Every time you post something on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram, you’re influencing—or trying to influence—how the world views you. Each carefully crafted 140-character message that goes out into the metaverse fills a publicly accessible database that defines you to people you’ve never met. In the end, it isn’t who you really are. It’s the hilarious, adorable, fascinating, intelligent, so-worth-Friending version of you. Social media isn’t about having a conversation with people you know. It’s about advertising yourself. It’s not social; it’s media.
Much of Facebook’s genius revolves around the Wall: a public space that we curate but that other people can add to. Within the universe of the site, where everyone is a “friend,” you feel a special compulsion to respond to Wall posts—to comment on others’ posts to yours and to reciprocate by writing on theirs.
We want our Walls to reflect ourselves. It’s analogous to the way we curate our belongings, which itself is a window into our personalities.
Na marginesie – czytanie solidnego tekstu napisanego przez naukowca to prawdziwa rozkosz w porównaniu z produkcją blogoidalnych pseudoekspertów mediowych.
We also let ourselves be gamed every day by one of the oldest technologies of all: the calendar. Because it displays our nonscheduled time as empty space, our calendar apps encourage us to pack our days with events. Think how differently we’d interact with our calendars if the default was for time slots not to be empty—if, instead, they were prepopulated with tasks like thinking, writing, and planning. We’d be far less likely to neglect the opportunity costs: Every time we accept an obligation, it would be clear that we are giving something up.
Ponieważ w ostatnim czasie wszyscy już zdążyli podzielić się z internetem swoimi refleksjami i „analizami” na temat Google+, a zapewne nawet „Tele Tydzień” pisał już o Facebooku, warto przypomnieć, że są ludzie potrafiący pisać o sieciach społecznych na wysokim poziomie, na przykład Danah Boyd – właściwie wszystkie teksty są godne uwagi.
