DIGITAL ATHENS/DIGITAL SPARTA

Posted on October 21, 2012 by

As we continue to move into the digital frontiers it may be helpful to see cyberspace in terms of maps, one of which would have a pole marked Digital Athens, the other marked Digital Sparta. We live between the poles of optimism – from all that the Net enhances and enables – and reality – war on the ground and now war in cyberspace.

Let’s add a filter to those maps – B.G. (before Google) and A.G. (after Google) as cybersociologists and historians will no doubt see this as the new dividing line for the Digital Age. Every good explorer needs maps, or makes them as she goes along, and Google Search has provided everyone with the cartographic tools for cyberspace. Soon we will be able to put on our Google Glasses and map our way as we explore our hybrid reality.

I’m currently taking a thought provoking course led by Howard Rheingold, called Think-Know Tools. One of the things that has come up has been the evolution of communication – from an oral tradition, to written, to multimedia, to now what has been termed Remix. I think it is safe to say that we, and culture as we experience it are being remixed. Maps are going to be important. To riff on Bob Dylan, “I’ll let you be in my maps, if I can be in yours.”

 

 

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THE FRACTAL FUTURE: Hybrid reality and the New Aesthetic

Posted on June 27, 2012 by

NYC Street art, photographed by Benjamin Norman

While we are still learning the vocabulary that describes the digital spaces that occupy so much of our time, add ‘new aesthetic‘ and ‘hybrid reality‘ to your list, alongside augmentation, virtual, and singularity. Art has always reflected culture, so it is no mistake that digital is now bleeding into our physical landscapes, while at the same time artists take advantage of digital tools and platforms to create works in digital space. (When’s the last time you checked out 2nd Life to see what’s going on among the artist communities there? Or Skrillex, for that matter.)

This bleeding, the interface of physical and digital space, and the sharing and transformations taking place in either, is being thought of as a hybrid reality, most recently described in the book by the same name by authors Ayesha and Parag Khanna. James Bridle has captured the new aesthetic in this video of his talk at Web Directions this past October.

There’s a lot to think about here. Is there a new culture emerging as a result of digital immersion, or is it simply current culture being imposed on a different landscape? Or both? Is augmentation taking place is both spaces, physical and digital?

It’s the user that occupies both spaces, simultaneously, who’s perceptions are being changed. How will that effect our culture? Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth: “something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear” has been the soundtrack playing in the back of my head for about six months now as I’ve pondered all this, attempting to “pwn” it – that’s geek for ‘grok’.

There’s no question the times are changing. A new hymn to  Apple replaces the old ballpark chorus:

I screen,

you screen,

we all screen,

for iScreen.

(Apologies to David Brin for morphing off a thought in his new book Existence, get it!)

If this youngest generation is generation z, then it only seems appropriate that the next be Alpha prime. We’re heading into whole new territories and we’re only six clicks of separation from one another.

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MINIFESTO – Easter note to myself

Posted on April 8, 2012 by

I am not the tool – technology will be of service or I will not use it

I am more than the sum of my data – It is my data and I decide who sees and shares it

I will maintain a healthy scepticism towards the ‘next new thing’

I am responsible for my reputation – trust and respect is earned by sharing

I am living virtually in the real world – feet on the ground, mind in the cloud

I will be a life-long co-learner  - networks and collaborations are to be vigorously embraced

I will take time to disconnect from the Net and reconnect with myself, family, and friends

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THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT: IT’S CALLED YOU!

Posted on April 1, 2012 by

Not too many people can own homes these days, but they can have fairly inexpensive access to their digital house in cyberspace, via mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc. And then begins the work of keeping up with the Jones’. It’s no surprise that “the next new thing” is all the rage. That’s to be expected with any new technological shift. And it’s no surprise that everything is beginning to look the same… ticky tacky apps, ticky tacky platforms, ticky tacky thinking.

What we are seeing is the homogenization of us as the next ‘cash crop‘ – the livestock in the stacks, as Bruce Sterling called it at his wrap up to this year’s SXSW Interactive. The stacks – Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google – are the walled gardens to which we all provide the content and information that allow them to sell us and our data to advertizers and marketers. The good news – they all crumble eventually (remember Netscape, AOL, My Space?). The bad news – not before turning the Baskin Robbins multiple-flavors, multiple-toppings potential of the Net into a bland vanilla-only offering; and us along with it!

That’s the herd mentality of marketing – get them in line, wanting the same thing, and serve ‘em up. “Would you like that in white or black?” Make no mistake, advertising and marketing are the biggest drivers of tech and our futures. And we need to resist it the same way we resisted TV and magazine ads.  We are becoming the product and tech is just dressing us up to all look and think the same.

As Jaron Lanier says, in You Are Not a Gadget, “Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.”

I saw a good quote the other day that puts it into perspective…”Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring, so I go back to being me.”

 

 

 

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YOUR AUDIENCE SHOULD BE YOURSELF

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

With the mad rush to Social Media, personal branding and all the other non-essential madness taking place, be sure YOU don’t get left behind. Unless you’ve got a Paris Hilton complex, your audience should be yourself.

