staying (too?) connected

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.

car shopping

With six months to go on my warranty and a desire to do test drives in daylight, I figured it was time to go check out the Honda Fit. I've been somewhat admiring this car from afar, but I'd never driven one (nor even sat in one). So tonight, armed with a dealer referral (thanks, ralphmelton; he says you two are a lovely couple :-) ), I set out to remedy that.

The visibility is rather better than in my Golf, though still not as good as in my old Mazda 323. (Nothing else has come close to that, alas.) The interior is comfortable, and I was able to find good positions for the seat and steering wheel. (I like to sit up in a car, not slouch; many cars don't support that well, but the Fit and Golf both do.) The instruments are easy to read. The rear seat folds sensibly, which was not the case in the Civic I looked at three years ago. (Transporting my hammer dulcimer would be a piece of cake.)

They didn't have a manual transmission on the lot, so I had to drive an automatic. For an automatic it seemed fine, but I'll want to drive the manual before committing. The car I drove had a smooth ride but was a little sluggish on hills and while accelerating; I think that's the transmission type and not inherent, but I want to make sure.

The steering and braking were smooth. I obviously couldn't do a skid test in summer, but I'll trust. The turning radius felt nice and tight.

The Fit comes in two flavors, basic and sport. While I flinch a little at the "sport" name and note that the engines are identical (I expect "sport" to mean "vroom!"), the latter is the only path to some features I've become fond of, so I'll probably spring for it. Not sure yet. I'm trying to decide if keyless entry, intermittent wipers, MP3 support, and the rear wiper are worth the $1200 difference. That's steep, but I've undervalued the annoyance factor in the past, too. (There are other differences, but they're things I don't care about.)

The salesman offered me less for my trade-in than I (and Edmunds) think is called for, but he's going to try to improve on that. Since I told him I wasn't going to make a decision tonight anyway, that's fine. He was not drastically out of line, but it was enough to be worth pushing back.

Of course I knew, and he knew I knew, all the pertinent data about pricing, invoices, supply and demand, and so on. He commented that the internet makes things much easier for all concerned; I would have thought it would make it harder for dealers, but maybe it depends on the car being sold. We both know that there's only a $500 markup built into the price for this particular car; maybe if we both knew that there was a large profit built in that would be different.

Our conversation was pleasant and low-pressure, in both directions. I loathe the high-pressure slick-salesman situation; while I'm not particularly intimidated by it, I find it distasteful. It's possible that, if I buy this car, I will overpay by $100 or so, but I consider that to be the price of the experience.

There's enough demand for the Fit that they're being doled out to dealers; this dealership can get four per month, filling out the matrix of {basic, sport} {manual, automatic}. The next sport manual is due in a week or so and is an acceptable color.

I'm positively inclined, but I want to sleep on it (and see if he can improve the price).