OTOH, You do have to take the role of the other. And who the heck cares that you had eggs for breakfast, other than you and your partner? Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________ On Sat, 31 Oct 2009, danah boyd wrote:
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:03:56 -0400 From: danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> To: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> Cc: "Baym, Nancy" <nbaym@ku.edu>, aoir list <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] facebook, twitter and annoyances
Life isn't so neatly compartmentalized. Remove the internet for a moment. My guess is that you have dear friends who are sometimes brilliant to speak with and sometimes, not so much. You don't reject them as friends just because not all of the conversations are brilliant. Likewise, you have colleagues who you have intensely philosophical debates with but, when standing in line for lunch, the conversation centers around something else. We can value people for just one facet of their lives but our friends and other intimates are more than that. Of course, perhaps you have friends who could never stop talking about their kids so you stopped inviting them to dinner parties. This happens too. But none of our strong connections with people are truly always on topic. We just easily forget the chitter chatter and remember the deeply meaningful.
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves: Why is it that, when we go online, we want to optimize for the brilliant conversations only? Why do we want to reduce our connections down to only one facet? Is this because of the asynchronicity? Is it because of our self- involvement? Or something else?
Personally, I like the peripheral awareness that's baked into status updates. Sure, some of what you say is brilliant, but mostly I like the tempo of the connection, the reminder of personality and quirks, the feeling of being part of humanity even when I'm sitting in my living room.
danah
On Oct 31, 2009, at 11:41 AM, Barry Wellman wrote:
sounds like we need multiple twitter accounts. but life may not be so neatly compartmentalized;-)
how do you feel about Oscar Wilde.
Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
On Sat, 31 Oct 2009, Baym, Nancy wrote:
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:34:00 -0500 From: "Baym, Nancy" <nbaym@ku.edu> To: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> Cc: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] facebook, twitter and annoyances
Of course it's complex. But what if another of that person's followers funds the food updates a lovely way to feel connected but is annoyed by all those professionally tinged informational links. "Interesting" is not a quality of message but of a particular listener's response to a message. "Almost all" is often an unwarranted assumption from one's own point of view. Furthermore, even if "almost all" holds, they may not be the people most important to the tweeter.
Nancy
On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:06 AM, "Barry Wellman" <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
1. Nancy, I think it is more complex. What if there are really interesting people whose posts are often filled with gems, but at the same posts some self-infatuated or status update stuff ("going for breakfast") ("sitting in my garden") stuff which is not interesting to almost all.
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"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria