Posted by Karen E. Lund in Circle, Humanizing Technology, Language, Museum, Social Media.
Tags: Change, Ethics, Humanizing Technology, Language, Museum, Social Media
Several years ago I visited Charleston SC on a vacation. While there I toured the Aiken-Rhett House, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and is now a museum. I love museums and I love old houses, but the Aiken-Rhett House is unique among all the old house museums I’ve ever been to: it retains an outbuilding that once contained slave quarters (discreetly described as “servants’ quarters” in the NRHP nomination form).
I arrived at the house shortly after it opened to visitors for the day, so had it pretty much to myself. I followed the audio tour through the main house, then walked out the back door. Two nearly identical buildings flanked the courtyard—to the left, the stables; to the right, the slaves’ quarters. I went up the stairs to the second floor, above the kitchen. The small rooms, which reminded me of a bargain motel, were where the slaves had once lived. They were mostly bare—I remember a wooden bed frame without a mattress and a simple wooden table—because slaves’ furnishings were not saved as heirlooms and very few have survived the years.
Alone in the building, I tried to imagine what it would have been like to be a person without rights—one who could be sold as easily as the horses in the stables across the courtyard to another plantation, in another state, perhaps separated from my family forever. What was it like to have no choice in one’s life and work, and no legal recourse? To be not a person but someone else’s property? I could not quite wrap my brain around it, but I had the sense that I was standing in a very special place, almost sacred. It is one of the last surviving slaves’ quarters—structures that, thankfully, will never again be built in the United States. A century and a half ago this nation fought a war to decide (among other things) that slavery was to be abolished and all people, regardless of the color of their skin or where their ancestors came from, would have the most basic rights as human beings.
Seventeen Dollars a Share
So imagine my surprise, a few days ago, when I discovered that I (or, to be more precise, my Twitter identity) was on sale for $17 a share on a website I had not previously known about. I was not pleased. Actually, I was outraged. The first analogy I thought of was not slavery but prostitution. Somebody was selling me online, without my consent or (until recently) even my knowledge. There was a dollar amount attached to my name! I was relieved to see that no-one had purchased any shares, but how could I guarantee that it wouldn’t happen?
Fortunately Empire Avenue (the site in question) responded promptly to my e-mail asking them to remove me from their website. For that I am thankful, but in the meantime I have engaged in a few discussions about why I reacted so strongly. (A brief search of Twitter tells me that women react more negatively to this site than men, but not exclusively.) After all, there are other sites like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitalyzer that “score” Twitter and social media users based on their online activity. How are they different?
Simple. Those other sites give users a score, like a report card grade or a batting average; they don’t put a dollar value on social media users. This is, I want to emphasize, my personal Twitter account and my handle is a variation of my name. To the people who engage with me on Twitter, it is me. It’s not a corporate account, so I cannot think of Empire Avenue as a stock exchange. I never issued an IPO on my personal identity.
But there’s a little more to it. Those other sites use algorithms to determine my score. I can’t influence them, except by my online behavior, and other people can’t vote me up or down like it was a popularity contest. As such, I can more easily ignore it, if I choose. Putting a dollar sign in front of the number makes me uncomfortable. Allowing other people to virtually buy or sell shares of me creates an awkward dilemma: either people don’t buy into me, which is faintly insulting, or they put a price on my value as a person, which is (to me) a bit more insulting.
Thinking it Through
Clearly I have to think through some of the counter-arguments I’ve read.
- It’s like buying and selling shares on a stock exchange. Well, it might be, if this were a business account. But it’s my personal account and I am not for sale.
- It’s a game. I disagree. It’s only a game if I agreed to play, and nobody invited me to play or asked my permission to be listed. If this were an opt-in game, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. (But I still wouldn’t join.) I don’t think online “games” like Mafia Wars are fun, either. I knew someone who got in trouble with the real Mafia, and his parents had to take a second mortgage on their home to get him out of trouble and prevent him ending up in the emergency room—or worse. Some things just aren’t fun—or funny—and in my mind buying and selling people is one of them.
