Friday, April 27, 2012
Thursday, October 14, 2010
instant gratification isn't so gratifying
I recently had an awesome conversation with a few of my friends about how our generation is one obsessed with instant gratification. As I said in one of my phone posts, I have about 5 methods someone can communicate with me that all funnel into my phone, which I always have on me. So if someone sends me a message on facebook, an email, a text message, a gchat or calls me, I will know instantly. For me it’s convenient and efficient but what if I don’t really want to talk to the person who’s messaging me or heaven forbid forget to respond? Generally people are so used to an instant response that if the person they’re trying to get in contact with doesn’t respond in 10 minutes or less, something’s wrong.
What does this mean for us? The conclusion of the conversation with my buddies ended with a sentiment that we’re all growing up impatient and needy. I guess it’s true but it has certainly changed how we do other things too. For instance, I feel really connected with the news and if something disastrous were to happen I would know pretty quick – that makes me feel safe.
On 9/11 my mother had a really hard time getting in touch with my aunt, who was a flight attendant for American Airlines and possibly involved in the attack (she wasn’t, thankfully). Now let’s keep in mind that this all happened in 2001, my mother (who was teaching at the time) had to go down to the office and use the principal’s phone because it was the only one in the building that could call long distance. In 9 years almost every person walking around has a phone in their pocket that can call anywhere in the world. Crazy. I’m pretty sure that if something of the magnitude of 9/11 were to happen again the cell phone towers would be so overwhelmed that no calls would be able to go out anyway. If that were to happen all of us instant gratification creatures would FREAK. Till then…
All of this really does make you think about our culture and how it can change so quickly. I wonder if our culture shapes our technology or if it’s the other way around. Facebook has changed the lives of young people and has evolved to meet different needs and methods of communication. I remember when the news feed came out there were petitions and everyone was really upset about it, “I don’t want EVERYONE to know everything I’m doing”. Now we rely on it; we love it. I remember when I was personally upset about the news feed I sent an email to Mark Zukerberg who told me (in a form letter) to try the news feed and I’ll learn to love it, I’ll grow to not be able to live without it. It’s true. This makes me think that for the most part, we grow into our technology, instead of our technology growing around us. There seem to be products everyday that don’t catch on or don’t seem to make sense, until we use them and grow to need them.
The reason why I decided to write this whole post at all was after reading an article about how Skype is teaming up with facebook and there will be an option call people right from the news feed. This made me think of how my friends were talking about instant gratification and how soon there will be ANOTHER way for people to contact each other. I think it’s a cool idea, I think people will use it and love it but it is a little scary that there is another way to be accessible. Sometimes is nice to be out of touch, out of communication. I’m worried that we spend too much time talking to others that we forget the introspective exercise to figure out who we are independently before we decide how we fit into society.
P.S. This article by the onion seemed inappropriately appropriate.
What does this mean for us? The conclusion of the conversation with my buddies ended with a sentiment that we’re all growing up impatient and needy. I guess it’s true but it has certainly changed how we do other things too. For instance, I feel really connected with the news and if something disastrous were to happen I would know pretty quick – that makes me feel safe.
On 9/11 my mother had a really hard time getting in touch with my aunt, who was a flight attendant for American Airlines and possibly involved in the attack (she wasn’t, thankfully). Now let’s keep in mind that this all happened in 2001, my mother (who was teaching at the time) had to go down to the office and use the principal’s phone because it was the only one in the building that could call long distance. In 9 years almost every person walking around has a phone in their pocket that can call anywhere in the world. Crazy. I’m pretty sure that if something of the magnitude of 9/11 were to happen again the cell phone towers would be so overwhelmed that no calls would be able to go out anyway. If that were to happen all of us instant gratification creatures would FREAK. Till then…
All of this really does make you think about our culture and how it can change so quickly. I wonder if our culture shapes our technology or if it’s the other way around. Facebook has changed the lives of young people and has evolved to meet different needs and methods of communication. I remember when the news feed came out there were petitions and everyone was really upset about it, “I don’t want EVERYONE to know everything I’m doing”. Now we rely on it; we love it. I remember when I was personally upset about the news feed I sent an email to Mark Zukerberg who told me (in a form letter) to try the news feed and I’ll learn to love it, I’ll grow to not be able to live without it. It’s true. This makes me think that for the most part, we grow into our technology, instead of our technology growing around us. There seem to be products everyday that don’t catch on or don’t seem to make sense, until we use them and grow to need them.
