This link has been bookmarked by 79 people . It was first bookmarked on 04 Apr 2007, by Martin M.
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18 Feb 14
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technology has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life
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technology is more often the property of a corporation, not the passion of an individual
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Growth demands that you can't really target a niche population - you need to go for the masses.
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Passionate users are happy users
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more people care about Britney's meltdown than what's happening in Iraq.
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The magic isn't the technology... it's the stories and connections, the sharing and ideas. It's the way these technologies serve people's lives. More importantly, it's the way technologies serve the lives of *everyday people*, not just technologists.
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What comes out is not always good for society.
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These spaces are also where teens videotape their gang fights and blast them online to make fun of the losers.
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Technology has created a new frontier - a new space for people to come together based on what they need. This is not without complication.
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21 Oct 12
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Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.
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. Traditionally, we talk about meaningful labor in terms of a "career" instead of simply a "job" but that's becoming increasingly amorphous as careers become increasingly out-of-reach for many youth, particularly lower socio-economic status (SES) youth.
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, there's no really good social network site there to meet the needs of the older contingent.
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Problem is that technology is more often the property of a corporation, not the passion of an individual. Corporations have different incentives, often umbrella-ed under the mythical "shareholders." Shareholders want monetization and growth.
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. The architecture of the Internet has changed his life forever.
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. Context was key but context depends on there being walls.
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Online, there are no wall
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She doesn't know that i exist even though her life is on display for my consumption.
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l have location data and how will we deal with that?
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How are we going to handle the social boundaries then?
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And the code that we're creating now is changing the architecture on and offline.
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18 Oct 12
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25 Oct 11
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perhaps we lose track of what friendship and connection mean
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if we stare solely at the technology, we lose track of the true magic that exists around us
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US-centric
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impression management
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Techno-dreamers
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The value of Twitter has to do with baseline co-presence
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24 Oct 11
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As we Twitter our way to friendship
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perhaps we lose track of what friendship and connection mean
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if we stare solely at the technology, we lose track of the true magic that exists around us.
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You need to understand the social practices that make it flourish
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to understand the success of a social technology
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Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.
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Life stages are generalizations
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uncommon for friendships to cross age barriers and even familial relations are heavily age segmented today
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four key life stages
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1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)
2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)
3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")
4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees) -
As children, our identity is defined by the people around us
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We perform to others and adjust our behavior based on how they react.
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impression management
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we seek
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to align our image of ourselves with the reaction that others provide.
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As youth enter adulthood, they seek meaningful labor and companionship
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In theory, a career helps cement one's identity by providing a socially-respected role
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also seeking a partner
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next stage is about attaining status in the labor force and reproducing
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ubiquitous this dream is
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ever desired carrot at the end of the stick.
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as people age, they move into a stage of reflection and storytelling
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not everyone values the same things
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aren't a top priority for any particular group at any life stage
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education and politics,
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people segment themselves and that they don't actually engage with all people across all spaces and all time.
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engage based on what matters to them
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The mobile is a complete disaster. The economic model is set up entirely for those in Stage #3
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Should we build technology to promote what we believe should be people's priorities? Or should we build technology that supports the priorities that most people have?
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Techno-dreamers typically try to design to change the world.
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Problem is that technology is more often the property of a corporation, not the passion of an individual.
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Passionate users are happy users
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Passionate users make companies money
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in a capitalist society marked by Wall Street, often we have no option
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Companies can be quite profitable with niche audiences, but public companies are required to GROW, not just maintain profitability.
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Facebook hit its target demographic with unprecedented precision
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Last fall, they opened up to the world
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they diluted their brand just to grow grow grow.
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Expansion has its costs and one of those is angry users.
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While the market values growth, the cost is user passion.
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Companies typically try to model out demographics and design for the market that they think is most monetizable. They go straight for mass adoption based on need, not love. Even more so than startups, they tend to blow through their early adopters so that they can get to the cash-cow as fast as possible. Warning: once you destroy the trust of your early adopters, you're on the greed path.
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what would happen if startups were more aware of life stages, user priorities, and people's practices
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Social media reflects all the good and all the bad. They enable and support it, giving us space to see society from a new lens. Technology has created a new frontier - a new space for people to come together based on what they need
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Just like soylent green, social media are people
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What you say sticks around
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if you hang out in networked publics, you're searchable.
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You can copy and paste a conversation from one space to the other but can you tell what is the copy and what is the original?
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In mediated public spaces, there's no way to accurately gauge who is present or who will be present as the conversation spirals along.
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Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls.
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The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.
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How do you train a generation to speak to all people across all space and all time?
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Will your Twitter friends be there for you? Are they even there for you on the site?
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If i'm going to sit on my computer getting a flood of Tweets, i want happy positive news. The last thing i want is to be invaded with an attack of emo.
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The value of Twitter has to do with baseline co-presence, but how much of that can we take?
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Somehow, technology has taken TMI (Too Much Information) to an artform.
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Not all outcomes of ubiquitous technology have positive outcomes
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Are we ok with the pain that people feel because of our technology?
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But we, as technologists, have a responsibility to keep people in mind at all times.
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23 Oct 11
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We are so enamored by the technology that we think that is the magic upon which all life subsists
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Is the production of technology an incantation for the masses, a spell that will help them reach a higher ground, or perhaps be under our control? Or, does the incantation occur when everyday people perform their rituals through the platforms that we lay down?
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What are the spells we cast on one another, the spells that technologists cast on society, and what are the spells that practices cast back on us?
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keep younger populations away from older ones. Other structural and normative forces make is uncommon for friendships to cross age barriers and even familial relations are heavily age segmented
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We perform to others and adjust our behavior based on how they react. In doing so, we seek to align our image of ourselves with the reaction that others provide.
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not an individual process
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consider what people prioritize at different stages
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education and politics, they really aren't a top priority for any particular group at any life stage
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how people have values and that these values affect the ways in which they engage with technology
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technologies that they're using are the same, but how they're using them differs.
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often what makes users happiest and most passionate are when their priorities are met, not when the ideals of society are met.
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we leverage user passion to get adoption but our greed forces us to push for growth at the cost of user happiness.
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Lock-in is where you create reasons for users to be forced into sticking around when their passion fades.
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starting with the social communities and thinking about their practices and needs and designing from there.
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People have always organized around passion, interest, family, curiosity, etc. Now they do so online. They can come together, facilitated by technology.
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it's also the way that people share the worst parts of their life. What comes out is not always good for society.
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the underlying architecture of life has changed.
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we act like the world can have continuous norms and rules online.
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There's not one public - there are many publics
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They're collecting friends as a way of demarcating audience in a world without meaningful signals about who's watching
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As we continue to build new technologies, we continue to alter the architecture
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it's not really a space where you can talk about personal, negative things. And this makes sense to a certain degree. If i'm going to sit on my computer getting a flood of Tweets, i want happy positive news. The last thing i want is to be invaded with an attack of emo
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As you build technologies that allow the magic of everyday people to manifest, i ask you to consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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21 Oct 11
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"quarter life crisis" as youth realize that plethora of well-paid, valued, enjoyable jobs is a myth
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20 Oct 11
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If you want to understand the success of a social technology, you can't stare at the technology. You need to understand the social practices that make it flourish. Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.
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The reason that i bring these corporate practices up is because they really affect how systems are designed, deployed, and allowed to evolve. If you want to think about people, you need to understand how technological and corporate decisions interface with people's lives and practices. Who are the real stakeholders? The users or the stockholders?
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Life stages are not simply biological - they are socially constructed, legally enforced, and architecturally bounded. Life stages are generalizations - they do not apply to everyone, but at the same time, they are constructed as "normative" by society. This is why Hollywood can make movies called "The 40-year-old Virgin" and everyone laughs. Because life stages are primarily socially constructed, they are bounded by culture.
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So how do we cope? Most people go with the ostrich solution. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right? If you don't see the strangers staring at your virtual existence, they don't exist, right? The other proposed solution is being a luddite - avoiding all technology. Either way, we're talking avoidance.
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Perhaps the magic is not in the technology, but in the practices that emerge from the seedlings we put out into the world? Perhaps our technologies are nothing more than pitiful efforts to replicate the magic that we do not fully understand.
