Just updated my Blogroll and included some of my StumbleFriends.
Just updated my Blogroll and included some of my StumbleFriends.
In which neighborhood in cyberspace do you hang out?
Blogsville?
Pr0natella?
News-Junction?
Home-Makers-Place?
Single-Square?
EyeCady-Heaven?
So many places, so little bandwidth and even less time.
Over at Lifehacker.com there is a nice round of geeky exhibitionism. People show their stuff. Another fine example of social porn on the intranets.
So - how much does your bag tell us about you?
Hamlet would have a cool dark gothic MySpace page today!
(Warning: stupid word creations ahead)
There is a lot of personal porn to be found on the blogosphere: death, breakups, terminal illness, angst, family affairs, war stories, fetishism, any kind of sexual encounter, romance or just plain everyday Weltschmerz.
Why this intensive openness and almost offensive sharing of pain? We has the web exploded with a gazillion video blogs, social bookmarking sites and even more cute baby pictures? Why do people pour their innermost secrets and feelings onto the blogosphere?
Diaries are hardly a new invention. Blogs are evolved diaries. People have been writing their intimate thoughts literally for thousands of years. But diaries were always considered a private affairs, as personal reflection of life, emotions and ‘books of pain’ to cry into. My dear diary I feel like shit today …
I type, therefore I am.
But the age of personal intimacy is over. Overall society has opened up. With the ‘invention’ of psychology on one side and mass media on the other we much more understand how our psyche works. Writing is good! Sharing is even better! Crying is no longer only for girls and Britney Spears fans.
Expressing yourself to the global family is a good thing - no need to bottle it all up and keep not only a stiff upper lip. Let your emotions flow. Breath in, blog out!
But the desire ones own thoughts can hardly explain the incredible explosion of personal tidbits, video diaries, family blogs, instant messaging, social networking sites and all those nifty gadgets to share, collect, compare and publish the lifes of the ‘Always-On-Generation’?
Living in a box?
We actually face a total restructuring of our social fabric since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The classical family has been dissolving for almost 200 years.
But there is another important aspect to our modern society: the ‘tele-lifstyle’ has massivly changed our perception of life and speed of our socities.
Since the start of the industrial age the ‘breeding collective’ is no longer necessary. It took only a short time to deconstruct the big family clan via the small modern family to arrive at the single parent. Today society takes much bigger part in raising children so woman can basically ‘breed’ by themselves. The big family clans support is no longer required for financial, legal, religious or moral reasons to get your clone up and running. No wonder we see such a huge explosions of single moms since the mid 80’s.
Old school family fantasies …
The result: most modern cities are filled up to 60% (or more) single people. Extreme individualism is no longer a choice, but the way kids grow up.
The ‘Me’-Generation has arrived.
More and more kids have no brothers, no sisters, no uncles, no aunties. They are grow up in a reduced family environment, while the social fabric is becoming ever more lose as well.
But also the way we experience and learn about our world has changed dramatically. We always had verbal communication and written reports to keep us informed, exchange ideas and archive knowledge to improve our chances for survival. But inventions like the telegram, telegraph, telephone, radio and most of all the television have radically changed our lifestyle and how we grow and connect as societies.
These new inventions enabled us to have a ‘tele-presence’ almost anywhere in real time on the globe. In contrast to the old slow days we can now experience live reports from the Hindenburg catastrophe, watch moon landings and the start of wars in shock and awe. We are ‘there’ without leaving here.
There is no longer a delay between events and the reports we receive. We can see and hear events as they unfolded - we are tele-present. The first time in human history you can participate in events far away from physical existence.
We loves our TV!
The television transports us within one news broadcast to a dozen places. Death in Iraq, a naked celebrity in Hollywood, a cute polar bear in Berlin. Been there, seen it, taped it.
With telephones and video conferences we can interact with people all over the world.
All these forms of communication are cheap and available to almost anyone these days. With cell phone armed with cameras and Internet access anyone can broadcast from anywhere. You can be everywhere without leaving home - you can establish a tele-presence with a mouse click, flipping on the TV or by dialing a simple number.
Amazing - especially when we remember that our grandparents just started with radio and the telegraph. No TV, no telephones, no computers, no cell phones, no Internet, no Google, no eMail, no video cameras.
But the new Tele-Presence had another effect. People shared mutual memories of events they haven’t been. A mass event without a crowd.
Billions of people watched the first moon landing or listened to it on the radio without being there. There was no crowd on the moon - but billions shared that moment with intense involvement.
These are the new virtual ‘We’-Moments.
