.oO Tailwind

All this digital stuff is funny isn’t it? My ‘digital friend’ @Charliegower is more up-to-date with my moods, locations and general activity than my real-life, long term buddy Nick Foster (who’s not plugged in enough to have the Twitteresque ‘@’ prefix on his monicker).

Charlie and I have only met once, we share a mutual friend in Nick, but we’ve hardly met really. Yet somehow, some reason we’re connected on all the usual social properties, Last.fm, Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo, Linked In, Twitter, Plazes, Dopplr etc etc

Twitter in particular interests me at the moment because of what it’s doing to relationships I have with people. The ambient familiarity is an extra layer that I think is only beneficial. It ‘warms the cockles’ as they say to know that:

@drpig (Will Bloor) is making homemade pasta

@brackers (Andy Braxton) is engaged!

@casablance (Phil Whitehouse) is struggling to install his BT Vision box

@melb (Melissa Bezar) is off to another posh London restaurant

@charliegower (Charlie Gower) is (again) procrastinating by going swimming

@gavinedwardsuk (Gavin Edwards) is on the train to Sheffield, again

@stephenbarber (Stephen Barber) is picking up his guitar (which is what he should do more often)

As we all know, Twitter is a broadcast medium where users can announce ‘what they are doing’ via sms, instant messenger or the web. It’s predominantly utilised as a ‘I’m doing…’, ‘I’m feeling…’, ‘I’m thinking…’ medium.

I’ve also used it in a practical means when trying to navigate New York looking for a top-drawer deli for breakfast, but it’s mostly used like Facebook Status, informing your ‘followers’ of what you are are doing.

Personally, I protect my updates a i don’t want people I don’t know seeing that I’m ‘out of my house’ or I’m ‘away on business’. Scamsters could mine a lot of information from active tweeters.

It stands to reason, that people ‘Tweet’ when they are doing something interesting or when they are killing downtime in a bus queue or on a train (see my post on living an ‘ALt-Tab’ existence), so you get a skewed view, but it makes entertaining reading nonetheless.

Of course, you would never say ‘Just listening to some Mariah Carey’ (Gavin Edwards) or ‘Having a poo’ or ‘Just had a row with the other half’.

No. That’s too much. You have to filter.

It’s interesting that people whom I work with are the ones I engage a lot with via Twitter. None of my ‘friends’ use it, of course I consider many of my colleagues and ex-colleagues friends, but I also Twitter with clients, friends friends, and as a result I feel like there’s something there, known between us that in some way, sustains or affects the personal relationship. Not in all cases, of course.

Phil WHitehouse wrote Ten Commandments of Twitter, which I wholly disagree with. the only rule should be ‘there are no rules’. Although I HATE people who follow but don’t Tweet. Lurkers. Blurgggh!

So, to wrap up, I could meet @Charliegower down the pub and have a rip-roaring evening of conversation, feeling like I already know him. I know his work situatiion, his exercise habits, his music taste, hi ideas and via Plazes or Dopplr, his location.

That’s all bonkers. But if you keep it real by only using such technologies with real people you are likely to meet, I think it’s quite a nice relationship enhancing tool.

Fancy a beer?
Continue reading ‘My Twitter Chums Know More’

Whilst eating some toast this morning I caught a report on BBC 1 suggesting that we’re not hugging enough. We’re not extending human contact in the form of hugging kissing and touching and we are failing to receive our RDHI (Recommended Daily Hugging Intake).

(Sorry I can’t find a story to link to on the BBC website).

Psychologists behind the report suggest that we are relying far too heavily on non-human-touch methods of communication such as texting, email and ‘pokes’. Hugging makes you happy.

I’ve been arguing for a while that humans require real, genuine and tangible value when it comes to their relationships with other humans and that social networks as they currently stand, fail to satisfy our long-term human needs because they are limited to facilitate only synthetic relationships.

Look at your Facebook account. How many ‘friends’ do you have?

Are you one of those people who accepts every invitation through fear of offence? Or are you one that only accepts invitations from people they actually, really and still know?

