Time to rust. Freedom on the web.

Our freedoms as they (seemingly) are on the web: fluid, multi-dimensional, creative, and even (at times) considerate and assertive, have, I must warn you, only a limited lifespan. Justine Bateman states that we 'Need to put our foot down on net neutrality' - very much PRO the openness, this is under threat from the efforts of organisations such as ATT, Comcast, Time/Warner Cable, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, The NCTA who threaten to control all forms of media content. By control I mean for profit $/£s. Until when? Well 'when' the margins of profitability state that this isn't a good idea. So that'll be at the end of time.

Increasingly mediated, but always communicative what makes the web? NOT its version change to a '2.0', but its links, networks and openness - A veritable pool for innovation. The question is, should media commerciality innovate like the rest of us? OR is this freedom damaging the quality of information - social or otherwise?

Maybe there's room for both. Today in the UK, Johnston Press reveal a trial to charge for online content.

Other opportunities one could throw in to the mix include:

Maybe Fox's 24 could be 23hours long with a final 'paid for' hour.That bit we all skip forward to anyway and usually when Jack Bauer is either getting his vest top on or off for the upteenth time in 24hours.

The newspaper the Sun could publish with a free 'fully dressed' version. And then with an additional option of a 'less dressed' content version = less clothes more totty for £s.

email could work the same way. Free SPAM. But $/£s for the content that you really care about... That job interview reply etc.

Whatever the future, you can safely bet there will be a price tag for our freedoms.

Taking it all off. GPS my intimates

There is a preface to my remarks for this post. It is likely that you and I do not know each other very well and I would prefer we were face-to-face for the following - so I first knew your social particulars (gender/height/hair colour/relationship status and so on), and second, so I could better gauge your reaction to the following...

Dear reader, my passion and first love (and what will be my ever-enduring love) is technology. I am happy to inhabit a wonderfully (by my own estimations and 'creation') socially mediated world. I hold firm that technology is a creative and good thing. In the right ways it can be life changing. But lets not get too technologically deterministic here. What makes technology special is the how, why and when we choose to use it.

Which is why I am a bit abashed when it comes to the penetration of technological artifice into the bedroom. Today marks MEGA Monday! the busiest internet shopping day of the year. (hello Amazon & John Lewis you have my order/s). BUT, pause before you point and click as I build up to the BIG reveal...The Brazilian designer lingerie company LindeLucy lets its wearers be GPS tracked. Perfect for that spontaneous roll in the hay? Handy when your other half is stuck in traffic and wants to locate you? A chastity belt for our times? Watch and decide for yourself.

I wonder what the forrah would be if via uplink these smalls rated your intimate abilities too?...
Pick it up, ladies. Pick it up. All right. Ladies! That’s it. Let’s go. Live updating of your sexual exploits.

A visit to BBC Radio York re. social media. It's not PANTs

GOOD MORNING YORK! via BBC Radio York.

And we're LIVE: A positive or a negative comment from someone, somewhere on the web can be critical to how debate develops, brand reputation and, as we saw recently with @stephenfry on Twitter, personal ego.

Today (as in this date Wednesday, 25th November) on BBC York I put some social media tools to the test. Well at least in so far as you can with a self-confessed ‘technophobe’ DJ and ‘older generation' listening demographic. But, really all Maude from York wants is to stay in touch – how else will she know when little grandson Johnny has taken over the world? This is true for all generations. And even technophobe DJ's - hello, Andy Tomlinson, thanks for keeping my mic warm.

So, it is with real delight when I am introduced to the ‘newbies’ or ‘virgin’ social media users. One core message that resonates when confronted with Twitter et al. are the claims made by the newbies that they ‘don’t’ get it’ (whatever the 'it' may be – as in IT or otherwise). What they are missing out on is accompaniment of (another) tool for the simple pleasure of communication. To go return, briefly, to Maude and her grandson, in essence the pleasure take from the how we choose to stay in touch. Such social media influence can often mean the difference between communications success or a communications failure. Because whether we are aware of it or not we all have influence.


This is NOT a popularity contest.


Consider the example set by small business such as Elizabeth Wells Lingerie, right ‘here’ in York. BEFORE I had even arrived this morning at BBC Radio York Sarah (owner of said establishment), had twittered her way through the mornings arrivals including tit(literally)bits and ‘stylish pants’ for men.

