Shouts & Mumbles
theoretical thinker, design lover, non-designer in a digital product design studio.
These are my shouts and mumblings. And a smattering of things that strike my fancy and make me think.
twitter.com/aaretz:
I completely agree with Ben. I think that the rise of these social giants such as Facebook has created a sort of fear or distrust in users. We are not comfortable having our social networks be so large. This is an entirely new concept when it comes to constructing the self in relation to others; if you throw in a few hundred to even thousands that is just overwhelming.
There is a backlash starting against the social giants and the large networks of people that come with them. We want to be able to return to our comfort zone, our natural and familiar social tendencies. The locally, more personally-curated and monitored networks will continue to thrive, but I don’t think that they will replace or really take away from the social giants like Facebook. Facebook will still matter as a social network; we’ll still want that larger connection, but will also want to retreat to our smaller networks. It is about finding a purpose for that larger social web of connections that perhaps we are finding difficult and still navigating.
—“Facebook: Like?” on More Intelligent Life
It’s fascinating to think about how these social networks have completely altered the way that we interact with one-another. Although I think that Lee makes a great point, that Facebook has not replaced a social life, it has altered it a significant amount that we need to take note. We have changed the way that we socialize and express ourselves in social situations. Facebook has allowed us to compartmentalize parts of our lives (which we could do before), but now with greater ease.
Facebook has made social life more of a performance.
The new studies on loneliness are beginning to yield some surprising preliminary findings about its mechanisms. Almost every factor that one might assume affects loneliness does so only some of the time, and only under certain circumstances. People who are married are less lonely than single people, one journal article suggests, but only if their spouses are confidants. If one’s spouse is not a confidant, marriage may not decrease loneliness. A belief in God might help, or it might not, as a 1990 German study comparing levels of religious feeling and levels of loneliness discovered. Active believers who saw God as abstract and helpful rather than as a wrathful, immediate presence were less lonely. “The mere belief in God,” the researchers concluded, “was relatively independent of loneliness.”
But it is clear that social interaction matters. Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years. In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.
In the face of this social disintegration, we have essentially hired an army of replacement confidants, an entire class of professional carers. As Ronald Dworkin pointed out in a 2010 paper for the Hoover Institution, in the late ’40s, the United States was home to 2,500 clinical psychologists, 30,000 social workers, and fewer than 500 marriage and family therapists. As of 2010, the country had 77,000 clinical psychologists, 192,000 clinical social workers, 400,000 nonclinical social workers, 50,000 marriage and family therapists, 105,000 mental-health counselors, 220,000 substance-abuse counselors, 17,000 nurse psychotherapists, and 30,000 life coaches. The majority of patients in therapy do not warrant a psychiatric diagnosis. This raft of psychic servants is helping us through what used to be called regular problems. We have outsourced the work of everyday caring.
"— “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” in The Atlantic
The backlash of hyperconnectedness, we are finding the real world more and more anxiety inducing, pushing more and more into our digital lives/selves and farther from the the real others.
You’ll have no doubt seen that a ton of brands have switched over their brand page on Facebook to the new timeline style version. Here’s just a few of the usual suspects…. Starbucks, Red Bull, Nike and Burberry but perhaps my favourite is The New York Times where you can go back through their history, on Facebook.
I’ve included a PDF guide from Facebook on all the information you need to know.
Facebook releases new content guidelines Get ready, now you can show bodily fluids. Awesome?
(via Facebook Releases New Content Guidelines, Now Allows Bodily Fluids)
Blogging is on the decline at INC 500, but Facebook and Twitter use is on the rise; does this mean that blogging won’t matter? Or is it just not the right method for the INC 500?
Chris Poole may still look like he should be getting ready for the Prom and not the Web 2.0 summit, but nevertheless, good points here.
Chris Poole Talks About Online Identity at Web 2.0 Summit 2011
