ZeroCool

It’s funny how the days quickly roll by as lives are streamed by the various portals of socially charged information. Hello to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Dopplr…

It doesn’t seem over ten years since our alleged entry into the ethereal arena of cyberspace. And my, didn’t we take it all so seriously ‘back then’.

Over the weekend I re-watched Hacker’s. Director’s Iain Softley’s, 1995, vision of a New York situated cyberpunk culture. Lot’s of smoking, lots of inline - should that be online? ‘waaaaaaay cool dude!’ - skates and 'a 28.8 bps [sic] modem!’. And with Angelina Jolie.

Friends are made, lost along the way, re-made and the movie ends with Angelina getting wet in a pool with not-a-lot-a-on as a result of the games, territorial fights of fancy and the ultimate battle with a ‘big bad wolf’ corporation as led by the hacking community and culture.

So, today, why so 1990s?

One line in the film stands out, when a friend of the ‘PhantonPhreak’s’ asserts, ‘you’re nobody unless you have a handle’ – an individuals self-nominated ‘cyber’ name, the equivalent of what we would use as a username.

Today, it could equally be argued that ‘you’re nobody if you use anything but your real name’. An interesting turn of events. Where once the anonymous identity reigned supreme, now you’re only ‘insanely great’ if your friends can recognise you and be there to track your every movement. To this extent, the Hacker's suggestive nod to George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother ‘I’m watching you’ is suitably fitting.

Today this would be 'we're watching you'... Add to this observation, today the main protagonist ZeroCool would be zero cool, dismissed as a fake persona and consequently receive no friends on Facebook.

There’s been a steady change to the inclusion (intrusion?) of the arrays of technology, applications and resources that supplement our daily social highlights, lowlights and reveal the lowlifes. Perhaps we should all get used to suffering a new malady of data retention.

From today all ISPs will be ‘legally obliged’ to store all details of your internet content and telephony for 12 months. Whilst not the BigBrother central database of communications information – there are longer term outcomes that will affect our civil liberties. One example is how last month Facebook both defended its right to impose, and had users obliged to support, the sites new terms of service. For Zuckerberg this was promoted on the Facebook blog as an opportunity, 'On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information’ – in short, ‘we have your data and we’re not afraid to use it’. Faced with heavy criticism, the threat of legal action and rebel against Facebook by users (the Facebook group, People Against the New Terms of Service, grew to nearly 150,000 members) the company reinstated the old terms of service and with a new Facebook (trust us) group: The Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (with less than 100,000 members).

One day such events will tempt us to look back and recall not only ‘oh what a funny place that little cyber world was’, but to lament ‘oh how we used to be at liberty’… Now that was a funny old world which was far from ZeroCool.

Some questions to keep in mind: What is privacy? How are we surveilled across networks? What values do should we hold important for personal data? How can governments, corporations, and individuals make information safe?...

The Model Social Media user

It was so much simpler back in the cyberspace day. We knew where the offline and the online lie of the land was placed and happily ‘logged-in’ to take part in flame wars and avoid ‘reality’. Back then, there were no Facebook’s cancer risks, no Twitter’s to cause injury to our mental capacity and wither our brains, no stumbling around in the dark on Flickr only to reveal in the cold light of day ‘opps I didn’t mean to upload that’, too late I’m sacked, you're humiliated. In these darker social media times it is getting increasingly difficult to really understand where the You as 'yourself' ends and your alter-ego social Profile(s) begins.

So you must make your own crazy-pathed line into the web abyss. Update the Tweats, friend the likes of Wossy, descend on every Facebook invite wielding your social profile like a light sabre whilst declaring 'get out of my way', 'I am here ! I am here!' 'Notice me, recognise me!'.

You love to update on the go. Even more you love the gizmo’s and gadgets that sit happily alongside as you chat with friends in bars, whilst at the same time ‘quickly’ updating to Facebook just to let the rest of the world know where, when and what you are. Your parents use of email may leave you tutting and rolling your eyes, but your Tweat talent is as much beyond their years as the lack of theirs is beyond yours. In the social end, it’s the least that your parents can do to friend you on Facebook. After all you share the same surname, you all once shared the same address, it would be rude not the share the same social network. It’s just like moving back home all over again...

