Mar 30 2007
Who Will Be the Neanderthals In Our Digital Culture’s Social Evolution?
John of Finding the Money asked the question “Are You Tired Of Blogs About Making Money?”
John replied that while he wasn’t, Jesse of Blogspoke was.
I answered with: ” I feel that blogs have to evolve – they have become a 2nd life for more and more people; they live their real life and then write and create their online life. Somehow the 2 will become more tightly coupled”
To which John replied: “I like the way you think. Web 2.0 is too disjointed right now to really have a digital self. Blogs, flickr, bookmarking, myspace, etc., can’t be combined in an elegant way to represent a complete person. But things are going that way.â€
Jesse then posted “Blogging: A chance to adequately portray your true identity online, or a second life altogether?” and wrote:
“Do you think one day with the use of more evolved social networking technologies like blogs, photo sharing, video etc, people will be able to accurately express their true identity online? Or, do you think that there will always be obstacles to an integrated social network, causing us to all have schizophrenic double-lives, giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘half-life’.”
My answer to his first question is another question:
Who is willing to express or more accurately, expose, their true self to anyone?
It’s less of a question of technology than psychology.
Jesse has been asking some very interesting questions with respect to the social effects that blogging has had on society. Until I began involving myself in this digital culture, I had no idea that there really was a digital culture complete with etiquette, social hierarchy, and language. In fact, I have become so immersed in it I really have added a second life to my current one.
I believe that we are not far from experiencing a social evolution because people desire a merging of their online and offline lives. Why else do so many of us feel “out of touch” when we don’t have access to the Internet?
The desire for integration will drive the innovation.
John’s thought that “Technology will eventually get us to a place where our online activities become a part of – or even integral to – how we earn our income” is not a new one.
I found an article by Paul Hartzog titled “Digital Culture: What Matters?” written on November 5, 2004.
Paul Hartzog touches on News, Information, Money and Tools in the Digital Culture:
News: ” weblogs are the primary news source for an increasing number of people who need up-to-the-minute coverage of important events.”
Information: “Where once centralized encyclopedias were the norm, now we find instead Wikipedia, huge and accurate information archives created and maintained by a decentralized global mass of users.”
Money: “Douglas Rushkoff has even suggested in “Open Source Money” that mobile technologies used for the creation, distribution, and consumption of culture could undermine governments’ and businesses’ stranglehold on money and capital, creating a boom in alternative currencies.”
Tools: “What Howard Rheingold has termed “tools for thought” provides a whole new market in cultural goods, a market that is extraordinarily crucial to digital culture. …As Steve Weber has pointed out in The Success of Open Source, these new cultural norms can have profound implications for economic production.”
On the topic of Digital Cultural Networks:
“…We must move from understanding merely the wage economy to examine a broader definition of “work” including cooperation, non-profit work, work in the home, and the entire social economy.”
“Perhaps, the middle class is now producing in a way that doesn’t engage the wage economy but rather creates what is increasingly called “the sharing economy.” ”
Our society is evolving and this means that the economy must change to support it. Those who don’t want to be left behind adapt and this is one reason for the proliferation of blogs that focus on making money. We’re all trying to adapt and adaptation requires change. A few years ago I never would have thought that I’d be interested in making money from a blog. Heck, I had no interest in blogging itself.
Blogging doesn’t exist as some self-contained, isolated world called The Blogosphere. The Blogosphere is a component of the larger Digital Culture.
Once I became a member of this digital culture I became aware of the digital commerce.
What is the currency of the digital commerce?
Links! The more links you have, the more traffic you can attract and the more traffic you have, the greater your potential to earning real currency – cash.
What is evolution?
Evolution is change over time with the environment selecting which changes will survive. We can already see the Neanderthals of our culture – The Unplugged. The Unplugged have to work harder to keep up with The Plugged In.
We are going through a social evolution. The Digital Culture will become merely, our Culture.
to answer your question – MySpace Users! . . . no one else on the internet typify’s the word “Neanderthals” more than people who just use myspace all day long!
I will not lie to you, I have seen my blog as a way to make some extra money. I no longer see itthat way.
Part of the reason for my shift in attitude is that when I get paid to write about things I can’t help feeling used. Even if it is something I am interested in, if the money changes hands BEFORE I write I feel like a prostitute. If money changes hands AFTER I write than I see it as a reward.
Does that make any sense?
I use MySpace. >:) If anyone knows of an easier way to keep up with family and friends spread all over the country, I’d like to know what it is.
These are great thoughts, MsQ; I’ll be thinking about them
-j
HMTKSteve: I have always had this simmering desire to write and never quite brought it to boil (to keep the analogy) until recently. However, what gave me the incentive was the idea that I could make money from blogging. Making money wasn’t the goal but it gave me at least the push to actually start writing.
I have earned a few bucks so far via adsense (not enough for them to cut me a check yet) but I’m more amused that I’m earning anything at all!
I can understand your feelings about feeling like a prostitute if someone pays you to write. Your feelings make perfect sense.
When I get those adsense cents, it does feel like a reward – a validation that my writing was good enough to bring a reader to my site. My guess is that your thoughts about feeling used has to do with the type of writing and who is asking you to do it.
For example, if some e-zine asked you to write some (I’m guessing since I don’t play video games) article on 3 great games for girls around the age of 6, no push towards a particular product, you might be OK with that. It’s your expertise and objectivity they want.
I would love to get paid to write and have been thinking about finding out about freelance work. The writing I do here is very rewarding – I gain a great sense of fulfillment and satisfaction from it, but I think that taking on freelance work would expand and improve my writing skills. It’s one thing to write for yourself, another to write within the guidelines of an eZine.
Think about if I could get paid to write airport bathroom reviews!
Gary and John: I’m addressing this to the both of you since you have differing views on MySpace.
I just browsed around MySpace and can see that some people have what might be considered juvenile looking pages and friends that don’t really look like friends but it doesn’t seem all that much different from blogs.
Personally, I have never used MySpace and don’t know that much about it. From what little I’ve seen, I don’t agree with Gary’s assessment – I think that the people who are on MySpace all day long are the future but we won’t be calling it MySpace. I have an idea about this that I hope to post in the near future and I touched on this in my comment to Jesse on BlogSpoke.
While many people use MySpace as a blog/marketing-type tool, I would venture to say that most don’t (I wouldn’t dream of it, personally.)
It’s much more of a peer-to-peer system than blogs are. It’s really the best way I’ve found to keep up with friends and family online. You chat back and forth, see what the others are up to or currently into, broadcast bulletins, get reminded of birthdays, etc.
Probably its greatest strength (and coincidentally why its users are mocked incessantly) is that it appeals to people who aren’t technology-savvy.
Regardless of the fashionable disdain, I agree with you – it’s the way of the future. With over 100 million accounts (yes, 100,000,000), all the other social networking sites combined can’t hope to compare.
-j
John: 100 million MySpace accounts? Yow!
I got the impression that MySpace was very easy to use and if it has as many features as you listed, I can see why it’s so popular.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post – I’m going to describe what I think will replace MySpace!