In All Reality

I’ve been a recent convert to using Twitter, and while I hate to give it any more press than it has already received… I just have. Name-dropping aside, my experience with Twitter has encouraged me to take a step back and look at this whole social networking thing and really evaluate why we do it, and to look a bit more objectively on the culture of the Web as a whole and its impact on society. Below are some random observations and thoughts that have occurred to me as of late:

Communication is… good?

In general, I think most people would agree that the ease of information sharing brought about in the revolution of the Internet Age and the way it facilitates open communication is a good thing. Yet, at the same time I believe that most people who would agree with the previous statement are thinking in terms of scientists huddled around laptops, basking in the glow of shared info from their colleagues at the Anaheim Center for Diseased Rodent Studies. Our idealization of “communication” is that it is used for the betterment of mankind in political, artistic, or scientific endeavors – not to discuss the latetst episode of American Idol and how the judges were sooooo stupid or to share a video of a guy getting lit on fire in a banana suit. With the light-speed info sharing methods we now take for granted, both ends of the communication spectrum are consistently expressed.

Enter social media and networking. It’s not really a new idea, but more the result of a variety of practices and approaches that have coalesced into a single category that we can finally put a label on – because anything without a defined label or buzzword is terrifying. But that label makes all the difference. Telling someone to place all of their contact information on their website would make them leery of solicitations, fraudulent deals, etc.; telling them to place their information on a social networking site like Facebook or LinkedIn because “everyone is doing it” generates a mob mentality that ends in approval. There’s something about the idea that taps into the core need of all human beings to find acceptance among the whole, to feel that they are a part of something larger than themselves – even if it is a group discussion on how hawt John Stamos was on ER.

The phenomenon of transparency

The truth of humanity in regard to communication is that any advancements that are made and used for this ambiguous “betterment of mankind” end up also enabling us to express the more immature, intolerant, fearful, and emotionally needy sides of ourselves. The more frequent and easier the communication, the more those deeper facets seem to want to emerge to the forefront.

I was recently working with a photographer, who related a story about one of his clients. A bride-to-be contacted him with a meeting request. He immediately searched Facebook, found her profile, and proceeded to discover everything about her that was possible. Within minutes he had learned what sorority she was a part of, her favorite songs, the names of all of her friends, viewed several photos of her in a bikini, knew the names of her family members, her birthday, and about three different ways to contact her. He then spent a few additional minutes going through her wall posts and groups, gauging her personality, tone, and interests. He then called her back a few moments later and was able to strike up a conversation, schedule the meeting, and place in a few favorable comments based on his info.

There are a lot of interesting things about this story to me, and it’s not an uncommon one. The obvious business potential is there, and with it the ability to get to find more about someone you see as being interesting. There also exists the possibility for more sinister applications ala cyber stalking or the Craigslist Killer. But what I find most interesting is the willful sharing of those things that form the core of your private life. Pictures, memories, conversations, relationships, love interests… all these things are present for public perusal.

The idea strikes me that by baring all your thoughts and feelings to society as whole, you somehow cease to be an individual and rather become another object within the culture – something more than just bits of data yet still less than a human being. The difference is in the anonymity, the lack of control that the owner of the information has over who is viewing it, the socially-accepted voyeurism. I don’t really have an explanation for it, but I do believe that it is at its core a representation of the state of a person’s self-esteem indicated by how much information they choose to share in the vast and public world of the Web. We all have egos, and the ease with which we can share those things about our lives we think other people may find interesting serves to enhance those egos – for good, bad, or whatever else.

Redundancy

The communication aspects that are the hallmark of the Web haven’t changed; Email is still the main method in use, with a sizable share going to instant messaging as well. What has changed is the internalization of these methods. Nearly every social networking site boasts email alerts from a variety of events: friend updates, public messages, private messages, status changes, group invites, etc. The difference is that each soc-net site has a specific goal to keep you coming back to login, eat a little of their bandwidth, and (most importantly) view their ads – and to this end does not allow you to respond to any of the email updates via your mail client. Some services, like Facebook, have now even built in a closed instant messaging system to encourage more user time spent on their site.

It’s a bit of a paradox. Most soc-net services allow some form of API integration for external use, yet only for the reasons of directing traffic back their site. This is a solid business approach, and I applaud the proliferation of API integrations. However, the internalization of these communication systems leads to an intriguing set of infrastructure considerations. Let’s take the example of Twitter, for instance. In its relatively short lifespan, Twitter has encouraged a countless number of apps and services to be created specifically to manipulate data and resubmit it. What happens if Twitter is dissolved, or (more likely) Ev Williams gets an offer for 20 billion dollars, sells it out, and the purchasing company overhauls it? Assuming even moderate changes to the system, a host of developments could be rendered useless. The same could happen to any other major web service: Flickr, Amazon’s Cloud services, Google’s App Engine, etc, etc.

When we build on these infrastructures or add our content to them, we’re going on faith that nothing is going to happen to these companies. This is the crux of the Web 2.0 generation of media. Can you image what would happen if Flickr lost all of its data? It sounds unimaginable, but similar incidents have occurred, like Magnolia being wiped off the face of the earth. These ventures exist to provide excellent services to their users and drive ad revenue, but one must keep in mind that many of these services also don’t charge a dime for the vast majority of the people who use them. I have to wonder when the sheer volume of bandwidth, data, cost, time, and users will reach a critical mass and another large provider will go down. Or perhaps we have the beginnings of the foundation for all Web interaction to come, the bedrock of providers upon which Web 3.0 will be erected.

Trying to keep up

Sharing information is now so ridiculously easy, especially with the advent of Twitter and its entourage of submission applications and methods. Once something is bounced into the tweetsphere, it grows and leaps from user to user in a way that the word ‘exponential’ can’t begin to describe. The speed at which something can be presented, reviewed, and either rejected or assimilated into the general Web culture presents an interesting set of circumstances and results.

In a medium where the entire planet can know in an instant that an event has occurred, the focus on keeping up to date shifts somewhat. In previous media cultures, we have rushed to stay ahead of the pack, to keep our eyes on what’s next so that we had an advantage over everyone else. Now, it’s nearly impossible to make a prediction of what new information developments will occur, what trends will develop, what events will garner attention and fame. Instead, we must now rush to keep up with each new facet in the day-to-day jumble, and hope that those ideas we’ve spent precious moments examining will turn out to be of sustainable value.

And lest we forget

Web culture is no longer its own paradigm. The Internet isn’t populated only by geeks, scientists, and IT professionals (though some of us wish we still lived in those glory days). It is now such a general part of our lives as to no longer be any different than the TV we watch, the radio we listen to, and the magazines we read. In past decades, a resounding “NO SOUP FOR YOU!!” would meet with immediate recognition and a smile for Mr. Seinfield. In the same way, we now giggle at references to “pwnage” or “You’ll run as fast as Kenyans!!” or the prevalent theme of zombies and pirates that seem to have become a staple of the Web.

But the key is that we aren’t giggling about these things in chatrooms or emails (at least not exclusively), but instead at our social events where we may share stories about a web comic we’ve read, a video we watched, a new service we’ve started using, or a new site that has these totally awesome LEGO models… We haven’t made the jump to a parallel existence where our online personas are mentally separated from our normal lives; we’ve integrated the ethereal realm of the Internet into our real life culture.

I’ll be very anxious to see where the next few years take us. The unbelievable rate at which our communicative society has evolved (and its impact on world culture) suggests that we’re rapidly approaching… something. The Epoch of Humanity? A unified consciousness? The noosphere? Armageddon? Who knows, but it’ll be a very interesting ride.