed because I thought I would never get through what I wanted to say in that amount of time.
As you’re painfully aware by now there are hundreds of social networking websites but none of them have a communal database. If you’re on orkut your data stays there, if you’re on yahoo communities your data is there. All these social networking websites are very similar in what they ask of you but different in how they link you. Loudmouthman got me thinking about how you could use a database like freebase to share this data between networks, sort of like openid but with more data.
Recently I have been trying to categorise websites and how they are used into single words. To this end I have recently started to view facebook as a self actualising phonebook. There are a number of factors which help to contribute to this feeling. One of these is the ability for me to add all “real life” friends without adding any “virtual friends” - friends I do not know in person.
The fake Steve Jobs linked to this video before writing a short commentary. _Â “Phone Bill Girl and one of her fellow Ph.D. candidates are discussing the work of Roland Barthes and narrative theory in the context of Derrida and Chomsky, with a deftly handled digression into the recurring sexism of Norman Mailer’s work” _ I have no idea where the inspiration for the video came from but the little remark is amusing.
“The simultaneity of electric communication, also characteristic of our nervous system, makes each of us present and accessible to every other person in the world. To a large degree, our co-presence everywhere at once in the electric age is a fact of passive, rather than active, experience. Actively we are more likely to have this awareness when reading the newspaper or watching a tv show.”
Marshall McLuhan - 1964
Too many video podcasts are badly produced and that is why David Pogue’s most recent episode was enjoyable to watch. He has a distinctive style. Whilst most video podcasters are content simply using a fixed camera at a desk he takes the time to create entertaining demonstrations of how the tech he is discussing is interesting.
In one episode he talked about how phones for children were great for some things but let down by others.
Last night’s fourty minute trip meant I got to see a lot of faces as I headed from one side to another. Some of these people would be forgotten within a few seconds whilst others would be remembered slightly longer. One girl had a disarming stare, as I headed to my first destination of the night. She got off within a few stops and my journey continued. On the way back I was in good spirits after filming a few people perform their songs.
Here are some images from the party. I’m still in the process of uploading the images but the pages can be found at this location