We now have gazillions of shared memories, emotions and experiences although we have never made them together. This is the new collective memory, the new ‘We’.
When you talk with others about global ‘tele-events’ (like the moon landing) you share deep down images, emotions, associations. These are like emotional ‘bookmarks’ we can use to connect and link our lifes. And these bookmarks are global ingrained in the individual and collective memory.
Almost as good as being there yourself - only safer …
For example: the images of 9/11 were burned live into our collective memories. We all can recall these images, we all shared that moment.
But not only such sinister moments connect us. It is amazing how TV shows, movies and advertising have created a huge library of moments and associations in our global psyche. Captain Kirk is as much a modern ‘We’ moment as Sesame Street or using ‘The Force’ (TM).
We are all Waltons now.
TV shows like the Waltons, Friends and almost any other soap opera are our new surrogate families. We learn from their lives and share their experiences we often can no longer get from our own social networks and often non-existent families. Like in ancient times we model our behavior on our virtual gods and role models.
The new ‘We’ has many fathers, mothers, lovers, relationships, enemies, brothers and sisters. ‘We’ lives and feeds on real and virtual events. It doesn’t matter if JR, John Lennon or John F. Kennedy gets shot, it all influences the ‘We’ psyche.
If TV has taught us anything it is the mechanism of sharing moments and exposing yourself to an global audience.
The web finally gives us the tools to link our lifes into the global psyche. We add to the ‘noize’ of the human condition.
The ‘Me’ digitally melts with the ‘We’.
Our minds spent more and more hours each day in other people’s lifes - real ones and virtual ones.
Am I connected or what?!
We participate in ‘tele-lifes’, ‘tele-families’, ‘tele-news’ and ‘tele-gatherings’.
It is no surprise that new types of websites or functions have developed: the YouTube’s on one side and the MySpace’s on the others. They serve two important functions: collecting and sharing mutual ‘We’ moments - and establishing your own global ‘Me’ tele-presence. We peek into other people’s ‘Me’ and compare our ‘Me’ to them - to see how much ‘We’ there is.
Via blogs and sites like StumbleUpon as well as social networks or social bookmark collection we put out our ‘Me’s: these are the websites I like, these are the videos & moments that are part of me, these are the pictures I can identify with, this is how I date and mate, these are snapshot from my ‘real’ life, these are my buddies, this is how I vote, these mp3s are part of my life’s soundtrack.
I am a well connected diversified prosumer individualist …
Come here, click me, compare me, link me, read me, watch me, email me, IM me, bookmark me.
This ‘Me’ is part of our ‘We’.
So is it any surprise that you can read, hear and watch almost any aspect on the global ‘We’? How much of your ‘Me’ can be found there? How much time do you spend in your many ‘tele-lifes’, avatars and online nicks?
Ah the simple life: no windows updates, no spam, no config.sys and no Paris Hilton!
And remember: we are the Neanderthals of the global ‘We’ lifestyle. Our iPods, cell phones and laptops are pretty limited and primitive. Our Wikipedia’s, blogs, galleries and online footprints are not even one generation ‘deep’.
There is no firewall against ‘We’. ‘We’ are ‘We’.
PS: This post was inspired by my exchange with Judefa and Edosan - so it’s only logical I dedicate this posting to those great beings. So Judefa and Edosan this one is for you - thanks for your inspiration!
The intranets provide a cute safety net if you feel stressed out, unloved or empty. Just click for something cute - and your day brightens up. So the net becomes an emotional one-click-pony: Click-Cute-and-Relax!
We humans have the great ability to empathize: we can feel what we see. We feel the cuddly moments and gentleness of such sweet snaps. We become the picture we watch - we become the little fluffy being being cared for. For an instant we are without weight, memory and pain.
The emotional rush is better than chocolate, caffeine and Prozac. Escape the harshness of your life with a cute instant gratification.
Transform Mousetivism into Activism and browse Pledgebank. It’s a website to start your own little revolution or activism to change this to a better world. I like it’s idea and simple social mechanism: I’ll try to better myself - if other people join me. Excellent! This is how society should work - from the ground up to promote ideas and action - instead of top down.
When do you make your pledge?
More and more people find their favorite websites blocked by corporate firewalls. Also email filters clamp down on stupid attachments like the newest ‘funny’ video or porn.
Actually I can only recommend to anyone working in a big company not to visits websites you like in private, nor use the companies email address for mailing your friends and family. Most admin’s don’t care about your stuff - but looking at your mails and surfing habits is a gold mine for any middle management asshole to find a reason to kick your butt.