How old? Your use of social media has the answer.

I have, for some considerable time, dispatched from my lingua franca (language for convenience) the term ‘cyberspace’. Marilyn style gasps aside, my argument is there is a considerable divide between the manifestation of a 1990s cyberspaces and today’s array of ‘social media’. Used not only by the 'cool kids', 'geeks', 'dorks' or 'nerds' this observation is apparent through technologies ubiquitous and taken-for-granted everyday use, emphasised by the numerous (web-based) social presence(s) that we connect.

So much so, that the construct of separate worlds disconnected / divided from each other by an online Vs offline, or real Vs virtual simply does not compute. Indeed, to recognise that the use of social media is becoming ever-more common place is to acknowledge (albeit grudgingly) that we share at least one friend in common – either the self-pronounced ‘Wossy’ - Jonathon Ross, or the more straight forward, self-proclaimed ‘dork’ stephenfry – Stephen Fry. Here it is likely that both you and I can count ourselves as increasingly ‘one’, amongst the many. To add to the burgeoning social crowd, the house wives favourite ‘Schofe’ - Phillip Schofield, after he admitted posting live to Twitter during updates on This Morning, now has a ‘cool’ 74, 310 ‘followers’ flocking to his tweats. To say that 'everyone' is now connected would be an over-statement, but your everyday use of social media, their related networks and ‘friends’ does say a lot about your generation.

Under 15: You’ve been born with the metaphorical social media spoon in your mouth. Not that that’s ever stopped you from Tweating. Most likely your parent’s have spent longer referring to the text-only based edition of their parenting manual than the likelihood of your having had to refer to any type of handbook to ‘connect’, ‘link’, ‘unite’ and ‘get on’ with others. Once out of the womb you had already at least ten friends on Facebook. None of whom are your parents.

15 – 20: Too cool for MySpace and Bebo – that’s for the ‘sib’s’. You YouTube for entertainment, point, click and post directly to Flickr with the push of one button. You live by an expected continuous stream of social information that is supported by your steady and faithful connection to peers. Your parents may have ‘friended’ you on Facebook, but you have them on ‘Limited Profile’. You’re too cool for Twitter. That’s for the ‘old’ folk.

20 – 25: The original ‘Digital Generation’. You were fed on MTV and dabbled with email when there was still dial-up. You were amongst the first on MySpace, but quickly ditched ‘that space’ for Facebook. Now your Facebook is ‘LinkedIn’ with your LinkedIn's and Tweats. Smug? Maybe. Your friends know you because ‘we used to go to school together, like years ago’ and because they’re the only one’s who read your blog(s). You might be friends with Wossy, but only in an ironic way.

25 – 30: Cyberspace chatrooms and forums are within close memory. You still remember your first Avatar and 'username'. Now signed up to the latest social media you don’t give a damn how many friends you have on what networks. These (of course) all sync seamlessly to your iPhone. Sweet. You've only sent one '@' Tweat to stephenfry, but didn't expect a reply.

30 – 40: Facebook is FriendsReunited without the fee. You ‘remember’ those school friends, but really signed up to social networks to ‘spy’/reacquaint yourself with exes and those ‘bitches’ from school. Wossy was your first Twitter friend. Schofe will be your last - most likely through the link on this blog.

40 – 50: That nice Mr Schofield is on Twitter. I don’t understand what that is, but I will follow him wherever he may be…

50 – 65: What’s all this Twittering? Bird watching was never so popular in my day. We have a computer, but only for email – one shared account that has more Spam than messages from the family. Lots of ‘Friend Requests’ from someone vaguely familiar on something called Facebook. What’s wrong with a nicebook instead? There's bafflement when the mobile phone rings. Especially as this is indication that it's still in charge.

65+: Twit? Certainly not. How rude. I’m at home you can call and verbally abuse me here.

And where do I fit? Follow mazphd and find out...