- The money isn’t real, it’s virtual. True enough, but my Twitter identity is a big part of how people see me online, and many of the people I know through social media I have never met in real life. That virtual self and those virtual relationships are important to me. And there are a few people I’ve met online first, then met face to face. Don’t you think it might be awkward meeting someone for the first time who “owns” part of you? I do.
- It’s about your “real world ‘value score’.” That’s from Robert Scoble’s blog. By “value,” Scoble seems to mean literally assigning a monetary value to someone and allowing others to bid. I don’t value people that way. I prefer old-fashioned values (in the ethical sense) to dollars any day.
Those are just my first impressions. I’m still thinking about this and reading what others have to say. Maybe I’m missing out on some Next Big Thing. But that’s OK. I’ve missed out on a few of those, and I’ve learned it’s that there’s always another Next Big Thing around the corner. So if I miss out on this one, I’ll catch another.
There’s a Reason It’s Called Social Media
As I wrote in a comment on Scoble’s blog, “I enjoy the approval that comes with a connection on LinkedIn, a follower on Twitter, or a comment on my blog. They are personal engagements, not a financial transaction.”
That’s why it’s called social media. The most interesting people on social media have conversations, even if they are sometimes fleeting. They are social. It can be banter around the water cooler, or sharing a link because you think it’s interesting and somebody else might like it, too. Occasionally a conversation grows too large for Twitter and moves over to private e-mail or a blog, a conversation by phone or Skype, or a face to face meeting. Those are rare, but they can be special.
You can do whatever you like (after all, you’re a free person with rights), but I’m keeping the personal and the financial separate, even in my virtual life.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this over the past two days—from not knowing anything about Empire Avenue to having a very strong gut reaction. (And I again want to say how pleased I am that they removed my information so promptly.) I would love to know what you think. Have you looked at the site? Have you checked your own listing or invested in anyone else? Do you think of it as merely a game or (like me) do you find it impossible to separate it from your real self? And if you know of any other blogs or articles about it, I’d like to have links.
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Posted by Karen E. Lund in Change, Humanizing Technology, Learning, Social Media.
Tags: #UsBlogs, Change, Humanizing Technology, Ignorance, Learning, Social Media
For at least two years, I’ve been hearing and reading about how social media is taking over our lives. It’s terrible. It’s revolutionary. We love it. We hate it. It needs to stop. We need to learn how to use it. What will we do when the bubble bursts?
It’s time to get over it. Social media is not a fad, although some of the particular websites that have been popular early on (such as MySpace) are struggling and may disappear. Like other electronic technology it will continue to evolve. But it’s not going away.
It’s time to stop arguing about if and start discussing the who, what, when, where, why and how of social media.
So here are some social media myths I want to bust:
- “Social media is a fad.” Sure it is, like television, telephone, radio and the printing press. All were controversial when they started: people were afraid they would force out existing forms of communication. They didn’t eliminate existing forms, they added something to the mix. Social media is doing the same.
- “Humanity will suffer if we spend all our time online.” Of course it will, but almost no-one would spend all their time online. We become boring if we spend all our time online or talking about being online—just like we become boring if we spend the whole day watching television, or talk about nothing but sports or our own hobbies. We’re actually more interesting when we have information and ideas to share from the “real world.” As the novelty wears off, we’ll figure out how to switch effortlessly back and forth between the real and the virtual and communicate our most interesting discoveries between them.
- “[MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/insert your own choice] is boring.” Yes, perhaps it is—to you. Not everyone enjoys everything. Those social media platforms that don’t interest enough people will vanish, either shut down or absorbed into another platform. The good ones will attract users (which usually will make them more interesting), evolve and thrive. Just because you don’t like one site doesn’t mean the whole medium is a failure.
- “Too much time spent with social media makes us unproductive.” Sure. So does too much time doing any one thing (see above). But, honestly, what would you be doing with that time? If you would be working hard at something productive, then go do it. If you would be twiddling your thumbs, stay with the social media; at least you have a slim chance of learning something interesting or useful from a virtual friend.
- “Virtual relationships aren’t the same as face-to-face.” Absolutely true, but on the other hand virtual relationships are better than not knowing someone at all. I have three kinds of virtual “friends”: people I knew first in real life but no longer see often (because we don’t work together or one of us has moved); people I met virtually and then had the opportunity to meet face-to-face; and people I’ve never met and perhaps never will. In the first case, we would have completely lost touch if we didn’t have e-mail, social media or some other way of staying in touch, so I consider that a good thing. In the second, I took advantage of an opportunity to meet someone because I was impressed with what I knew of them online, and it has enriched my life. In the third, social media has given me the chance to meet people far away whom I would never have met otherwise (and perhaps will never meet in person), but the virtual world has given us the opportunity to know just a little bit about each other via the Internet. Isn’t that a good thing?
Those are my observations about social media. It is maturing, but not yet a finished product. The time has come to stop debating if it will succeed (it has) and figure out how best to use it. What is the truism you’ve heard too often and want to bust? Comments welcome!
Today’s post is part of the #UsBlogs project. “Tired, Old & Redone Social Media Rhetoric” is the topic of the week.
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Posted by Karen E. Lund in Emergency Preparedness, Humanizing Technology, Internet, Knowledge, Mobile, Non-Profit, Social Media, Volunteer.
Tags: #UsBlogs, Collaboration, Communication, Disaster, Emergency Preparedness, Humanizing Technology, Internet, Knowledge, Mobile, Non-Profit, Social Media, Volunteer
Last month I attended Social Media Week New York. As most of my career has been spent in non-profits, I registered for panels on non-profits, international development, and using social media for social good. There was a good deal of discussion about events happening in the Middle East, and opinions were divided on how much (or how little) social media like Facebook and Twitter were influencing the democracy movements.
Friday around noon I returned from an early lunch break for a panel discussion. Every venue (that I know of) had wi-fi, so after finding a good seat I cracked open my laptop to check e-mail and Twitter. Twitter was alive! Reports that Hosni Mubarak had resigned were lighting up my timeline, so I switched briefly to my News list, which was also crazy. But this is a new medium, and the contradictory reports of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in January had shown me that misinformation can propagate just as easily as reliable information. So I quickly looked at the websites of the New York Times, the BBC, and Al Jazeera English. All of them reported Mubarak’s resignation, so I accepted it as true.
Double Check Your Facts. Then Triple Check.
Social media accelerates the flow of information, both good and bad. Rumor and misinformation can spread just as rapidly as accurate news, so confirm what you read against other sources. That first report you read may be true—it may even be a scoop, in which case you won’t find confirmation for a while—but unless you are an eye-witness or know the source to be extremely trustworthy, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
What Social Media Can Do
Before this sounds too negative, I need to say: social media has enormous potential to do good. But like any tool, it’s all in how you use it. Here are a few thoughts on how to make social media do good:
- Stay informed. Develop a trusted network of individuals and organizations that you can rely on in a time of need—or any time. Discover who provides reliable information about topics that interest you (social good or otherwise) and can both keep you up-to-date on current news and be a fact-checking resource when you need one.
- Share. Contribute to the conversation, share what you know from your offline experience, and forward information you glean from your network. When sharing, always double-check before you forward or retweet; be sure that what you share is relevant, useful and that the links work.
- Choose your subject. Nobody can do everything, so focus your attention on a subject that interests you and/or a particular skill you have to offer. By all means stay informed about everything that interests you, but if you’re going to delve deeper, narrow your focus to be most effective.
- Use the best available technology. One of the greatest things about technology is that it gives us so many channels to communicate. Sometimes the difficult part is deciding which to use. In emergency situations, such as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear hazard in Japan, some forms of communication may be unavailable, so you may not have access to the very best channel—but choose the most appropriate from among those you do have.
- Get involved. Opportunities to do good may be virtual, or you may want to carry your helping into your offline life. Use online sources to be informed, then connect via social media and carry your good deeds forward.
