What have been your prior experiences with Web 2.0 technologies? Do you consider yourself a leader or follower in this realm, or something else altogether? Why? Also, discuss what you hope to get out of this class.
I guess I would have to rate my past experience with Web 2.0 technology as a moderate follower. As a service member, I am extremely hesitant to "put myself out there" by personalizing my life online. I am aware of the most popular tools, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, etc. but rarely actively participate because of the public private struggle going on in my brain. There have been many instances in my life where I wished I could retract a comment, thought, utterance, or look and I am concerned with the permanence of these tools. I have an account on all three, but prior to this course I never actually looked at them. My last course, Media, Text, and Technology, exposed me to terms and tools that might be of limited use to me in my career, but I doubt that anything other than the basic tools (email, IM, or blog) will be required.
I hope to learn a way to expand my current online presence without sacrificing my private life, or is this just wishful thinking?
I think you raise a great issue, Kenny. Life online is public, for all to see. Many of use have ideas or thoughts to share with one audience, but not another. Stories you'll tell your friends, but not your parents. Etc. It's a lot harder to keep it all separate online. Plus, an embarrassing utterance has the potential to live on and on and on -- sometimes archived in other places even after you try to delete it.
ReplyDeleteFinding the right balance between public and private is a necessary task that most people figure out over time. It's a personal thing, too. What works for one person won't work for another.
I have two friends who are Air Commandos out of Hurlburt. They are not allowed to publicly (beyond spouses)communicate the "whens" and often the "wheres" of their deployments. In the case of one with FaceBooking teenage children, he has to ensure that they don't reveal departure and arrival information by accident. Of course, keeping tabs on minors and FB is a good idea anyway, but what about Mom's page, or Sister's, etcetera? In theory, they not only have to be careful of thier OWN use of social media, they have to be concerned about anyone else in a position to comment on thier comings and goings.
ReplyDeleteOn a different but similar note, somewhere within the last month I saw an article on a group that developed an algorithym to use social network connections to probabilistically identify closeted gays, based upon their friend networks. Given enough data points, your politics, your beliefs, your private life can be inferred with decent accuracy even when YOU have never made the information public. Who saw that coming?
For all practical purposes, the internet is public and information posted to the internet is posted forever. I predict that (sometime soon) someone will market a breathalyzer-interface that will prevent you from posting to the internet after a second glass of wine!
David, Wow, just...Wow. That bit about the social network algorithim is amazing. I know I didn't see it coming. But it does fit in with what Shirky says about the development of communities being statistically more probable in homogenous groups.
ReplyDeleteIt's not hard to believe either. Someone could take a look at my Facebook friends, groups, fansites, flair, etc. and get a really good idea that I like baseball, go to church, own 5 dogs and prefer Green Lantern to Batman. Imagine what they could get by looking at my "Bookshelf" to see what I am claiming to have read recently!