Gazing into the crystal ball.

Gazing into the crystal ball at the future of social media - what do we see?  Extremely rapid changes in technology and interpersonal dynamics make it very hard to predict what changes will take place in social media. Some people try to predict the types of technology that will be invented and offered, or the types of platforms that will be used for people to interact with each other, and come up with complex  ideas, theories and diagrams that are obsolete the moment the ink has dried.

My approach is perhaps a little different. I tend to think of the future as a pattern of waves - or cycles - what I mean is that the boom in social networks has exploded to the extent that there are so many ways that people can communicate with each other, but that some of these are getting so large they become unmanageable and the trend will be to shrink it down to make it work better. Take for example Facebook. Some facebook users may have thousands of 'friends' on their page, but how real are these 'friendships' and how much time can one person devote to any kind of meaningful dialogue with each person? It's just not possible. People will start to become more selective who they add to their page, in order to try and reclaim some quality personal time and communication with a select group. Fragmentation will become consolidation.

 

A similar story with Twitter - people try and keep up with so many 'tweets' from so many sources that eventually they will be unable to keep up with everything and begin to be more selective with whose tweets they follow. We can see this pattern already being applied inthe use of mobile phones - where people give out their number to certain people but not others, and don't answer the phone if the number is unfamiliar. Individuals will become so bombarded with social media they will start to withdraw from complex scenarios in the quest for personal quality time with specially chosen others. 

Technological changes - expect also waves or cycles. We can see that has already occurred -  screens shrink and then grow - computers got smaller and smaller, now the screens are getting larger again (think 24 inch monitors), tvs got smaller and have now become larger to give us huge plasma screens. Mobile phones got smaller  and smaller, but now they have become slightly larger again to accommodate larger screens, (think iphone), and the ipad with its larger screen is probably just like an iphone on steroids. 

Devices become more and more complex, but then will reach to a stage where they will be too overwhelming and become more streamlined. The iphone already has over 250,000 apps - far too unwieldy for most users to make proper use of. So again some consolidation will have to occur, otherwise the advantages of the technology will not be able to be fully realised and people will turn away to something simpler and more manageable. Anyway, that's just my two cents, for all its worth. In the meantime, we continue to use the technology the way that suits us and our lifestyles until we get to a point where we feel the need to adapt, and by then the technology will already be there waiting for us. 

Documentaries - not just for nerds

Who enjoys a good doco every now and then? I'd like to think that everybody has their hands up right now - that not everyone is so engrossed in celebdom that they wouldn't spend a small chunk of their time on earth to watch something about the world around us that's really interesting, useful or valuable in some way . 

What is a documentary? Broadly speaking, a documentary film attempts to capture and document reality. Companies such as Disney began making documentaries about the animal kingdom some decades ago and have recently produced a movie called Earth which earned $32 million at the US box office, behind Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins. $32 million doesn't sound like much for a movie revenue, but apparently that's pretty good takings for a documentary. Unfortunately, many documentaries might be interesting, useful or valuable but they are not deemed commercially viable, and therefore don't get sufficient distribution time in theatres. This of course reduces the likelhood that they will be seen. So it's a bit of a catch 22 situation. Fortunately, there are there other avenues of distribution available, and one of these is the internet. 

Online documentaries are gaining in popularity, there are so many sites available where viewers can search and watch movies online for free (just do a Google search for online documentaries). Here are a few to get you started: Top Documentary Films     Watch Documentaries Online       Documentary Films.net      and here is an online film festival site;   Culture unplugged  Tv stations such as the BBC, ABC, and SBS often broadcast some of their documentary shows online after they've been shown on tv, and are a good way to catch up on missed episodes. the best things is, viewers are not restricted to their country of origin, and can watch movies from anywhere inthe world. Check them out!    
                           
Just about any topic that one might be interested in is available, and many old movies can be also be found. Now's the time to seek out that old film you wanted to see many moons ago and never got around to. Online documentaries also provide a wealth of useful reference information and resources for teachers and students, such as the movie - A Class Divided - based on  a classroom experiment by a teacher in Iowa in 1968 demonstrating to the 3rd graders  what discrimination means. The original movie was called Eye of the Storm. This topic is still as valuable now as it was then, probably more so, as teachers would not be able to conduct activities such as this today. 

Michael Moore is a name that readily springs to mind when the word documentary is mentioned, and many of his films can be found for free online all over the internet. Moore is well-known for his insights and critique of almost everything crappy about being an American - gun ownership, fast food & consumerism, the health system, big business & capitalism, and of course the Bush government. 

Other individual and group activists may perhaps not be as well known, but still have a chance to be heard, which is the best thing about using the internet as a distribution method. Movies can be as short as just a  few minutes, cheaply produced and easily uploaded to YouTube, yet viewed by many millions of people. Clips and longer movies can be viewed on topics as diverse as Childhood Consumerism, Human Trafficking, Hospitals in Haiti, Interview with an Apartheid spy, and Life in African refugee camps. These issues are very deserving of being disseminated to the world at large so that everyone can know what is going on without constant mediation by traditional media sources.

 Youtube in particular provides a special place where people can load their films without having to have special skills, to pay fees or to host their own website or pay to use someone else's. This provides a unique opportunity for personal expression about issues of 'reaality' that can be documented for viewing by other people, for information, or to prompt the viewer into action. Emma Thompson has been instrumental in bringing to light the plight of women and children being trafficked as sex slaves and has been filmed in a shocking clip to further promote public awareness - view story and video clip here or at YouTube. These may not be the most pleasant of topics to curl up on the couch and watch, but may be quite worthwhile in understanding other people's lives, and appreciating how fortunate many of us are, if nothing else. 

The March of the Mobiles

Quick question - how many mobile phones do you think there are in the world?

Answer -

Well, in 2001, the total number of mobile phones worldwide surpassed the number of television sets, and currently over 4 billion people, roughly two-thirds of the world's population owns a mobile phone, and many people have more than one. Considering that of the one-third of  the worl'd's people that are left over, many are probably babies or people unable to own or use a mobile phone, you would be forgiven for thinking that there are not too many people without one. Far from it!

In India, the mobile phone market has a national saturation rate of  less than 30%, indicating that there's plenty of room for more, whereas in the US about 80% of people have a mobile phone. Farmers and other residents in rural areas  of countries such as India and Africa use cheap or shared mobile phones to access  relevant market and other information that help them in their agricultural and livestock businesses. They would otherwise not be able to  do this otherwise due to lack of landline infrastructure in rural and remote regions. A report by the United Nations has found that there are actually more mobile phones in India than there are toilets...  In Dhakar there is an sms based version of something like ebay called Cellbazaar, where people can list, sell and buy goods by text messaging. 

In more developed countries, mobile phones are probably used more for social and leisure purposes rather than anything else. Wireless technology and 3G phones, smartphones, android phones and iphones provide a smorgasboard of choices to select from, including: taking photos, playing games, listening to music, moblogging, watching tv shows & movies, or make your own and upload it to YouTube.  A mind-boggling array of over 250,000 iphone applications presents no limits to what you can do with your iphone. But what are the ramifications of all this mobile-mania? 

According to Hans Geser, there are four main areas to be concerned about in social overuse of the mobile phone: 

1) mob phone users tend to be in constant contact with family and close friends at the expense of widening their social networks, using the phone as a safety blanket and becoming reluctant to deal with the unfamiliar, such as not answering calls from unfamiliar numbers;

2) mob phone users forgetting, or not learning proper planning and organising skills, due to the immediacy of mobile technology enabling decisions to me made, and cancelled spontaneously, rather than having to schedule things in advance, make firm commitments and be punctual;

3) a change in the communication dynamics between work and home, with family members able to access employees on their personal mobile phones at work, rather than on the employer's phone, leading to constant interruptions and a change in employees' attention and productivity, and work-life balance;

4) the use of the mobile phone as an 'umbilical cord' between parents and their children for constant monitoring, and between  employers and their employees and vice-versa, leading to co-dependent relationships and a lack of  delegation skills for the manager or leadership skills for the subordinate. 