OK, so perhaps not a before breakfast topic suitable for the less fruity of Maude's friends, but certainly an influential pull in terms of business awareness and, yes, sociability. I mention sociability as @Elizabethwells and myself ‘met’ over Twitter, where we discovered a mutual residence in York and appreciation of mojitos. This is unlikely to have occurred if we had kept quiet and without a tweet from either of us re.pants etc.


Ultimately, this is finding your niche and what you as an individual is comfortable with. Finding the blogs or Twitter users who are quotes ‘highly influential’, is about understanding how such connections influence choice, steer networks and lead to linkages to others. Maude et al. are unlikely to care about this side of social media 'stuff' and 'things'. But they will be happy to 'see’ what Johnny is up to and update status with ‘making tea’ for the upteenth time that day.


In short, the individual use of social media provide invaluable clues as to who you are, as much as what you are doing. Whether as Maude, Johnny, DY, @Elizabethwells or me (@mazphd)...

No more lies please. We're not fake online.

A recent ruling in the United States makes it illegal to lie about your identity on the interweb.

The case: The suicide of Megan Meier, a 16-year old girl (no, a child) who, after falling out with her best friend was approached by that friends mother Lori Drew on the SNSs MySpace. Ms Drew was posing as a 16-year old boy under the name 'Josh Evans' and sought to pursue the 16-year with a barrage of communication. Eventually earning her trust and her friendship.

How exactly will this order play out?...
Daily, we face a constant barrage of real and unreal connections across the web. Some spaces such as SecondLife even encourage the use of multiple identities and play. Others choose to live out what they uphold as very real lives and lifestyles.

The 'real' is dependent not only on context, but the ideals (and manipulations) on the part of the individual. Real profiles on SNSs such as MySpace, Facebook and friends require time to solidify within networks of connections, in order to gel and become stronger. Perhaps what really lies at the heart of the above case is not whether the identity created by Ms Drew to taunt Megan was real or fake, but the fact that it was real to Megan.Which , in this instance, meant that the accumulated actions had very real consequences. The abuse of trust that is at the centre of the case reveals a heartless, if not very disturbed adult deliberately preying on a vulnerable and exposed child.

iPhones, MySpace, friending, Google - how odd these concepts were only a short time ago? Now they are commonplace. In fact, to be 'off' or not present on at least one web platform stands out as unusual and even anti-social. In five years from now the treatment of fake profiles might become commonplace too, when users (young and old) are used to the new social parameters of such technology. What this case represents is a lack in the provision of care, trust and knowledge of the individuals that we invest time and emotional attachment to through our Status Updates, Tweets, etc. To say nothing of the longer-term effects of the broadcast of (too much?) personal information to our known and unknown others.

The case represents not just what makes us who we are, or at least who we say we are. Here, there are a lot of answers. Certainly one possible answer is to 'ban' all those who pretend to be our friends, who pretend to be 'someone' when they are really a no-one trying to be an everyone. However, it is inevitable that those who want will find ways around this.

In a way, this is a form of social control, but meant on the best possible of terms - to safeguard 'real' people's interests. Perhaps in time we will be savvy enough to safeguard our own interests and not be left vulnerable or exposed to those who intend malice. I am hoping that the likes of Ms Drew are the exception 'out there'. After all, what social media offer, to be connected, to enjoy meeting, socialising etc. with others is precisely why so many of us signed up to Facebook et al. in the first place.

Un/Happy Slapping: A call for communications decency

Are you familiar with America's Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act? If you're not here's a précis; it expressly protects the web-based platforms from any defamation of liability that may be related to any data/updates/social information etc. that are posted to their sites. So if you, or someone else, uploads something to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. it is NOT the provider's issues. But yours.

Yes, primarily a United States led legal ramification, but with significant consequences for all...

Think of it. We all (I am sure) have experienced a potentially awkward situation. Traditionally we have been relatively free to live down these mortification's in the now of the moment and within a specific context - whether workplace, pub, street, supermarket etc. BUT with the advent of the constant streams of publicly broadcast social information we may (inadvertently) share our moments (whatever we are doing) with everyone.

This does not just relate to potentially embarrassing episodic moments, but also to mundane activities, professional events, and so on and so forth. My point is that with the nowness of innovative technology (e.g. instant video uploads to YouTube) the (to)day has come when we have to be prepared to be socially aware at all times. Whether welcomed or not. And this is not just on a personal level, but shared across the globe simultaneously with unknown as well as known others. Who may, or may not, be your friends.