So get yourself at least a private webmail account that supports secure transmission and is hopefully not blocked by your corporate admin. Don’t surf any pr0n, funny or dating websites during work - not even during lunch break. It will be recorded - and used against you …
For years now the ‘war’ between the mainstream media and Bloggers has been raging. A new form of media is storming in scene and shifting the balance of the old media market. This is nothing new: movie theatres complained about TV for everyone - which took away most of their eyeballs. The original press people sneered first at radio and later TV reporters as well. Every form of mass communication has to proof it’s worth and develop it’s style.
As much as I applaud the new citizen journalist I don’t think we / they have taken over the world, nor deeply influence the rich and powerful. Plus the number of Bloggers who actually contribute NEW information and reports is very small.
One of the big difference between Bloggers and journalists is, that the later ones go out and report directly from wars, press conferences and events - while most Bloggers simply recycle these reporting’s. Sure - there are Bloggers in the field, but they are few and not ‘organized’. Big news corps like Reuters and BBC News have offices all over the world and they provide a continuity that is very different from the more sporadic blogosphere.
When life was simple - only those Viking terrorists and your soul to worry about
Although I don’t think that an unorganized and unstructured reporting is a bad thing (because I believe that chaos is always a self organizing affair), it is also important and highly valuable to have news providers and archives from either state funded news organizations (like many European TV stations) and commercial ones.
But most important aspect of all is that news consumption has changed - not just the reporting. The media explosion in the 80’s (actually pushed by the likes of Rupert Murdoch) and the later web revolution has changed the viewer / reader as well. Once people read / watched only a few sources and usually never questioned it’s content. That has greatly changed for good. Equally important is that news consumers started searching for their own truths. Thanks to search engines news and fact finding is no longer a domain of the professionals.
Hey, I know how to solve your problems - trust me!
But sure as hell the extra work and the extra confusion is making life more complicated and less understandable for many. No surprise that populism also has risen strongly in the last few decades. Simple and strong messages always were a part of politics - but in confusing and harsh times there are more people willing to listen to them. Instead of working and coping with a more complex reality many people prefer a simplification of (their) problems.
So in a strange twist the more noise the old school media and Bloggers make - the less they actually support the public. They actually create more confusion and ‘white noise’. And splitting the ‘truth atom’ into even more bit doesn’t create ‘more truth or a better version of reality. But on the other side a big public discussion is better then none or a truly state organized affair like under the Nazi regime or Stalinist Russia.
Life is complex, it sucks and still we have to deal with it. 
More? A BBC opinion piece about the return of the citizen journalist.
I have been using skype since it’s start. Today it’s the only Instant Messaging program I use. I also do many conference calls and all my text messaging to cell phones with it. It’s cheap (to call land lines and cell phones), free (to download and call other computers) easy to use and works fine most of the time.
Highly recommended for all digital human beings. Delete your ICQ, AOL, Yahoo!, MSN or whatever IMs - this is the future.
Here is one amazing art blog by Mr. H. - go and enjoy it. He covers many aspects of art in great detail, with knowledge, insight and detail. One of the rare gems in the blogosphere!
Thanks to some recent successes in uncovering some political and media lies the armchair pundits called ‘bloggers’ consider themselves a new political force.
What they don’t understand that they are the bottom of the information food chain. They only reexamine scraps dropped down to them, checking inconsistencies of the overall news feed produced by the alliance of international big media and mostly American big politics.
Political deals and money powered lobbyism happens between real people, real bank accounts and real backrooms. Places you can’t google. Place you can’t hyperlink to.
The culture of fear and the terror of the media can’t be stopped with a mouse click, but by an active democratic culture on the ballot and on the streets. Mouse pointers won’t stop tanks nor political subversion.
One professor called this generation once screenies:
We work all day in front of a screen.
We relax in front of a screen.
We educate ourselves with screens.
We socialize via our screens.
We pick out our next date on a screen.
I think he is right.
Behold the Power of the Princess Salome [make sure to read about her story before continuing]. Her innocence and tempting fertility drives the King and his Court mad. Her display of beauty, untamed sexuality and an almost childish mindset make her an explosive mixture.
While a Queen has to accept the limitations of power and responsibility - the Princess is allowed to play, tease and make mistakes. Since only her fertility mattered in the old days - nobody cared about her character, education or overall potential as a human being.
Be charming! Be fertile! Be tempting! But nothing else …
You find in almost all culture ritualized displays of female fertility (and male shows for courage etc.). It was and still is part of the ‘wedding porn’ of human culture. Picking the best DNA to breed with. The play between the young female and society is nothing else but a cow market at best and simple entertainment at worst.
