http://an.org/inet98/questions.html is the text, I'll paste it here as
well. The first question about how do we share experiences on the net is
perhaps weak but still something that has been bothering me. The second
one is my fav: Facing reality - are we "growing up digital" kids really
gonna grow up and what will we be? What would you like to be?
I'm probably staying in Holland till the end of this week and now that the
being-without-a_place-to-stay-in-hassle is finally over there should be
more time to this, to comment your questions and reactions etc. I hope :)
---cut---
1. Sharing experiences with friends (by writing) on the net
The net enables new ways to share experiences with friends. Does that
change our lives and how? Is text-baseness essential here - i.e. could
these work with sound/video and other time based media as well in some
way? Are the written ways of communication actually a benefit here? (could
hypermedia perhaps combine the good sides of asynchronous text and
audio/visual multimedia?)
Two examples that we have plenty of experience of:
Many people keep semi-private on-line diaries so that their friends and
others, even people they don't know, can read them.
Other, perhaps not so well-known way of sharing, is having IRC channels
and keeping your chat clients (agents, if you prefer) permanently on-line
(first attach, then just de- and retach) so that all discussions go to log
files or to the backbuffer. This way the things friends tell publicly to
other friends can be "heard" later also by those who happened not to be
present that very moment. The dynamic multichanneling and messaging
features in IRC help choose a specific audience for every sentence
Some misc. thoughts:
Mails - perhaps especially mailing lists - and now that I come to think of
it actually most of old media like newspapers, books and TV can be viewed
from this experience sharing perspective. Friends' bottom-down networks
on IRC are however quite different than the big media. They are probably
more related to writing postcards and letters but differ technically at
least in time-span, interactivity and in the ways they can be shared.
One interesting thing related to this is how the net makes people move. I
mean, before these communication systems really worked many visionaries
predicted that telecommunications would reduce the need for travelling
dramatically. Quite the opposite has happened so far as most people who
make friends on the net want soon to travel to meet them - sometimes cross
the world.
Friends simply want to spend time with each other - experience together.
This might work better over the net if virtual reality techniques one day
fulfill their promises but I don't think that's going to happen in near
future. Sitting in airplanes is more likely for us. Party sharing
experiments are still interesting! Parties are often the ultimate
experiences that we live for and they really ought to be shared if net is
supposed to be any good.
2. Facing Reality - what kind of adults does Growing Up Digital make?
* what will we be, how do we wanna live, work etc?
Don Tapscott's book, titled Growing Up Digital, describes quite thoroughly
many aspects of so called Net-Generation (N-Gen). Are we like that? Have
some of you read the book, what do you think of it?
Most importantly: what do you think that the future of you and other net
kids will be? Do you know, if you even want to know, what kind of life you
are hoping to live in the future? What is your dream work, family etc?
Some thoughts about this question as well:
Tapscott gives a very positive image about us. I recognize some of it but
am afraid that we Net People will have more trouble facing reality - the
established often stupid excisting sturctures in cultures and
organizations that is - than he lets the readers understand. At least I'm
always in trouble ;) My friends often as well .. with for example stupid
laws, unmotivated restrictions, stupid bureauchracy and non-netty closed
systems in general.
Of course it's important to bend those borders and try to make a change if
we believe in something different but I'm always not sure if we can do it
the right way. Or should we even care? Many net groups tend to isolate
from the rest of society. Does it necessarily have to be that bad if
everyone's happy that way? Societies are divided in separate entities
anyway and as long as we have interfaces and standard enough protocols to
operate with other groups everyone should be happy. Rough consensus and
running code! (i.e. no net evangelism, please)
---cut---
That's it this time.
BTW: If I never tell you about an exhibition called "from Siberia to
Cyberspace" (did I mention that already?) please ask!
Happy netting.
+ an + ~ Toni ~ : (t . !