Do you consider tenuous links with colleagues you are simply ‘aware’ of? Or do you keep it focussed down into people you actually know? People you are actually friends with?

Social networks tap into out latent need to belong, to be part of a community and to be recognised. They provide us with recognition and allow us to say “I am here and I belong”.

It’s a Maslow thing.

But over a long period of time social networks will fail to deliver real value in the form of tangible, off-line and physical benefit unless they evolve into real space. Doing something, actually being there together, in real terms.

A search on the BBC website reveals this:

A hug is, first of all, a form of non-verbal communication. It brings people together in a feeling of mutual love, comfort and safety. Research suggests that everyone needs physical contact to survive, especially infants. Hugging is an act of giving and receiving support, moral and physical, and love

BBC - Guide to Hugging

Loving the ‘Huggers’, ‘Huger’ and ‘Hugee’ references there.

Great digital ’start-ups’ such as Facebook, MySpace and Last.FM could just be limited by their lack of real physical space and I wonder if this is something they’ll need to evolve in order to survive?

It’s all very well having ‘friends’ on these sites and receiving witty pokes, funwall messages and music recommendations, but I can’t engage with them on a “so how are you doing?” basis. I can’t really and truly care.

I personally have noticed some of my more distant friendships relying on Facebook to stay in touch. We poke, message and send things to each other whereas before we’d phone.

That’s rubbish. I’m changing it. By using Facebook to message each other we’re saying that we don’t really care.

I’ve also observed some friends and family resolving sticky issues via email, text or by writing a message to someone’s Facebook inbox. How sad is that? Complete avoidance of true, emotional disscusion.

What is that doing to society?

I guess in the old days we used to write letters but I don’t consider that the same thing. Letters unlike email/text etc, take time. They take effort and flow from the end of your pen in an emotional, stream of consciousness kind of way.

Email is synthetic, easy and impersonal.

We all know that teenagers don’t use it.

Emoticons were invented to try and bridge this emotionless communication. ] :p :s =|

(My blog tool has probably ‘emoticonned’ some of those).

I remember back in 1996, when I started using IRC (internet Relay Chat) in the form of Foothills and Resort, we communicated using a telnet window using text only using the ‘emote’ command to show emotion.

Warren> Emote is happy.

‘Warren is happy.’

Fundamentally, even though the technology has evolved the need hasn’t changed and the need hasn’t be fulfilled.

When we are born and as babies we learn primitive methods of communication such as touch and hugging. But as we progress to our teenage years the level of non-family touch drops away considerably.

I don’t know about you but on a personal level I’m getting bored of social networks. On a professional level I’m still enjoying the challenges of seeding a community and designing tools for them, but I have to say, I’m not really seeing any great value.

I could talk about Twitter here, but that’s for another day. this post is already too long, if you got this far, well done and thanks.

As I write this post I can’t help but laugh at the fact that next to me on the train into London, there is a couple smooching, kissing ad making lip-smaking noises, cooing and warbling together like teenagers.

They are in their late thirties and it’s irritating the hell out of me!
xx

Image credits: Dina_Mehta

Technorati Tags:
social networks, community, backlash, behaviours, emotion

I always laugh at those people who walk round with bluetooth earpieces in.

Seriously, what do they think they look like? They look like they are either on the brink of a major ‘Orange Juice for Pork Bellies‘ deal like some ‘in-the-know’ city trader or like a special service sercurity operative.

If you do this, can I ask you to just stop.

By all means use handsfree, jut don’t walk around with it hanging off of your head. You won’t miss a call.

Which brings me to look at my own behaviour and FOMO (fear of missing out) syndrome.

On my desktop I currently have my chat client open (MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, ICQ), Skype, Mac Mail, Entourage, Twitteriffic an my browser. My browser always seems to have Facebook, Last.fm and Flickr open.

In my bag I carry my Mac, iPod, mobile phone, Blackberry, latest edition of Monocle magazine, some Design Council magazines and two books (currently Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton and Zag by Marty Nuemeier).