The Princess shows off her wares for attention and maybe a good marriage deal. She doesn’t need any personality or any skills, just be fertile, healthy and mildly attractive - so society can project it’s desires and dirty thoughts onto you.
Hey, I used to be news …
Amanda Congdon and LonelyGirl belong to the new Cast of WebFems - who like Salome dance before the Kings behind the other side of the monitor. Give them a video stream or a blog - and they immediately attract hungry male eyeballs and curious girlies.
Dance Princess dance, maybe the Audience grants you a wish or some fame for actually doing nothing.
Uhhh, save me Knight of shining Armor …
It seems like that anything young with breasts is able to create their own cult within minutes these days. Salome’s dance on speed with a million Kings watching.
Although most gurls (to use a web 1.0 expression) have hardly anything interesting to say or are hardly entertaining. It’s like New Orleans: flash your titts to get some simple beads [Mardi Gras].
It is called dicktionary for a reason …
My favorite piece of video mouseturbation is YouTube’s Hot for Words. She actually has something to say about words, but even without sounds she makes any healthy male hump their monitors.
She is Princess Salome with a Dictionary.
So is this the Future of Girl Power? Is this what’s left of Feminism in the Web 2.0 age? Playing Porn Princess Salome on YouTube, MySpace and all the other Mekkas for mouse clicks?
Where are the smart girly role models? An aggressive form of Sluttism seems to be the way to go. Celebs like Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton all have ‘leaked’ their Vaginas to the net. Brittney Spears and her entourage of drunken blondes compete almost daily to show their pussies to anyone with a camera.
Is that the formula and message for modern girls: show your cunt and you become a real person?
Dear Salome - you have started a terrible trend.
Looking a cool wallpaper for your desktop? Or maybe two or three? Or maybe a dozen … or maybe 432?
Vlad Gerasimov has a HUGE collection of well designed wallpapers. Normal sizes are for free - bigger ones cost you some Euros. I actually think his work is worth some cents since it is well made and he offers a great site and support.
Thanks Edosan for the link!
I hate being left out of the free multimedia frenzy.
I know many people in Europe (and other places) who download American TV episodes, because they can’t wait to see their newest favorite show.
Now many broadcasters like ABC and NBC offer free episodes - only for Americans. Many web sites have reported the free offers - without checking if it’s free for everyone or just a limited deal. The same is true for the iTunes store, that offers all these cool TV shows only for Americans as well. As an European I can’t buy an episode of ‘Lost’ or ‘Galactica’.
But the BBC is also restricting it’s video service to UK citizens or better say IPs.
Hello? Global market? Many of your ‘foreign pirates’ download your stuff, because it either takes several months before these episodes are released in their country or they simply don’t get your stuff at all. Who wants to watch a ‘hot’ V series after the hype is gone and you already know from the intranets the whole story?!
So if you want my money - you better open up your shop for me while I am hot to buy your wares. Otherwise I will look for the ‘warez’ someplace else …
My virtual home, complete with Firewall, a secret VPN tunnel for escapes and a house dragon to keep all the spammers and hackers away.
Click for yourself: debates.news.yahoo.com
Since the YouTube ‘debate’ the intranet is running hot for anything video with political candidates. This time Yahoo!, Charlie Rose, The Huffington Post and Slate teamed up for a mashup.
I think this is a step in the right direction, although I find almost all questions still too lame and ‘nice’. It is also noteworthy that the Republicans so far have been afraid of responding to net questions.
The web is becoming slowly dethroning TV as the most important advertising platform for political messages. In the last french election all candidates literally poured millions of Euros into their web sites.
So the politicians bring their message to the web - no it has to be seen if the people on the web really can influence the politicians?
My good friend Dario sent me this great link: Hackmyfriend.com
If there is paranoia - there is a market: this service offers you to hack into accounts of your boy- or girlfriend to check if they are cheating. Whatever happened to ‘let’s talk about it’?
Since relationships are started and ended with eMail and SMS this actually no surprise to me. The YouTube generation will live, die and mate via keyboard and virtual rituals.
Welcome to the 21st century …
The original …
That was unavoidable …
That was predictable …
And that is simply weird.
Oh boy, this site used to be once the hottest contender in ruling the blogosphere. Today technorati is slow, buggy and simply awkward to use. For example it still listed all my old blogs, although I had deleted my claims and ONLY entered ultraorange.net as my new one.
It’s ‘What’s popular?’ page is simply boring and looks more like an extension of YouTube.
Sad, very sad.