Rather than have debate on whether such uploads are an infringement into individual privacy, I (like socially mediated others) am mindful that we live in a of-the-moment world of nowness where everyone via the social web can be a potential distributor of content. Ironic when you consider that whatever one uploads you effectively give up all ownership to it. To follow this path of thought, perhaps current legislation needs updating. Certainly current measures offer no remedy for those who find invasions into what they are doing, when, where and with whom as, at best, an intrusion and, at worse, a personal and unacceptable impingement.

Covered in the press by incidence such as Happy Slapping
(described by Wikipedia as 'a fad' in which typically 'young people' choose to assault a victim while recording the assault for instant upload to YouTube or other filesharing sites), in the same week there is a report on Cyber Bullying which describes an increased anxiety caused by negative social situations due to the immediacy of increasingly social technologies.

So, do these situations point to a need for a rethink of individual visibility across various platforms and/or the ways in which we behave and have expectations of others?...

As a footnote, I think the best advice is to remember that whenever 'on' the web you are effectively out and in public - as much as you would be in the street. In one way this makes us 'fair game'. In another it strikes me such social visibility can only ever be unfair.

Social Media cloaking

Overheard. Friend no.1,

'I never joined Facebook cos I actually want to see my friends'

So claimed a non-Facebook friend. This all began one evening in the pub as another friend (Friend no.2) was berating his 'inaction' re. a Friend Request she had sent him.

Which sparked the following...

As social technologies continue to arrive cloaked in rhetoric's of openness, of trust - all the main components for friendship. We appear, in effect, in control of 'our' Web. The very construct of O'Reilly's 'Web 2.0' fosters sharing & caring; participation & reciprocation. Together these obscure how never before have we volunteered up so much personal information.

Thus, as we move from finding what's on the 'web of information' to a series of networks as a 'web of people' (Social Web) the output of all of this social participation is boundless and can be arranged as seemingly comprehensible information dossiers on individuals (everything pulled together from social network profile/s, photos, location, status updates, searches and so on and so forth.).

At the heart of this pulling of social and 'out there' data lies a loss of control over personal information. Take for example MIT's Project Gaydar - set to 'spot' your sexual preference by the social ties on Facebook with various checks accumulated from tagged 'shares', quizes etc. all making very personally identifiable information available (AND quantifiable £s as it is sold on) to third parties.

Amidst such complicit social action/s, one starts to wonder if Friend no.1 has a point. Not because being on the web and/or joining Facebook means that you see less of friends, but rather there are very real social risks that arise from the 'giving away' such personal aspects of yourself.
All rather disconcerting. Until Friend no.2 countered with,

'Well we're all being CCTV surveilled right now! (in the pub) and everywhere else anyway, so what's a few clicks between friends'

And so the above, I find, is more or less exactly how people have decided that it is OK to volunteer up so many aspects of themselves. This is because such social participation has been gradual. Slowly our personal offerings lend themselves to a radical shift in one direction of increasing social exposure - a by-product of wanting to be a constant part of what's going on and open as a link to others.

Besides, as Friend no.1 and no.2 manage to agree before closing time,

'...We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

This may have had more to do with the Eagles on the juke box, rather than any real profound thought as to the social state of surveillance and the web though...

Why costume parties are more fun in-person

The sociologist Erving Goffman once noted that any social encounter is to be understood by the 'functioning of the 'membrane' that encloses it,' (1961: pp.79).

Over the weekend I had to cancel my attendance at a get together with friends - a Halloween costume party. From all details the event was a happy and silly occasion - pineapples were strewn on the floor. Men were dressed as flamingos. What's not to love. So, how do I know such fun was had? Because Facebook, Twitter etc. tells me so. I have had no 'real' contact with those friends who donned silly wigs and so forth and did go along, but according to the various snippets of news from Status Updates, feeds and so forth, I 'know' that things were a resounding and fun filled success. If left a bit disturbing after a PVC 'incident'.

But how does this relate to Goffman and his 'functioning' social 'membrane''? Goffman was writing about Fun in Games. Excluded from the fun, my attachment to the functioning membrane of the encounter was made more permeable by my being able to have an absent presence.

