Last year, Robert Scoble created this Social Media Starfish - a diagram depicting some of the forerunners in the New Social Media. The image was designed to organize the numerous recent online technologies that create opportunities for conversation. Since the New Media are primarily social, they display a new value system with attributes not found in older media including connections, interactive conversations and instant accessibility. Critics & skeptics abound, but proponents are calling this the dawning of a new age of human communication.
What's your take on the New Media? Does it affect your daily life? Has it changed the way you communicate? Has it changed what you value?
{ 1 trackback }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
The new media for me has been surrounded by the adoption of blogs and of course Facebook which has changed how I relate to some of the high school kids at the church, but has also helped me reconnect with friends from around the world that I have lost touch with.
The biggest thing that changes how I do business are blogs. Other things such as Facebook help me expand my sphere of influence so in essence they are helping me do what I did before.
There has been so much growth it is really hard to keep track of which technology is important or valuable to my daily life. Facebook has definintly made keeping up old friendships easier, but what happens when all the “cool kids” move somewhere else? It has also created a challenge of balancing time - I’ve really enjoyed blogging, but it can take a lot of time out of my day.
Looks like Facebook is getting all the attention. Besides fb, I’m expecting comments on Twitter……
OK, so I guess my comment was deleted because I didn’t use my name, so I’ll try again.
I almost lost my wife of 15+ years because she cheated on me with a guy she met on MySpace. We’ve patched that up, but she’s still spending more time with her virtual friends than with her husband and kids.
Speaking of, I caught my daughter a while back almost giving her phone number and address to a guy who said he was a 12 year old boy, but who could have been a 50 year old creep.
I say this not to whine but to warn folks out there that social networking online with total strangers opens your loved ones up to emotional (spiritual, physical) dangers that you can’t even imagine.
Until it happens to you, that is.
Don - so sorry a comment was deleted and it may have gotten caught up in my spam blocker, Akismet, moderation, etc. so thanks for resubmitting.
Also, so sorry to hear you’ve had a very negative experience with social networking. And of course your story is quite common. The ills and horrors of the online world are well documented and quite the victory that your marriage sustained the hit.
Don - I too am sorry to hear about your experience. However, I disagree with your assessment that social networking is bad based on your situation. I feel that social networking is a tool, yes it can be used inappropriately but so can many other things. Bars use to be the root of the evils that you discuss but now it is social networking. Are we missing the point? Maybe social networking is a very useful (and often fun) tool that can be used to grow businesses, reconnect with old friends, or make new ones.
Just my opinion.
Travis - your perspective has been mirrored here by many people. Some even argue that MySpace would be a better place if more individuals carrying the Gospel would frequent it (and even set up shop).
I think Don sees some value in cyberspace or he would not spend his time reading blogs and commenting.
Yes I’m a blogger, and agree that they can be useful. Used to run a blog that carried news about our church’s mens group and activities for instance. Just started participating in a political network online. Been blogging for four years now. The web is, no doubt, a great networking tool.
The difference with MySpace and sites like it is the ability (and propensity) for people to isolate themselves into a social cocoons. All of the things I blog are plainly visible to my wife and kids and extended family. I’m accountable to the men in my church and my readers for the things I write and the relationships I develop online.
MySpace pages, on the contrary, are intended to be exclusive. When your spouse or child intentionally locks you out of it and establishes private relationships with other people it always causes damage and undermines trust. Just google something like “hack into myspace” and you’ll see page after page of men and women and parents desperately trying to deal with and relate to a whole new area of private relationships their loved ones have entered into and intentionally hidden from them.
This on-line behavior, like a military simulator, can get folks “trained up” to do the real thing when they would never consider it otherwise. My wife’s MySpace chats led to her meeting this guy at a bar a couple times, something she’d never considered doing before. She told me this in the aftermath when we were trying to restore our trust in each other. In my daughter’s case I turned over the IP address to a friend in the Navy criminal investigative service and they believe the guy was a 50-something perv working kids online. I would guess you all have seen network TV programs on how creeps use these sites to lure women and teens in situations that range from the unsavory to the deadly. People are using what they think is a “private” network as an excuse to email lewd pictures of themselves to others, and then are surprised when these end up on the net. Or men who would never darken the door of an adult bookstore ingraciating themselves with x-rated blogs. And so on.
So if I had to characterize social networking without lambasting it as a whole, I’d say it was like D.C. There are amazing places to visit - historic sites and libraries full of information and entertainment venues and coffee shops and trade shows and common areas where you can meet and trade business cards. Yes, there are even great churches in D.C. It certainly has “value.”
But to say that D.C. is totally wonderful and someplace that you or your loved ones can wander all over at all hours of the day and night is plain foolish. There are blocks of stores with no windows, where people intentionally meet in the shadows, and where the cashier has to lock him or herself behind bullet proof glass. Yet people who would never consider doing such things in real life are playing with this sort of behavior in a virtual world. And until the real world comes back to them with a vengance they think it’s completely harmless.
Yes, there is some value in cyberspace. Not trying to sound like a prude. I simply share my experiences here in the sincere hope you or your family won’t have to suffer anything like what mine did.
Parting shot on taking the Gospel to MySpace - on this point I agree with you whole-heartedly. The fact that well-meaning Christians have set up “GodSpace” and Christian only sites shows how we can even isolate ourselves from the rest of the world rather than be salt and light and influence. As somebody once put it, the Cross wasn’t erected in a cathedral, but on a hill overlooking suburban Jerusalem where he could be seen by all.
Grace and peace.
Don,
I agree with you. I dont think anything these days can not be misused and most are misused. I also like your analogy of D.C. There definitely are parts of the Internet that are the “bad parts of town.”
However did you know that My Space restricts adults from communicating with minors? This of course assumes that the adult has put in their correct age. It is easy to overcome, however it reminds me of a saying about locks. “Locks are there to keep the honest people honest.” Another little tidbit of information that I think is relevant; Word press (a popular Blogging hosting service) can be made to be password protected. This works great for private office blogs, but can be misused in the manner that you described in your last post.
The Internet really does not have rules. It is useful and I dont know how I would run my business without it, but it is vitally important to always be on guard. When on the Internet it is like being in a foreign country. All of the safeguards that we as Americans take for granted are gone and we have to conduct ourselves accordingly.
Leave a Comment