staying (too?) connected

[cellio]

passionateusers has an interesting post about effects of Twitter. Twitter is ...a web site? an RSS feed? something else?... that encourages users to answer the question "what are you doing right now?". Gah. I can't imagine being interested in following that. It's got to be a hundred times worse than the LJ users who post one-liners a dozen times a day -- "now I'm leaving for work", "ugh, bad traffic", "eww, that sandwich has seen better days", and so on. Obviously, given its popularity, Twitter has something to offer, so maybe I'm just not seeing the good side, but I am not motivated to either read or supply that kind of content. As the Creating Passionate Users post says, I don't want to know that much about someone, even someone close.

Anyway, Creating Passionate Users talks about other down-sides, most notably creating the illusion of social interaction without, you know, that part about people. There are already many trackbacks and comments, which I haven't had time to peruse yet, but I recommend the article.

Twitter isn't a new concept, of course; it's just taking an older one and pushing on it. One thing that Twitter, blogs/LJ, web fora, newsgroups, and even email have in common is that they can create social divides. I see this with some of the LJ users I know: you'll be at a party or other social gathering and a subset of people will start talking about what so-and-so posted, or won't share news because it's already been posted to LJ. We saw this with mailing lists and newsgroups too, but the LJ case is more insidious because it's not all one big feed. If I'm on, say, the SCA kingdom mailing list, I might or might not have read the post you're talking about but I saw it go by. If we're both on LJ, however, that doesn't mean you and I read the same journals -- but the "on LJ so already knows this" bit gets flipped anyway.

I try not to let my online assumptions bleed into my real-life interactions too much. If I've read something interesting that I want to talk about, I'll describe it unless it's obvious that I don't need to. ("Hey, did you see that XKCD from last week about remembering names? Oh, it was funny -- [insert summary here]. It reminded me of...") And most of the people I spend time with are good about this too, but it requires conscious attention, which makes it somewhat vulnerable. We're bound to slip up sometimes even if we do pay attention; it's certain that the people who don't pay attention will.

Back when I first got online (ARPAnet and Usenet/UUCP), the email divide was between the haves and have-nots. Today the online divide is largely between the will and will-nots -- but we have to remember that there are will-nots, and that it's not one big switch -- you can be a user of email but not LJ, LJ but not IM, IM but not Twitter, (LJ but not that journal), and so on.

Creating Passionate Users talks about the effects of a particular tool (Twitter) on the individual. That's one dimension. We also need to pay attention to the effects we have on each other because of our tool use.

Now, to be fair, it's not really just about online content versus not, either. Fundamentally, this is an issue of manners; the people who dominate party conversations with talk of their particular hobby/community/etc and assume you know and care are committing the same transgression. But the net does seem to have an amplifying effect, and it's worth paying attention to that.

Comments

Guilty as charged.

[astroprisoner.livejournal.com]

"...that encourages users to answer the question "what are you doing right now?".

See, what's really bad is that I could have posted this directly from the cell phone as soon as I took the picture I thought about it.

But I resisted.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I found the XKCD about remembering names because you mentioned it, and I cracked up laughing.

(http://xkcd.com/302/ , for those wondering.)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

I follow a web-comic called Girl Genius. (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com). One of the characters in the comic has a twitter account. When he's not on panel, he's making entries, after he gets off panel, he comments on it. It's amusing. :D
-- Dagonell

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

"you'll be at a party or other social gathering and a subset of people will start talking about what so-and-so posted, or won't share news because it's already been posted to LJ."

*nod* I'm aware of this, and try to avoid it, but haven't found/invented quite the right social convention for what I'm trying to do. I'll start an anecdote or a bit of news by asking, "do you read / have you read my LJ?" in order to find out whether I should avoid being redundant because they've seen it or avoid being obscure because they haven't; and all too often my intent is mistaken for egoboo-seeking, or for a nudge that they 'ought to' read it, when all I really want to do is find out whether I'll be repeating myself.

So, obviously, I need to find better ways to ask that question.

[gregbo.livejournal.com]

Someone who's not on LJ recently suggested that I join Facebook and StumbleUpon. I asked him what I will get from both of those services that I do not already get from LinkedIn and LJ, but haven't received a response yet. I wonder how people who are on lots of different services manage to get anything else done.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Huh. I'd say that Twitter sounds really lame, but I did that sort of thing fifteen years ago. Of course, we only had "primitive" unix tools, so it was more a matter of fingering someone to see their status, and some simple shell scripts to monitor the away status or tell what they were working on.

Or putting something in telling people to send emails (that were handled by simple filters) for things like "vote on where I should have lunch". That was a disaster. I stopped that after just three (quite expensive) trips to a local Italian place.