So, rather than being 'cut off' from the sociability that give particular events - such as the party above - weight, these can be shared out amongst those who were there, as well as those who were not, but should have been, in attendance. This meant I bought the costume, I dressed up, I wasn't there, but to all intents and purposes I can share and 'live out' some of the happenings. Just not the chaffing of the PVC.

Thus with social media, we remain at all times - should we choose - connected to the various occasions and friends of our social lives. In doing so, we seek to dispel the myth of the socially disconnected and those more tortured sets of individuals who are in effect 'cut off' from one another. Here then, a new set of rules apply. These lay down the types of behavior and influence that can be given to the allocation of socially realised encounters. Hence, if an individual is absent from one occasion they can - in effect - remain 'spontaneously' involved. In this way technology provides a sustainable social platform from which to perpetuate the stability of selective relationships as we choose to move either closer, or further away from whatever social interludes and/or people that take our fancy.

Our goal is to be at ease with one another, as they may be stabilised on the one hand and then become unbalanced on another. Indeed, as any user of Facebook, Twitter etc. should know, any inaccurately maneuvered interaction immediately pokes through the thin membrane of our social reality. So when the likes of Lily Allen et al. rant on Twitter, we are amused, but also this is displaced within our social sphere. We have no personal claim or connection to that person. But we are curious and want to ride out the distractions of others...

Where does this leave us then? In short attend that party. The PVC incidence is more funny in-situ.

A tweet-indisecration. And a little more celebrity exposure

When I was of younger years youth I enjoyed much of the innocence of school days. I also shared with others a similar rite of passage which meant I experienced what one may describe as 'bullying' or at least mild level of verbal debasement of the 'he said'; 'she said' variety.

Older, when I was at secondary school there again name calling etc. played to the very same type of social taunting, 'slag', 'tart', 'geek', 'goth'...

And today, the same situation - albeit via Twitter, has arisen again!

In case you have missed what commenced as a tweet-indesecration exchange this kicked off when @stephenfry (the 'most popular' man on Twitter) announced over the weekend that he was leaving Twitter, after @brumplum declared,
There’s nothing like publicly broadcasting criticism - the social media equivalent of starting a rumour in the school playground - to prise out of celebrity an off the cuff eruption. Enter Fry's chum @alandavies1. In defense of Fry he tweeted over and over and over. The overall tone was matched by Davies initial retaliation,

'Anyone has a pop at your mates you stick up for them. Twittr needs to be more like Essex. If you wouldn't say it to their face then do shut up.'

And so we have a social responsibility to 'stick up' for our friends. But, my Goodness! When did Twitter become such a playground for nonfeasance? At a turning point when celebrity culture has become preachy, unfunny and with tweets starting to reflect a new critical mass of ego-centric interest is it time to send in some new clowns?

Both Davies and Fry had open profiles (Fry's is now - temporarily? - closed) so it's easy to Follow such displays of discordance. Being Twitter a defence may be that it's seemingly easy to take something back. To 'un-tweet' and hit 'delete'. What is surprising is how two of the most famous presences had been so easily overwhelmed and, in the course of others tweet outrage, wrong footed.

Negative jibes took on a critical mass as @brumplum was RT'd 'poked' and prodded into submission. We are now outside of the schools playgrounds. Tellingly, however, it seems that it is easy to forget that we share a persistence of presence in the form of publicly displayed profiles and the associated exchanges.

My hope is that Fry does not remain 'closed' from Twitter. That Davies defence of his friend is taken as just that - an acknowledgement of support, rather than a public call for Twitter baiting. Somehow things quickly escalated into a grand tweet-scale of unpleasantness. Certainly not (from a read of his blog) @brumplum's intention.

From the ballyhoo that has ensued I am reminded that there exist the same social risks that we all intentionally enter into when we broadcast anything across public settings. Twitter, Facebook etc. give only a frontispiece to what is going on.

imnotobsessed.com reveals celebrity culture. The tweet hate campaign waged between Lindsey Lohan and Samantha Ronson seems incapable of tuning out of our public feeds...

'@samantharonson doesn't respond 2me b/c her family will cut her off if she contacts me...They control the one I love&im incapable of making any sort of difference.'

Twitter and other modes may seep into ‘real life’, but it will be interesting to see if, like Lohan and friends, we continue with such open displays of hostility. Or turn, about-face, like Fry and chums...