Digital Socialising

I’ve was thinking about socialising, and what it means in our lives today and what it used to mean. I remember all studying theory about groups and communities forming, and the need to feel like we belong to something and to have shared goals and the forming and norming stages of dynamic relationships.
However something that has been making me wonder recently is the value of the experiences we share today and the evidence we produce to remind ourselves of who we are friends with and develop our social status.

With the wonders of digital cameras and website like dontstayin.com and facebook the experience of going out had become almost synonymous with the after evidence of the night, and the status symbol of having a certain amount of friends belonging to various “groups” and networks.
I starting thinking about all this when I realised that the camera my dad brought me for xmas 2005 has been used a lot for nights out with my friends, yet little evidence of pictures taken during the day.
Whereas before you may have a couple of films developed from a two week holiday abroad, which would equal 60 photo’s (if you’re lucky).
Nowadays over 100+ can be the normal output of a night on the tiles, and probably one of the only things to remind us where we were, and who we were with. (ok so this really may be an extreme example- but it does happen)

I know its not just me and people I know who do it, and my the wonders of social media we can share, collaborate, tag and comment on various picture we choose to broadcast to whoever wants to see it.
It seems like everyone wants there fair share of fame these days and you now even have peoples “model” tendencies coming out with self portrait pictures and pouting to themselves and a camera, in the hopes that some model scout will discover them (this isent me by the way).

Its just made me want to compare my social setting with that of my parents, the pictures I have of them from when they were my age are few in numbers yet extremely valuable, however I have well over 4,000 pictures files on my pc yet I wonder which ones will really be the make up of my memories in the future?
Im sure im just being overly philosophical, and I do think digital camera are good, its just the motives different generations have for the excessive memory cards needed to fuel constant picture taking that could easily translate a lot about our social settings.

Family and Religion

Ok so I come form a vary large Irish catholic family, and by the wonders of myspace have managed to find around 5 of my first cousins on there as well, I have even found my lovely older brother on facebook, which I was pirtty surprised about as he’s never been the “social media” kind of guy.

Are we now going to have “families” online, the ability that my brother could tag me as “his sister” and other members of your family can be named appropriately shows the possibilities for a “virtual family”.

The worry is how we represent ourselves online, for example I double checked that there weren’t any incriminating pictures of myself that my cousins and brother could quiz me about next time I see them, showing that I’m presenting a certain side of myself online that may not be in keeping with other peoples perceptions.

This all got me thinking about family, I read my cousins blog, also entitled ‘family’, and it spoke of how proud she is to come from such a large yet close family, who have of course had there ups and downs. Since a young age I've been very aware I come from an interesting extended family and enjoyed the semi-infamous status we adorned around the midlands where most of them still live today. My Nan & Grandad followed the strict Catholic regime and my nan heroically carried, produced, popped out and nurtured 11 children (My late father being one of them) and remarkably cared for a further 3!

Now that the second generation of “kids” are coming thorough, me and my 24, (first cousins on my dads side) are the larger representation of “the family”. With most of us now being in our 20’s or 30’s, I find it strange seeing them on myspace, and have noticed more that a lot of them put “catholic” in the religion status.

However I find with most people my age the stsu more common is “atheist” . Don’t get me wrong I have never been one to argue about someone’s beliefs, but it also strikes me as the thing people do these days, almost the norm.

I find people who are “atheist” a lot more vocal than the religious subset of our age range, maybe that’s just because of the people I know?

I would also disagree with anyone shouting there mouth off about certain religions and cults and I don’t adhere to all the bible teachings and spend every Sunday morning at church, However I feel proud that my parents decided to bring me up in that way, and I believe my moral judgments and basic understandings were all developed with the help of religion.

I think this has just shown me that the internet makes it easy for us to express more than just our sexual orientation and age, and the deep and meaningfull statuses are the ones so often overlooked, and without sounding too postmodern, its just more evidence that there is a break down of dominant ideologies our culture and society once relied upon.

Tecky Timewasting

Ive been looking at how other people interact with Blogs, and came across an intresting one called masters of media, it had a link to this picture, which I have been looking at for about 10 mins so wanted to add it here as well.

Sign-if-i-can’t

While contemplating the assignment for our IMS course, I’ve started thinking about how organisations use technology to aid there business. I feel very grateful that I had my placement year at such a forward thinking company and managed to get so much from it.
Infact my very job at Cisco was to translate the business benefits of there end users and then profile them in PR case studies and events.

Technological advancements fascinate me, and more to the point there impact on today’s society, while filling in a gradate application form one of the questions I answered why WHY technology interests me. I think it has to be its effect on organisations, such as the public sector, and how it facilitates opportunities for people.

I remember seeing how Cisco used tandgerd video units along with Cisco call manager platform to create a video contact centre for deaf people. Before this innovation started running in local government services There was a wait of up to two weeks for an interpreter, charging £90-150 per session for deaf customers to independently to deal with trivial issues such as council tax.

The UK has 70,000 deaf sign language users and less than 200 qualified interpreters and yet Cisco has managed to move forward with what they call “inclusion through innovation”. This has also made sure county councils are starting to Meet obligations under the disability discrimination act, and allows high quality service of sign language interpreters through the video call centre, 7 times faster than text.

Therefore what it boils down to is, it’s easy to rant about the threats and miss trust placed into new technology, yet it’s a force of change we have to embrace and if you look the benefits are everywhere.

Virtual Insanity

With everything going on in the news at the moment have started to think about online “Communities” social communities like facebook and myspace, start to make people wonder what a small world it is, and send them off in the pursuit of old school friends bands, and the ability to stalk the less known.
However looking at the wider picture these sites are arguably, made up of middle class (owning a PC and internet connection being standard) white western society.

This is as far as I have delved into the online “world” and its fragmented “community” sites, but I am intrigued by upcoming phenomenon’s such as second life and habbo hotel, becoming a more and more realistic which endless possibilities to make an income based bizarrely on intangible goods!?
I was reading about Moopf Murray who spent 40 hours developing his $60 Skoopf roller skates and has sold 60,000 pairs in two years. The designer’s other bestselling products include ice skates and vending machines. The twist being? Well he doesn’t exist.
This is a online avatar representing the part-time persona of a Derbyshire software developer in Second Life.

The idea these days that people want to escape is only enabling the success of such online mediums, however this haven’t escaped the corporate money making of today’s real world and people are chasing in on the virtual world.
Ailin Graef became the first dollar millionaire in Second Life after two years of buying and selling virtual real estate through her avatar, Anshe Chung.
It seems now as if little value is placed on the traditional values that a community arose from, I live in a small county village, where community life still exits somewhat from older generations. There are still weekly community meeting in the community hall etc, however arguably this we are starting to know our neighbors less and less, as we become better acquainted with an online forum or second life?
And when the going gets tough and we would rather not deal with the realities of today’s culture and society, are we placing more trust into an online world, and a non existent digital avatar?