The reason why I decided to write this whole post at all was after reading an article about how Skype is teaming up with facebook and there will be an option call people right from the news feed. This made me think of how my friends were talking about instant gratification and how soon there will be ANOTHER way for people to contact each other. I think it’s a cool idea, I think people will use it and love it but it is a little scary that there is another way to be accessible. Sometimes is nice to be out of touch, out of communication. I’m worried that we spend too much time talking to others that we forget the introspective exercise to figure out who we are independently before we decide how we fit into society.
P.S. This article by the onion seemed inappropriately appropriate.
seriously?
I'm sorry, but what the heck has AOL been doing since their attempt to drown the united states in promotional CDs in 1998? Apparently something since they've got the cash to buy yahoo. Crazy.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
stick to what you know
Goshdarnit Microsoft. Why are you seriously putting so much effort into a smart phone? I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're niche is not the consumer market - sorry bro. Apple has the consumer market for personal computing, music and phone stuffs. Blackberry has the corporate market for phones. Why do you think you're going to break into an already dominated market? Microsoft makes me sad all the time, it's like being the little brother trying to keep up with the big boys, "oh hey guys, can I try? can I come along, pleeeeease?". Stop it, seriously. Your place is in corporate computing, why don't you just try to perfect that?
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Trends, trends
For the past few years I’ve kept myself up to date by reading the NYT and listening to NPR (per usual). Lately I’ve been getting a little more creative. When I was in college I had my first real realization that I was living in a bubble; unaware of the world's news. I was only a few weeks into school and without watching TV or reading the papers I had no idea that hurricane Katrina had hit or anything about it. At that point I decided to make NYT my home page and to keep an eye out for big news I should know about.
Recently I was upset when I realized that none of the American papers were covering the election in Afghanistan and no one really knew about it at all. I’m still scared that something big will happen somewhere and we as a people won’t know about it. My solution: the wisdom of crowds. I read the book by James Surowiecki a few years ago and I use the logic in my personal life often. When I found out about google lab’s “trends” site I was all about it. The site compiles the most frequently searched terms and trends. It also has a forecast about flu trends for different geographic areas based on web searches (though I find with the swine flu thing, it’s a little off for 2009). I take a look at google trends a few times a day to see what people are looking at, so far I think I’ve learned about a lot of cool things that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.
P.S. I also wanted to note that google trends seems to be about 2 days faster at publicising a story before the NYT. For instance, I read about the experiments in Guatemala earlier in the week and today there was an editorial about it in the NYT. Cool.
Recently I was upset when I realized that none of the American papers were covering the election in Afghanistan and no one really knew about it at all. I’m still scared that something big will happen somewhere and we as a people won’t know about it. My solution: the wisdom of crowds. I read the book by James Surowiecki a few years ago and I use the logic in my personal life often. When I found out about google lab’s “trends” site I was all about it. The site compiles the most frequently searched terms and trends. It also has a forecast about flu trends for different geographic areas based on web searches (though I find with the swine flu thing, it’s a little off for 2009). I take a look at google trends a few times a day to see what people are looking at, so far I think I’ve learned about a lot of cool things that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.
P.S. I also wanted to note that google trends seems to be about 2 days faster at publicising a story before the NYT. For instance, I read about the experiments in Guatemala earlier in the week and today there was an editorial about it in the NYT. Cool.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
for you, for me
This is a bit for you (whoever you are) but MOSTLY for me - this is the best episode of This American Life I've listened to yet - do take note.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Connections
Ok for my first post about how the Nexus one is changing my life I want to talk about connections. A smart phone really allows you to make (and cultivate) connections with people and places. I’ll be the first to admit that smart phones promote many unnecessary and/or excessive connections.
For instance.. on my phone I can get email, text messages, google talk chats, facebook messages, phone calls and AIM messages. WHAT? That’s 6 different ways someone could get in contact with me. WOW! While it seems like it is terribly excessive, each form of communication tends to fit a different genre of message.
Texts are easy to send to a bunch of people at once, the “what’s up for tonight” type of thing.
Email for me is almost mainly for subscriptions about job postings, mailers from my alma mater, facebook notifications, coupons and deals, stuff like that. Email tends to very seldom be for actual communication (not too different from snail mail, right?). Though one feature of the nexus one that I really love is that I can turn off the sync with email. So when I go to bed at night, I turn off the sync so I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to learn about the ACM tech news. Also, I make it a point to turn off the sync when I’m doing something where I want to be only available to direct communications like a phone call or text message. The most important difference when the sync is turned off is I don’t get updates from facebook – which doesn’t sound like a big deal but it makes me feel a lot less involved with the greater world and more occupied with the conversation at hand/the people I’m with.
