How about a nice game of Plomley?
Sep. 23rd, 2004 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezThe problem with friends-lists (and Orkut and...):
In their current version, social networks are a performance device. We construct our identity in terms of other people. We collect friends and communities to signal who we are, what we believe in. We pad our blogrolls with people that we admire. These signals say a lot of things, but they do not say anything about our actual social network - our trust relationships or information flow.
(Referenced in this fine article by the estimable Joel Spolsky.)
Meanwhile, here's a section from David Toop's 'Haunted weather' that rather struck a chord: (as it were)
Like Patrick Pulsinger's unrealised ambition to encase acoustic musicians in a soundproof glass box, or the confrontation of digital and corporeal at Heights Gallery in Tokyo, this Berlin concert presented me with a symbolic encapsulation of some of the challenges now affecting live music. What remained unresolved was the reason for those challenges and the way in which live music might adapt to accommodate them. Based on my experiences as a fan, as a concert reviewer and as a performing musician, I had begun to feel that live music was anachronistic. Concerts continue to flourish, of course, but too many of them are content to be signposts to the past: musicians twenty or more years past their best, bands re-formed to feed the illusory nostalgia of an audience too young to be aware of them the first time round, the stubborn endurance of the pre-20th century classical repertoire, copy bands selling fakes of U2, Abba or The Doors in the absence of the originals, 'classic' jazz and rock groups recreating past eras with young substitutes depping for the dead or otherwise indisposed stars, new bands copying old bands or playing music so perfected and dominated by control systems that the audience might as well be watching DVD. As the adverts used to ask (somewhat optimistically, since this was analogue cassette tape under discussion), is it live or is it Memorex?
If that gives anyone the impression that I'm likely to be found listening to improvised concerts given in builder's yards in a thoughtful and Jazz Club manner, then that would be substantially correct.
In their current version, social networks are a performance device. We construct our identity in terms of other people. We collect friends and communities to signal who we are, what we believe in. We pad our blogrolls with people that we admire. These signals say a lot of things, but they do not say anything about our actual social network - our trust relationships or information flow.
(Referenced in this fine article by the estimable Joel Spolsky.)
Meanwhile, here's a section from David Toop's 'Haunted weather' that rather struck a chord: (as it were)
Like Patrick Pulsinger's unrealised ambition to encase acoustic musicians in a soundproof glass box, or the confrontation of digital and corporeal at Heights Gallery in Tokyo, this Berlin concert presented me with a symbolic encapsulation of some of the challenges now affecting live music. What remained unresolved was the reason for those challenges and the way in which live music might adapt to accommodate them. Based on my experiences as a fan, as a concert reviewer and as a performing musician, I had begun to feel that live music was anachronistic. Concerts continue to flourish, of course, but too many of them are content to be signposts to the past: musicians twenty or more years past their best, bands re-formed to feed the illusory nostalgia of an audience too young to be aware of them the first time round, the stubborn endurance of the pre-20th century classical repertoire, copy bands selling fakes of U2, Abba or The Doors in the absence of the originals, 'classic' jazz and rock groups recreating past eras with young substitutes depping for the dead or otherwise indisposed stars, new bands copying old bands or playing music so perfected and dominated by control systems that the audience might as well be watching DVD. As the adverts used to ask (somewhat optimistically, since this was analogue cassette tape under discussion), is it live or is it Memorex?
If that gives anyone the impression that I'm likely to be found listening to improvised concerts given in builder's yards in a thoughtful and Jazz Club manner, then that would be substantially correct.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
calm down dear... its only the internet
Date: 2004-09-24 03:01 pm (UTC)It reminds me of all those people who get worked up if someone throws them off a friends list. I really could not care less how many people keep me on or take me off their friends list, at the end of the day, it is only the internet. On a TG forum I am on (roses forum) someone was worrying because they had not had replies (like at the speed of light) from people whom they had e mailed or sent a private message to via the forum. It kind of kicked off this whole thing about people not showing how friendly they were, and if someone did not buddy you or reply did this mean that they were not your friend anymore. I added a post to the thread, with a similiar comment to the above, that people should not build there social relationships and judge them by the amount of buddies they have on a blogger list or the speed of replies if any.
People get so het up over this :-)
hugs
debs
xxxxxxxxxxx
Re: calm down dear... its only the internet
Date: 2004-09-28 01:46 pm (UTC)It makes me think of that scene in Forbidden Planet when Walter Pidgeon's character has finally accepted the truth that it's his mind that has caused all the death and destruction... my evil self is at the door ...only most people seem to revel in that sensation!
I've also noticed that wherever an online system involves a rating process that it has become standard practice for a false-positive bias. People seem to be incapable both of fairly criticising their fellows (ie saying things that might be construed in a negative light), or of showing the level of ambiguous indifference that permeates everyday life.
One can only wonder whither mankind is destined in this wonderfully wired world...
no subject
Date: 2004-09-28 03:31 pm (UTC)LJ, for instance, is pretty much for ego-stroking and fishing expeditions. It's Very Bad Form to lay into someone on what is supposed to be 'their diary' - The Diary being the socially accepted place where your inner monologue goes for one off the wrist.
If you want to have (pointless) argument, that's what the Usenet's for. People give a lot less of themselves away (ok, a lot of that's dependant on the tone of the group and people's capacity to graft some kind of group identity onto an arrangement of electrons) because it's a given that someone may pull your trousers down in public.
The part in that article mentioning personality disorders has really made me stop and think. Prior to reading that, I would cheerfully have gone 'Get a grip it's only the interweb', but I'm not sure that's an entirely valid response now.
I like to think that because I've been doing this sort of thing for a while, I 'know' that the part-personalities I see online are projections of people rather than the real thing. So while on one hand one can go 'people on the internet are not real', it's equally true to say something like '... But the people projecting themselves via this medium are absolutely real and to dismiss them as "your little friends from the computer" is a startlingly clueless action.'
We need a better UI, but cheaper and faster mass-transit would probably be more use.