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when people engage with technology, amazing things happen. The magic isn't the technology... it's the stories and connections, the sharing and ideas. It's the way these technologies serve people's lives. More importantly, it's the way technologies serve the lives of *everyday people*, not just technologists.
-
I want to address four key life stages that i think are relevant to folks interested in social media:
1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)
2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)
3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")
4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees) -
If you want to understand the success of a social technology, you can't stare at the technology. You need to understand the social practices that make it flourish. Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.
-
Life stages are not simply biological - they are socially constructed, legally enforced, and architecturally bounded. Life stages are generalizations - they do not apply to everyone, but at the same time, they are constructed as "normative" by society. This is why Hollywood can make movies called "The 40-year-old Virgin" and everyone laughs. Because life stages are primarily socially constructed, they are bounded by culture.
-
I want to address four key life stages that i think are relevant to folks interested in social media:
1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)
2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)
3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")
4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees) -
Should we build technology to promote what we believe should be people's priorities? Or should we build technology that supports the priorities that most people have?
-
Should we build technology to promote what we believe should be people's priorities? Or should we build technology that supports the priorities that most people have?
-
Problem is that technology is more often the property of a corporation, not the passion of an individual. Corporations have different incentives, often umbrella-ed under the mythical "shareholders." Shareholders want monetization and growth. Monetization requires that a particular group obsess over your technology, either to willingly dish out fees to use it or to be so active that they might click on ads. Growth demands that you can't really target a niche population - you need to go for the masses.
-
The reason that i bring these corporate practices up is because they really affect how systems are designed, deployed, and allowed to evolve. If you want to think about people, you need to understand how technological and corporate decisions interface with people's lives and practices. Who are the real stakeholders? The users or the stockholders?
-
when people engage with technology, amazing things happen. The magic isn't the technology... it's the stories and connections, the sharing and ideas. It's the way these technologies serve people's lives. More importantly, it's the way technologies serve the lives of *everyday people*, not just technologists.
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This is quite different from the society that you and i were used to growing up. We were used to having walls. We assumed that the norms were set by the environment and that you behaved differently in synagogue than in the pub and that was AOK. Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls. The walls have come crumbling down. You can cross through spaces with the click of a few keystrokes and it's impossible to know what speech will spread where. The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.
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This is quite different from the society that you and i were used to growing up. We were used to having walls. We assumed that the norms were set by the environment and that you behaved differently in synagogue than in the pub and that was AOK. Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls. The walls have come crumbling down. You can cross through spaces with the click of a few keystrokes and it's impossible to know what speech will spread where. The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.
-
This is quite different from the society that you and i were used to growing up. We were used to having walls. We assumed that the norms were set by the environment and that you behaved differently in synagogue than in the pub and that was AOK. Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls. The walls have come crumbling down. You can cross through spaces with the click of a few keystrokes and it's impossible to know what speech will spread where. The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.
-
So how do we cope? Most people go with the ostrich solution. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right? If you don't see the strangers staring at your virtual existence, they don't exist, right? The other proposed solution is being a luddite - avoiding all technology. Either way, we're talking avoidance.
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The spells of technology are complicating the magic of people. Architecture is getting altered. While people adapt the technologies to meet their needs, their lives have to adapt to the ways in which the technology alters reality. It's a confusing time and technology is playing a huge role in the confusion.
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24 Oct 10
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12 Oct 10
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Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do
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Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.
-
1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)
2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)
3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")
4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees) -
impression management.
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We must ask ourselves when and where we should prioritize people's desires with societal goal
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capitalist
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Once you're a public company, you're too indebted to the marke
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Technology has created a new frontier - a new space for people to come together based on what they need. This is not without complication.
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06 Jun 10
Tracy TutenArchitecture of communication in virtual communities; notes from a talk; very insightful.
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03 Jun 10
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06 Feb 09
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09 Jan 09
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01 Jun 08
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22 May 08
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02 Apr 08
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10 Mar 08
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26 Feb 08
user 100"code is architecture. And the code that we're creating now is changing the architecture on and offline."
architecture social software usability privacy interaction community culture risks
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14 Feb 08
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11 Feb 08
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09 Feb 08
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30 Nov 07
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26 Oct 07
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28 May 07
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08 May 07
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of 14, most American youth were beginning to be productive laborers; today, we extend the liminal stage until well into the 20s and age segregate at every step.
Integration and coupling.
As youth enter adulthood, they seek meaningful labor and companionship. Traditionally, we talk about meaningful labor in terms of a "career" instead of simply a "job" but that's becoming increasingly amorphous as careers become increasingly out-of-reach for many youth, particularly lower socio-economic status (SES) youth. In theory, a career helps cement one's identity by providing a socially-respected role. Lately, what we've been seeing is often discussed as a "quarter life crisis" as youth realize that plethora of well-paid, valued, enjoyable jobs is a myth.
While this group is trying to position themselves in the labor force, they are also seeking a partner. Courtship begins much earlier, but this is the nesting stage where coupling up becomes a central focus for many.
Societal contribution
If all aligns well, the next stage is about attaining status in the labor force and reproducing. More than any other stage, the collective image of this stage and the reality of it are completely different. The dominant image is a slight modification of a post-war Hollywood dream that was constructed for social stability (even though it never really existed then either). Father and mother with two children, a dog, and two cars in a mortgaged house with a lawn in suburbia. Father has a prosperous white-collar job and is working up the ranks in the company. (Today's image allows for both parents to work white collar jobs and to somewhat split child rearing responsibilities, but the white picket fence is still assumed.) Well-behaved kids are good students and involved in numerous activities; they will go to college. Church on weekends, family dinners every night, summer family vacations. Donna Reed meets Father Knows Best.
As i fly around the country interviewing teens, i am constantly in awe of just how ubiquitous this dream is. Unfortunately, the reality includes a lot more divorce, struggle to make ends meet, alcoholism, and familial battles (in addition to the reality that not everyone is white, heterosexual, Christian, and middle-upper class). Still, this is the dream that many are working towards, the ever desired carrot at the end of the stick.
While the reality pales in comparison to the image, this is the stage when many people make deeply meaningful contributions to society, both as laborers and as child bearers.
Reflection and storytelling
In theory, people retire and their children grow up. The baby boomers are not so good at retirement (or giving up power) and numerous movies comment on children's failure to launch (probably due to their parents' refusal to turn over the reigns). Still, as people age, they move into a stage of reflection and storytelling. Ideally, older people are proud of what they did in their lifetime and they tell stories to anyone who will listen. They share with their children and grandchildren and they find utter joy in watching the newer generation grow up. They talk about their children and grandchildren to friends with proud voices, sharing the joys of their stories.
PRIORITIES
One reason for breaking things down into life stages is that we can then consider what people prioritize at different stages in their lives. The important thing to consider here is that not everyone values the same things. Many of you value technology for technology sake; this value is not shared by your broader peer group.
To take generalizations to the next level, let's talk about some of the most salient priorities in people's lives. Of course, you can't fully untangle these items because they are dependent on one another. For example, people can value money to consume or to gain status; relationship-seekers can value attention as a mechanism to get sex, etc. But still, here are some common values that pervade American society:
* Family
* Friends
* Religion
* Play/leisure
* Health
* Property
* Education
* Politics* Labor
* Hobbies
* Money
* Power
* Attention
* Sex
*ConsumptionBased on my own observations, i'm going to attempt to order what i see are the Top 5 most significant values per life stage. (This is completely unscientific and we can debate this after the talk if you wish.)
Life Stage #1 Life Stage #2 Life Stage #3 Life Stage #4 * Friends * Sex * Labor * Family * Attention * Friends * Family * Health * Play/Leisure * Money * Money * Religion * Sex * Play/Leisure * Power * Hobbies * Consumption * Labor * Property * Friends
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30 Apr 07
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25 Apr 07
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22 Apr 07
Agatha K"One way of looking at people is through the lens of life stages. What matters to people changes over their lifetime. A lot of this has to do with what roles they play, what responsibilities they have, and what culture tells them is important."
article psychology technology web2.0 community socialnetworking theory
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19 Apr 07
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17 Apr 07
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11 Apr 07
Johann RichardInput for Succesful Social Web Projects
community communication **** collaboration business blogs blogging behaviour architecture for:unic.com for:surber theory social toread culture socialsoftware technology web2.0
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10 Apr 07
electrastephInteresting discussion from emerging technologies conference.