There are many other anti-social aspects of mobile phone usage, such as the too-loud commuter, the distracted texting driver, the popular person who's always on the phone while in company of friends, and the tradie working on your tiling/painting/floors/roofing/etc who is happy to answer calls and chat on his phone while charging you an arm and a leg for the privilege of listening to him book more jobs.... Some interesting research is being conducted on how people use their phones, and one recent  report  indicates that one in three teens in the US sends around 3000 text messages a month! Poor phone habits have led to bans and policies being developed, and rules of mobile phone etiquette have been formulated.

But can we do without our mobile phones? Considering that many  people use their mobile phones for just about everything - alarm, camera & photo storage, calculator, address book as well as all the uses mentioned earlier, it would be difficult to find a small, handy appliance that would replace it. Most mobile phone users keep their phones close to their body, almost like another appendage. It looks as though Donna Haraway was right - we have become cyborgs - a blend of machine and human, so entwined that they cannot be split...

Happy mobile-phoning.........

Politicians - more than just a laugh on YouTube?

Hands up anybody here who looks at serious political speeches or campaign clips on YouTube? Naahh, didn't think so. What about watching videos of pollies making fools of themselves.....yeahh? It's almost a national pastime to make fun of our politicians by sending them up, including carefully editing video clips of them to totally distort anything they say, or to insert silly farting noises as they speak and putting the resulting clips up on YouTube for the whole world to see. Some are in worse taste than others. But what about the genuine, serious uses of social media in politics? 

In the US, John Edwards was the first person to announce his intention to run for presidency on his website in 2007 in an attempt to get with the times and use social media to win some votes. But the use of his website was a poor choice and didn't get much exposure, because after all, how many people would be visiting the site to see it? A review of the sites of six candidates in that election indicates that Edwards employed lots and lots of types of social media in his campaign, but obviously didn't score the top job, and his site now appears to be totally defunct. 

This was a direct contrast to Barack Obama. Obama enjoyed a massive publicity campaign fought with a clever use of social media, including a particularly provocative video clip on YouTube of the Obama Girl, which could be argued to have given him an extremely good advantage over his rivals and may have even won him the election. There was a much greater turn-out of under-30s voters in the 2008 election than had been seen before, which is exactly the audience that politicians are hoping to capture with their use of social media as promotional platforms. I  think that it would be interesting to know what  Obama's wife Michelle thought of the Obama Girl video....

Obama continues to use social media extremely effectively. Figues show that he had around 2.4 million Facebook friends in Nov 2008 and now has over 8.6 million. Obama's YouTube channel contains almost 2,000 video clips which have had 23 million channel views and  over 150 millions downloads. Totally amazing for a political website. It is claimed that during the 2008 presidential election, 68% of registered U.S. voters turned to the Internet regularly to receive political information. For the first time, the Internet surpassed newspapers and magazines in terms of reach and influence.This demonstrates the power that efficient and effective use of social media can harness, but it needs to be done well.

To help the pollies, YouTube has just launched a  campaign toolkit for politicians with the aim of equipping political candidates with the resources to use YouTube and Google effectively to engage with their audience. Naturally the toolkit includes paid advertising video streams and similar.....     

      

The internet also provides fertile ground and the technological opportunities for citizens to express their true thoughts and feelings about their elected candidates, which can consequently positively or adversely affect chances of people still running for election. It also  has the capacity to spread information (or disinformation) exremely rapidly. Take the case of Sarah Palin. Palin was the youngest person, and the first woman ever to be elected Governor of Alaska, and was selected to be John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Unfiortunely for Palin, she had the misfortune to be impersonated and satirised on Saturday Night Live by the strikingly similar-in-appearance comedienne Tina Fey, and the end result went viral over the internet. This may have helped immensely in turning her into a figure of rpublic idicule and undermining any credibility she may have had, thereby affecting her campaign efforts. See video here. 

I tend to think that women get crucified worse by the media than men so, but that's just my perspective. Poor old Pauline Hanson has certainly got a lot of stick over the years, some may say deservedly, but apparently posting nude photos of her (turned out to be not of her) over the internet was regarded by some as a good marketing ploy. Hanson has not been treated well by the media, even though many might say she only has herself to blame. Here's a video clip discussing the media treatment of her.  And of course there's much more to be found on YouTube.



