Posts tagged with life online
A 12-YEAR-OLD EXPLAINS THE INFORMATION AGE'S FACTS OF LIFE TO HER MOTHER
Via McSweeney’s:
Mom, it’s gonna be a long ride to Grandma’s, and while we have some time alone together, I think it’d be good for us to talk about some things. I’m getting older, and I’m not always gonna be around the house to explain stuff to you. I know you have a lot of questions, and I want us to be open with each other. So, I think it’s time you learned where blogs and tweets come from.
I don’t know what kind of stories you’ve heard from your friends or the ladies in your book club. Sometimes, old people will spread around what they’ve heard from other old people. This can make things even more confusing and scary. That’s why it’s important you get the straight facts from me…
They grow up so fast…
Five Emotions Invented By The Internet « Thought Catalog
A vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled. During this time an individual feels unsure whether they have offended the IM recipient, committed a breach of IM etiquette, or have otherwise spoilt the presentation of themselves carefully crafted thus far thanks to the miracles of the textual medium. The individual must be at least vaguely aware that they are being vaguely paranoid, and must tell themselves things like ‘he probably just stepped away from the keyboard’ or ‘I know she is at work right now so perhaps she has stopped replying because she is busy.’
This is all kinds of awesome! (via kottke)
So true…
The Dirty Truth About Digital Fasts
“Here’s another framing: we plug in because we like it.”
Experiments in real life
R. observed: You live only half in the real world when you are here. You live through the camera instead of living in the present.
R. is the type of friend whose thoughts generate thought; I trust his creative instinct and his critical eye. His intelligence is well respected. He shuns time online as lifestyle choice rather than luddism.
The comment crystallised into an experiment. I decided to restrict my camera use for six months to see what would happen. To see if I would actually live a little more in the present and to see what it would do to the memory process.
From January to June I took minimal photos. Where I did, these were usually iPhone shots or a few on my small camera. I made conversation, I waited through pauses while others set up their shots and ignored the twitch towards camera case.
The outcome? A six month gap in my timeline.
There’s no artifact to mark Peter and Katherine’s visit, the Pixies concert or remember the particular moments in time: that light or the attempt at visual representation of an idea. I remember these things but have no sense of context and order (was the Pixies concert before or after P&K were here? when did summer end?). Other people’s photos are like crime scene recreations without the personal layer, the EXIF data of my memory.
I’ll go back to chasing and then tagging the butterflies on pins. R. may disagree, but I’ll know when I see him next. There will be another photo of him & me.
“ If you tell people they can upload their content, you should have a clear and distinct way for them to retrieve their content. People do it ad-hoc as they can, but the abilities of most people, the people without an engineering degree or years of experience, to get back what they put up is minimal. It’s not that important. We should make it important.”
How many more times will we allow this?
How long before someone takes a fucking stand?
ASCII by Jason Scott / Eviction, or the Coming Datapocalypse (via adactio)
This absolutely horrifies me, especially when I think about how much I believe in and advocate for people to document online. Read the comments in particular that Jason quotes.
HOW can we take a stand?
Teenagers 'spend an average of 31 hours online' - Telegraph
my second hellyeah of the day via aja:
They spend some three and a half hours communicating with friends on MSN, and around two hours on YouTube and in chat rooms.
Just over an hour is devoted to looking up cosmetic surgery procedures such as how to enlarge breasts and get collagen implants, an hour and a half is spent on family planning and pregnancy websites and one hour 35 minutes is spent investigating diets and weight loss.
One in four teenagers of the 1,000 polled said they regularly spoke to strangers online but thought it harmless.
If you wonder whether or not your teens talk to unknown people online, the answer is yes. Without a doubt.
If you wonder whether or not it is dangerous, consider this: have you taught your teenager to be a freethinking individual who has a good grasp of what qualifies as a safe situation and what does not?
I don’t think the answer to these type of problems is trying to add another lock and key to the American upbringing: after all, the internet did not mark the beginning of kidnapping or sexual abuse. I think what we really need to examine is how our culture creates teenagers who are barely able to chew their own food without the help of their parents, much less make the adult decisions that they are inevitably going to be faced with.
As for the amount of time spent online, I have to say that I think the internet has the ability to be an amazing portal of information and socialization, a place to expand horizons and create their own unique identities. Out of of the places I spent my time as a teenager, I can say with certainty that I got in far more trouble within the walls of my highschool than I ever did online.
This is awesome - more objects should have login capability especially if I can access them from the internet! When will I be able to log into my PO box and see what is waiting there for me, or log into my Mysky/TV at home & set it to record things (or manage what’s on the hard drive when it’s getting full)?
“ blog your rage, vent your spleen in the only way we know how”
re: the hideous prices for the iPhone which have been released here.
wanted: an epiphany
i am so bored of this website.
i’m bored of considering lifestreams and blogs and linklogs and the bits and pieces and posting an occasional photo and not having things all in one place but needing to continue the community aspects of those sites which do it better than i could reproduce.
what to do? what should this become?
i have always believed that if there is content you want and it’s not out there you should create it. i consider this the first tenet of self-publishing.
however, the second tenet of self-publishing is have pride in what you have created, and i don’t at the moment. i need some way to pull this all together, invigorate it, make it fucken awesome and something that i push in everyone’s faces because it’s a must read or a must do or a must LINK.
then i’d probably start to care about page views and referrers and all that kind of shit again (though i do love to look at the RANDOM ways people find this stuff).
i’m just taking up digital space here because that’s what i’m used to, and have done as almost a matter of habit for over 10 years now.
I NEED AN EPIPHANY.