- Collaborate. The thing about social media is it’s… well, social. One person acting in isolation isn’t social, nor a network. You’ll have much more impact in whatever you do if you collaborate with like-minded folks online. So before you rush off to reinvent the wheel, check out what others are doing; then join up with an existing network that matches your own ideals, or start your own project knowing exactly which gap you’re filling.
- Inform your friends, but don’t push. Just because someone likes you doesn’t mean they are passionate about everything that you are—or that they have the time, money or energy to contribute. Let your friends know what you’re interested in, but keep the requests for help low-key; those who want to participate will, especially if they know you’re the person to contact if they want to do more.
Social Media in Times of Crisis—One Example with a Happy Ending
If you have any doubt that social media can do good, watch this CNN report about how Akiko Kosaka, a young Japanese woman attending college in the US, learned on YouTube (YouTube!) that her family had survived the recent earthquake and tsunami. It demonstrates better than I can the ability of communications technology to connect people in time of need.
My Service and Support Corporation
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Posted by Karen E. Lund in Language, Technology, Website.
Tags: Language, Technology, Website, Word Games
This past weekend I attended a reading of selections from William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch. I had not read the work before (it’s now on my TBR list), but I knew enough about the Beats to not be shocked by its strange, surreal and sometimes profane language.
In the discussion that followed the reading, someone mentioned there are now websites that will “translate” any text into Burroughs style and I have been eager to try them out. But first, a little background. Burroughs’ strange language is not merely the product of his mind, it is the product of his hands: after typing some of his text, he cut up the paper and rearranged the pieces, thus reordering the words and even inventing new words. That became the “final” version. This wasn’t Burroughs’ own invention (I learned that today by researching online), but he is the most widely-known practitioner of the technique. There’s a video of an interview with Burroughs that includes a short demonstration of the cut-up technique. You don’t need a demonstration, though; it’s easy enough to try it yourself with a printed text (that you’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of art) and scissors.
Or you can do it virtually using online tools. This is fun to play with. Open up a text file on your computer—the odder the better—and give it a try!
I started at The Lazarus Corporation, which has compiled several text-altering programs.
To begin, I ran a couple of paragraphs from a recent post through the Text Mixing Desk, which is most similar to Burroughs’ cut-up technique. Enter some text in the box, then scroll down to the filter options. “Cut-up Engine” is the Burroughs technique, so I used with that, but there are other options and you can even combine manipulations in a single go. Click “Process Signal Now.” The next screen asks you to choose a number of words per strip—basically how wide the cut paper would be. Then “Click Here to Finish.” This is what my first attempt produced (with some parentheses removed and capitalization tidied by me):
Read under the bedcovers with a not always straight; a b or couldn’t seem to soak it up fast the picture books and matched less than a b, the kind who to be asleep. it felt like there alphabet when I started myself to read. I’d memorized understood the words. I knew the remember, probably before I flashlight after I was supposed blame, of course. They read to enough.
My parents are to was so much to know and I kindergarten and then taught me at bedtime from before I can two might slip in, but nothing child–the kind who got as if I was a nerdy, bookish the words to the pictures.
Next I visited Language Is a Virus and spent some time playing with the Haiku-a-Tron. It’s totally random—no user input at all—so a lot of the results are nonsense. But after a few tries it offered me something vaguely evocative of a Beat poem:
strange lose angel
disappointed inhaling rhythms starbrite
hell jagged
At this point I should probably mention that if you’re at work it would be a good idea to bookmark a few things for later and get back to what you were doing…
Got time? The Non-linear Adding Machine asks for four text samples, then slices and dices them into nonsense. (Have we identified Col. Gaddafi’s speechwriter?) Or try the Shannonizer, which takes a chunk of text and “edits” it in the style of a famous author—you can choose from Dr. Seuss, Edgar Allan Poe, God or Miss Manners, among others. (Hint: Try editing the same text by choosing different authors and see what happens.)
Enough of this! I’m going to play with word games for a while… Do you have a favorite? Did I miss something? Leave a comment and help me waste, uh enjoy, even more time online.
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