But one thing is for sure, what it really great about the internet, social media and politics, is that in our democratic society where we have relatively good freedom of speech in our media, ordinary citizens are able to read  political material that presents different or opposing points of view about matters that affect our voting preferences, which a lot of people in certain countries do not have the luxury of doing. It is therefore up to the politicians to make the best use of the media to enhance their prospects of getting into power. The tools are there. But in the meantime, it's great to have the freedom to find and publish silly photos of our respected (?) leaders. ...ciao. 

Are you a produser -- and no, it's NOT a rude word!

If you haven't heard the word Produser before, don't feel bad, you're not alone. It's a reasonably new term that supersedes the old word Prosumer. It's also second cousin to Produtzer and Prosumption. Yes folks, this is still English we're talking here. Let me give you the buzz about it...

Advancements in technology and an explosion of social media has created huge shifts in how media content is created and consumed. Traditionally, the production chain was a linear process: with a content producer such as a musician creating something (a song), a distributor being responsible for getting it out there, and the consumer buying and using it. But that isn't necessarily the way it is done nowadays. Now almost anyone can combine these three processes together and become...you guessed it...a Produser!! Here's a picture of what the process looks like... 

This form of user-led content contributes to an environment known by the term Produsage - coined by Axel Bruns, a social media researcher and lecturer who has written quite a lot about the phenomenon. Bruns says "There is an absence of producers, distributors,  or consumers, and the presence of a seemingly endless string of actors acting incrementally as content producers by gradually extending and improving the information present in the information commons, the value chain begins and ends (but only temporarily, ready for further development) with content." 

Here's a link to Brun's blog, one to an introduction to Produsage and one to a website with lots of articles about Produsage. I've even located a slideshow of a lecture for you. And here's a photo of Axel (ditch the bit under the chin Axel). But I know what you're thinking....just what does it all mean? 

Well... what it means is that instead of being merely passive consumers of media, people are actively participating in taking existing content, perhaps modifying it, adding to it, stitching bits and pieces of different content together and producing and distributing 'new' content. These produsers occupy a hybrid position as both consumers and producers of media artefacts. Modern technology enables users to easily create and distribute their own goods. YouTube, The Sims, Second Life, Wikipedia and open-source software are major examples of user-created content produsage, where the consumers are also the producers.   

Produsage is not just a new form of content production. The shift has changed the whole conventional producer - consumer relationship. Produsage is a continuous creation of knowledge and art by collaborative communities of produsers. It affects culture, the economy, society and democracy. Produsage embraces an open, participatory culture with new forms of governance and ownership - a fluid hierarchy of shifting and subjectively-based meritocracy. Blogs, collaborative online publishing and news sites are other examples of produsage.

Weird Al Jankovic is also a produser. Weird Al takes other people's content, modifies it by adding his own special brand of satire and parody, and redistributes it as his own new creation. If you haven't heard of him you can check him out on Wikipedia (another produsage example) or YouTube  (another one) where His song 'White and Nerdy' has had over 53 million views, you can also see it here. Al's version 'You're Pitiful', of James Blunt's 'You're Beautiful' apparently had Blunt's blessing, but was stopped from being released by Blunt's recording company. You can read about it and can listen to it here, it's pretty clever. A couple more examples of produsage are a video clip of soldiers in Afghanistan doing their take on Lady GaGa's 'Telephone' video clip, and here's a music video clip that proves not all produsers necessarily have talent...... Just as well it's free ;-)

Do good girls do cybersex?

No longer do people need to prowl nightclubs or scan crowds at parties for potential sexual partners, now practially anyone can participate in all kinds of sexual activity with just a few simple clicks. 

Cybersexual activity, that is....want to know more? Come on in....