I realised the other day that I find it impossible to be doing nothing. Sat on a train without a laptop cause me to turn to my blackberry to read my blogs. If my iPod battery runs out (which it shouldn’t do now since I replaced it), I have music on my phone.

I realised I’m constantly in a state of alt+tab, fast switching between states, modes and channels. So much so that when I find my self without any of my ‘kit’ I feel exposed. I look for a paper. I can’t just sit there and look out of the window.

However, all this said, when I go away from London I find it really easy to switch off. But I just find it interesting that I associate the corridor of activity between my home and work with being busy, doing something.

Must go…

I need to Twitter. People neeeeeed to know that I’m on the train.

The English are funny aren’t they (we)?

We’re not overtly social creatures unless of course we have a drink or two then we’re ‘right up for it’.

I was trying to explain to someone the other day why I think that we have such a problem with drinking in this country and I think it’s due to our traditional reservedness.

In times passed we’ve ‘used’ drink as a way of ‘releasing’ ourselves.

As an island nation with Victorian legacy, this was necessary I guess.

But today’s generation will grow up so distant from those days of ‘British Reserve’ they have no idea why they get battered, they just do.

The days of worrying about what others think, I believe have gone. As a kid when I used to get up to no good we’d ‘scarper‘ just at the sight of a grown-up.

Nowadays they threaten to knife you and tell you to f*ck off.

Those scallywags!

Anyway, I’m interested in this erosion of British reserve but am happy to see it alive and well in certain quarters.

Silence in a lift for example.

I catch the same train form the same point on the platform every morning and see the same faces day in and day out.

I talk to one of my fellow travelers because we’ve broken the ‘duck’ as it were, we’ve had consequence to exchange. Not that I remember when. But the others? Oh no, not the others.

I can’t talk to them, I’ve no reason to.

It makes me laugh that we Brits need a reason to talk. We won’t talk to people we see everyday, but we will be half-way across the globe and we’ll ‘tip our hat’ on first sight of another from Blighty.

Why are these rules different when Brits are abroad?

Also, in my building I see lots of people, those whom I’ve spoken with I will always say hello to, but those who I haven’t I don’t.

I think that this behaviour is consistent with everyone, but I noticed today that because I had spoken to someone new at work and when I passed them on the stairs I suddenly had consequence to say hi.

I’d seen them lots before, but because we’d exchanged words on that day it now seemed okay to say ‘hi’.

Bloody weird isn’t it?

Or is it just me?

Should I get a Blackberry? I’m at my desk less and less these days.

Having a creative job necessitates moving about a lot, particularly across several clients and sveral teams over several floors. So I’m not spending much time in front of Entourage which is the Mac equivalent of Outlook.

This is a good and bad thing.

It’s good because I’m getting work done in one way, but the other side of my role, staying up-to-speed etc is not so easy. I’m spending more and more time on the train (both directions) sifting through things which means I start at 7am and finish near 8pm.

So - do I get a Blackberry?

People encourage me to do so, but the idea of being contactable 24/7 with one of those things isn’t desirable. I think it was Jeremy Clarkeson who said something along the lines of ‘Why would I want to be woken up at 3 in the morning so someone can offer me penis extension drugs?’

So true.

I’m of the opinion that business has become much slower and more painful because people continue to rely on email as a tool for decision making and accountability.

It’s rubbish for that.

For starters everything comes in at the same priority while secondly the start of the thread that you missed is someway down the bottom, so you end up reading conversations back-to-front. Thirdly, byu the time someone like me gets to it, it’s passed (but maybe not in the way it should have donen if you were there earlier).

I hate the way people abscond responsibility because they ‘copied you in’. Slackers.

No, email gives you Teflon shoulders, allowing you to pass on decisions and accountability at the press of a ’send’ button and having a Blackberry further enforces that behaviour as it encourages people to send you more mail because you’re accessible. By owning one you are practically saying ‘Email me, I love it. I love it so much you can sell me penis extension drugs in the small hours.

Well I don’t want email and I don’t want a Blackberry.

There. I answered my own question.
P.S. The gadget monster inside my head is saying ‘yes, do it’.