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09 Apr 07
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e
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07 Apr 07
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06 Apr 07
Josephine Doradodanah boyd's lecture on ubiquitous web 2.0: "It’s about how technologists need to pay attention to the magic that everyday people create using the Web2.0 technologies that we in the tech world think are magical."
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05 Apr 07
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O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference - danah boyd
web2.0 technology for:chericem culture psychology 21stCentury
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04 Apr 07
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Jonathan Schmidwhat everyday people are doing with technology and how technology has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life.
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Howard RheingoldAs we sit here and think about the spells that we're casting, let's not forget that some spells are made accidentally and some magic has unintended consequences. Technology is soaking into the woodwork of society. But we, as technologists, have a responsi
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As we sit here and think about the spells that we're casting, let's not forget that some spells are made accidentally and some magic has unintended consequences. Technology is soaking into the woodwork of society. But we, as technologists, have a responsibility to keep people in mind at all times. Their practices inform us but our unintended consequences affect them. It is ubiquitous, but ubiquitous is not always positive. As you build technologies that allow the magic of everyday people to manifest, i ask you to consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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Martin LindnerThe Magic of The Net. Initiation Narrative mirrored in 2.0 apps. Is Web technology or invisible flow of compassion (question put wrong of course, standard sentimental US Tech Humanism)
mediatheory computational_humanities socialsoftware duplication twitter delicious
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Lynne BIsn't there something magical about how fast the Internet went from a defense project to a key part of social infrastructure? Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do.
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It is my belief that if we stare solely at the technology, we lose track of the true magic that exists around us.
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The goal of my talk today is to get at what everyday people are doing with technology and how technology has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life.
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But if we look at what technologies are adopted and how, we start to see that they fit into a set of pre-existing practices.
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Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.
-
One way of looking at people is through the lens of life stages. What matters to people changes over their lifetime. A lot of this has to do with what roles they play, what responsibilities they have, and what culture tells them is important.
-
I want to address four key life stages that i think are relevant to folks interested in social media:
1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)
2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)
3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")
4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees) -
As children, our identity is defined by the people around us
-
We perform to others and adjust our behavior based on how they react. In doing so, we seek to align our image of ourselves with the reaction that others provide.
-
As you build technologies that allow the magic of everyday people to manifest, i ask you to consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.
-
Social media is not just broadly about sociality - it's about which groups doing what kind of sociality. It's about realizing that people segment themselves and that they don't actually engage with all people across all spaces and all time. They engage based on what matters to them, depending on where they are and where they are going.
How would you design for these different groups? Unfortunately, for the most part, they're considered one big lump of "generic user." Many of the technologies that they're using are the same, but how they're using them differs.
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Should we build technology to promote what we believe should be people's priorities? Or should we build technology that supports the priorities that most people have?
-
Social media reflects all the good and all the bad. They enable and support it, giving us space to see society from a new lens. Technology has created a new frontier - a new space for people to come together based on what they need.
-
Mediated publics have four properties that are not present in unmediated publics:
- Persistence
- Searchability
- Replicability
- Invisible Audiences -
So how do we cope? Most people go with the ostrich solution. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right? If you don't see the strangers staring at your virtual existence, they don't exist, right? The other proposed solution is being a luddite - avoiding all technology. Either way, we're talking avoidance. But avoidance doesn't ever work.
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This is only going to get more complex as we go mobile, if we ever manage to go mobile. Someday, it will happen, carriers or not. Then we will have location data and how will we deal with that? We already have adhoc applications like Dodgeball to let us stalk our friends, but what happens when it's built into everything? What happens when you can tap into the physical experience of every person you've ever received a business card from? How are we going to handle the social boundaries then?
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While people adapt the technologies to meet their needs, their lives have to adapt to the ways in which the technology alters reality. It's a confusing time and technology is playing a huge role in the confusion.
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