The internet has brought a kind of sexual revolution right into our homes, offering many people opportunities for participation in sexual interaction that they may not have the means to  actualise in real life. While internet porn and sexually oriented material has generally been assumed to be a male domain, women are apparently taking to cybersex in droves. However, women are often omitted from discussions of online and cybersex activity. Believe it or not, but according to a major study discussed in an article by Marnie Ferree: Women and the web: cybersex activity and implications, women are over-represented in the number of people who are rated as cybersex-compulsive, that is people who engage frequently in cybersex (communicating online while masturbating). The compulsive behaviour of these women (and of men) is so intense that they that spend so much time online (around ten hours a day) that it poses a serious threat to their jobs, relationships and other aspects of their lives.

Women may perhaps feel that the virtual enviroment  provides a safer haven than real life to experiment with casual sexual experiences, and can elect to participate in sexual activity  when they choose to, for their own sake and not just to please a pushy partner. Online, women have greater sexual and relational power and are presented with an almost level playing field where to find or exert their sexuality. Virtual sex is a tool that can be used to find and exert one's self-expression, to break free from social traditions and restrictions, and an opportunity to act out various fantasies and role-plays that 'good girls' or women have traditionally not been associated with.

Women are free to have as many frequent, anonymous encounters as they wish in the privacy of their own home, all without having to worry about what the neighbours might think. There is no risk of sexually transmitted diseases, and certainly no chance of getting pregnant, unless one decides to meet up with someone offline, an action fraught with considerably more danger. Online, women are able to adopt any persona that takes their fancy, be any age they want to be, and take on any physical appearance they want. There can also be a certain benefit in transitory online relationships - if one encounters disappointment, then not to worry, there are plenty more encounters to be found. Not always so easy in real life. Particularly for the not-so-hot, the disenfranchised, the physically challenged or geographically isolated, or the less socially active members of society. 
 

"This is the new sex, or certainly the new safe sex. People are more willing to be sexually open when they don't have to touch each other. Now they can see and hear one another - and maybe some day they'll even be able to feel each other - without any actual human contact." So says Jed Weintrob, producer of the movie On_Line, which explores themes of lust and desire within the modern technological environment. 

The day of 'feeling' another person online is now here. Gadgets  and software have been designed that enable two people to share intimate moments online with one person controlling a personal 'massager' being held by the other person, making it vibrate in sync with their every command, even though they may be at opposite sides of the world. Amazing, huh! Incredibly boring looking company website though!  Let's hope the website servers don't have a meltdown if too may people sign up. Apparently lots of married couples, particularly in the military, use this service to stay sexually connected when they are physically apart, and testimonials from happy couples claim that the technology has saved their marriage. 

They are the lucky ones. There are many not-so-lucky people whose relationships and marriages have broken up because of cybersex. Take for example the  married couple - Amy Taylor and David Pollard. Amy caught David having online cybersex with a virtual prostitute avatar in Second Life and summarily decided to divorce him. Online affairs don't legally classify as adultery and are not automatically grounds for divorce, but couples may find it difficult to establish trust again after a bad experience.   

Another wife who was also less than impressed with her husband's online romps found him having virtual gay sex in a sex dungeon in Second Life. Lisa was horrified. John said that he thought it was funny and only did it for a laugh. Yeah right. ... "I can't believe it's ended up destroying my marriage". Sue Hoogestrat says of her husband Rick, " you try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they'll be having sex with a cartoon". Rick has another wife online who he spends much more time with that his real one... Check out the full story here. 

There is precious little relief for those who have been cheated upon except for what is set up by fellow sufferers. I don't know whether there is any truth to it, but it certainly seems as though more husbands than wives cheat their spouses in cybersex. Websites and forums have been established to support cheated wives such as Gamerwidow, where women can voice their suspicions or vent their anger at the feelings of betrayal and isolation they are experiencing from their partners' compulsive involvement in internet games and online sexual activity. Read more here.    

Researchers are now finding that some people may find it difficult to distinguish between the virtual world and real life on a neurological level. This seems to align well with Baudrillard's hyperreality theory, where the simulacra become the reality. It's no wonder that some people are addicted to internet porn and sex sites, but is it worse than crack?  

 
However, although the world of cybersex may possibly seem incredibly appealing to some, it may be prudent to keep in mind an old saying....what you see is not always what you get..... One doesn't always know for sure whether the person at the other end is who, or where, they say they are. It always pays to be careful and not to give personal details away too readily. 