Critical and reflective thinking only take place when you are the audience; without respect to what anyone else thinks and with no other end in sight but your own personal development. That’s getting lost in the rush to Social and Mobile. Sure it’s fun to be part of the crowd, share pictures and videos, and stay current with old friends while making new ones. But, don’t get lost in the shuffle of it all. Besides the time suck, it can be a complete misdirection of what you should be doing. If you are carrying a Smart Phone it is an even bigger suck.

Do yourself a favor this holiday season, turn it all off for a day and catch up with yourself. You may find you’ve forgotten who you are.

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Personal Branding: How Not to Become a Box of Soap

Posted on November 21, 2011 by

There are two big shifts happening in culture as we transition to digital – the move from individualism to being viewed as an individual, marketable data point, and the move to becoming a collaborative society.

Beyond Tocqueville’s Telescope: The Personalized Brand and the Branded Self, in the Fall 2011 issue of Hedgehog Review (article not available online) got me to thinking about another dynamic occurring as people establish their online identities. Marketing has effectively taken over the data behind the scenes in Social Media with every permission and access given. Now it is moving to the front and center of the stage as people begin branding themselves – using all the techniques of marketing to push and shape their digital identities for maximum exposure and connectivity, higher Klout scores, and improved social reputation.

The authors, Arlie Hochschild and Sarah B. Garrett, point out this reflects a major shift in our culture – from a society that prizes individualism to one that prizes marketing of the individual. Media has been utilized to bombard us with advertising. It used to be a 20th century survival skill to be able to ignore TV and radio ads – you could change the channel, turn down the volume or just shut it off. In the 21st century, marketing permeates everything. As more of our attention shifts to screens, it is far more difficult to turn off. We are tracked every time we open a page, grant a permission to a new app, click on a link. It is pervasive in the shift to digital. The first rule of marketing is “own the data”, and we give ours away all day long.

Now the shift is subtly moving to the other side of the equation. It is no longer just marketing targeting each one of us, we are beginning to treat our identities as simply one more piece of data to be marketed. Personal branding is the new big thing – just google it. Vanity sites, profiles, avatars and icons, posts, tweets, shares, +1′s, favorites, likes, etc. all serve to promote and define our identities. Klout, PeerIndex, and new metrics serve to measure how you are doing compared to other folks, areas of influence, trust and authority indexes; of course YOU are just a data point. You might as well be a box of soap, and the sooner you see yourself as such, the sooner your scores will increase.

It is what it is. I’m not sounding the alarm, only pointing out what we are up against as we homestead on the digital frontier. We need to take care as we define and represent ourselves. As human beings we are marked by growth and the multiple facets of our personalities and how we wish to present and represent them – we change and evolve, we are more than a new and improved box of soap to be re-branded or marketed.

Along side all of this another big shift is occurring all over the world -we are becoming collaborators. It is no longer knowledge that is king and all the “me against them” thinking that goes with it. It is who you know, your networks, who you collaborate with – and how you are known among them. It is one big US with a shift of consciousness to follow.

Be more than a box of soap!

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DIGITAL IDENTITY – NATURE, NURTURE AND NETWORKS

Posted on October 8, 2011 by
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Image via Wikipedia

Digital Identity Mapping is going to be one of the next big tools in our online skill set and there are a lot of issues and questions involved. As we extend ourselves and our identities onto the  the Web, the networks we create and participate in essentially work to define and shape who we are and how we are known and perceived. It’s a much bigger sandbox we play in now and much of the neighborhood is unknown territory to the average user. Algorithms, feedback loops, and filter bubbles immediately come into play as our identity is aggregated and re-aggregated in the simple acts of posting, liking, favoriting, +1′ing, etc.  If you aren’t managing your identity it is being managed for you and that is going to have increasingly far reaching consequences for your future success and happiness. Employers now regularly vet an applicant’s social media pages, Google their names, and gather all the online data they can to make a digitally informed decision regarding potential employment. Insurance companies do the same – what does your online behavior say about your lifestyle and categories of risk? And on and on. Marketers have you coming and going; they know your buying behaviors, media tastes, income level… and target you accordingly.

As the identity map above indicates, we are more than the sum of our parts – but what a lot of parts we have to consider when tripping the digital light fantastic! Big issues here – first of all, privacy and control: who owns and manages your identity – you or Facebook, Google+, Twitter and iTunes? Right now they own us and allow us to play in their walled gardens and parks while we are a target for marketers. Privacy settings and control require an almost superhuman effort in order to maintain an image you wish to project rather than the aggregation of behaviors they reinforce in their algorithms. Buy an iPad – you are limited to the iTunes garden; jailbreak it and you go to digital hell. Buy a Kindle Fire – you are limited to the Amazon garden, a big one yes, but still you’re limited where you can play and targeted immediately.

Social capital, reputation, and branding are the next big issues. You are what you post, and you are what your audience  likes, favorites, retweets, shares, and +1′s. Your social identity is shaped by the tools used by the site you use. You are limited by that and reinforced by that. It’s a computer program after all, it has its limitations and by its very design defines us and dictates how we can be known; nuance and individuation is not a big ticket item here. These things aggregate and we are merely data points. Fair warning and heads up when playing in these parks.

We have to be our own advocates, manage our own identities, own our own words and take responsibility for our reputations. If we don’t, we are going to become just another brick in the walls of their gardens.

OCCUPY THE WEB!

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