Oh what a wonderful world. But how real is it?

Residents of the 3d virtual world community Second Life (SL)  are fortunate enough to live in a very glamorous world, free to roam and fly about as they choose, totally unencumbered by the daily grind of juggling school drop-off runs, dirty dishes and other mundane chores incurred in everyday Real Life (RL). How wonderful!  Doesn't it sound so insanely appealing? Sure does. Unfortunately, I'm just a little too pragmatic to join in. Not necessarily for lack of wanting to, mind you, but fear that I might enjoy it so much I won't want to come back...however, perhaps not is all as it seems...

How real is it all?  Perhaps belief of Second Life as reality can be likened to the belief of fairies in Peter Pan? - "I DO believe in fairies" - and if you believe in SL, then it is real. Or perhaps we could say that  it is shared experiences  that create reality? According to Mark Stephen Meadows in his book 'I Avatar' : "People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it - this tells me that something real is happening. The suspension of belief has become a grounding of belief."

Does this mean that if two or more people share an experience it makes it more real and valid than if only one person is involved? Well then, with around 15 million registered users, life in Second Life must be very real indeed! It's certainly real enough for people making money in their Real Life from their involvement in their Second Life. RL people such as Ailin Graef, the creator of Anshe Chung, a real estate developer on SL, and the first virtual world resident to have made enough Linden dollars (the currency in SL), to equate to one million dollars in real life. Anshe Chung 's virtual business dealings now finance her real world business dealings, including the development and sale of properties for large corporations.

The business of consumerism is one of the major activities on Second life. In January 2006, over 5 million real dollars was spent in around 4.2 million transactions on shopping for general items such as clothing and personal accessories and real estate transactions. Second Life publishes it's own quarterly financial reports, unsurprisingly replicating the conventional real-life business world.  Residents can also purchase weird and wonderful items that are not typically available in RL yet, such as skins and other body parts, particularly if one intends to do the horizontal tango.

Apparently genitalia are not standard issue upon joining SL, and you need to purchase the right 'equipment', albeit easily done by virtue of your credit card, thank you. $$$ Kaching $$$. Even fashion guru Giorgio Armani (below) has opened a range of virtual/real businesses, offering his particular brand of taste and style to SL fashionistas. This blend of real and virtual worlds certainly blurs the line between reality and hyperreality, and for many, the simulacra has become the reality. But what if one day it all just disappeared,  at the push of a button?

The rug can be pulled out from underneath your second life at any time, as customers of Ginko Bank found out. Following an announcement by Linden Labs against gambling on SL which triggered  a run for cash withdrawals by bank customers, the virtual bank initially froze withdrawals of funds by customers, then summarily decided to close its doors. This potentially leaves many avatar customers and their real-life counterparts in a financial quandary, as their Linden dollars can no longer be redeemed and converted back to real currency. The connection between reality and hyperreality is a very one tenuous indeed.

A University no more... 
Woodbury University established  a virtual campus on an SL island in 2006, and has been paying around $1000 (real dollars) per month for the land lease. The campus was a reality shared by approx 1500 University staff, students and other people. Unfortunately, vandals and troublemaking avatars have created havoc a little too often, resulting in Linden Labs (the owners of SL) taking the drastic step of erasing the campus from the Second  Life world map. There is no compensation for any loss or inconvenience incurred. Meadows identified one of the main problems with immersion into a virtual world as the real-world consequences and injury that can be caused by actions inthe virtual world.


                                       The Woodbury campus as it once was......

       
                                     And the void created by where it used to be......      

                                    So, how real is it now? 

It is clear that a certain reality can be created in virtual worlds by the creation of another persona, another life, inslands, buildings, shops, banks and universities, and the sharing of extraordinary experiences with other people, but ultimately, these experiences are dependent on the technology required for them to function and the rules, policies, resources and whims of the world's creators. And that, my friend, is truly reality.

For further insights into the world of Second Life here is a very informative video from  a special edition of Four Corners on the ABC: You Only Live Twice.