For anyone who uses these forms of communication what I’ve just said is a bit of a given. Now let’s talk about connections that are 100% new to the smart phone era.
On my phone I have all these creepy apps (that I can’t get enough of). The first is foursquare which allows me to “check in” to places that I go and tell my friends that I’m there. So when I go to a restaurant I “check in” and have the option to either tell just the friends I’m connected with on foursquare (about 5 people) and/or to post it on my facebook wall (which will reach about 900 people). Foursquare postings end up being half “hey guys, come meet me here” half “look what I’m doing, look what I’m doing – you jealous?”. To make this whole process more legitimate foursquare is pawned off as a game. Points are awarded for checking into places, you get trophies for different things but MOST IMPORTANTLY if you check into a place enough then you get to be the mayor. Whenever anyone checks into the place where you’re the mayor, your face shows up as the spokesperson for that venue, giving off another “man I’m awesome” message. So far I’m only the mayor of my office building. I’m hoping to become the mayor of my street soon too. Also, sometimes a venue will give you a deal or treat for checking into their place like a free drink or something like that. I wish more places would do that, it’s great advertising and I like free stuff – win win win.
Another creepy app (that isn’t widely used for obvious reasons) is google latitude. Latitude allows you to see where your friends are using GPS. I’m only connected with 2 other people, I rarely check it and it’s rarely right. It always says I’m about 5 blocks west of where I actually am. It also has said that one of my friends has been on the ben franklin bridge for about 2 months (highly unlikely). This app has no real purpose other than for stalking and therefore not too popular.
Sooooo in the end I feel very connected to the world with my smart phone, more than I ever did with my regular phone. Perhaps I’m at the age where this almost insane level of connection doesn’t feel uncomfortable, it’s quite nice. I like to know what’s going on, who’s doing what, the buzz of the world around me. I like having up to the minute updates and updating people about what I’m doing. Being able to check my email at every moment makes me feel powerful, it eases my mind a bit. I don’t need to worry about going home and checking my email or if I’m missing something, it’s just part of my day.
For instance.. on my phone I can get email, text messages, google talk chats, facebook messages, phone calls and AIM messages. WHAT? That’s 6 different ways someone could get in contact with me. WOW! While it seems like it is terribly excessive, each form of communication tends to fit a different genre of message.
Texts are easy to send to a bunch of people at once, the “what’s up for tonight” type of thing.
Email for me is almost mainly for subscriptions about job postings, mailers from my alma mater, facebook notifications, coupons and deals, stuff like that. Email tends to very seldom be for actual communication (not too different from snail mail, right?). Though one feature of the nexus one that I really love is that I can turn off the sync with email. So when I go to bed at night, I turn off the sync so I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to learn about the ACM tech news. Also, I make it a point to turn off the sync when I’m doing something where I want to be only available to direct communications like a phone call or text message. The most important difference when the sync is turned off is I don’t get updates from facebook – which doesn’t sound like a big deal but it makes me feel a lot less involved with the greater world and more occupied with the conversation at hand/the people I’m with.
For anyone who uses these forms of communication what I’ve just said is a bit of a given. Now let’s talk about connections that are 100% new to the smart phone era.
On my phone I have all these creepy apps (that I can’t get enough of). The first is foursquare which allows me to “check in” to places that I go and tell my friends that I’m there. So when I go to a restaurant I “check in” and have the option to either tell just the friends I’m connected with on foursquare (about 5 people) and/or to post it on my facebook wall (which will reach about 900 people). Foursquare postings end up being half “hey guys, come meet me here” half “look what I’m doing, look what I’m doing – you jealous?”. To make this whole process more legitimate foursquare is pawned off as a game. Points are awarded for checking into places, you get trophies for different things but MOST IMPORTANTLY if you check into a place enough then you get to be the mayor. Whenever anyone checks into the place where you’re the mayor, your face shows up as the spokesperson for that venue, giving off another “man I’m awesome” message. So far I’m only the mayor of my office building. I’m hoping to become the mayor of my street soon too. Also, sometimes a venue will give you a deal or treat for checking into their place like a free drink or something like that. I wish more places would do that, it’s great advertising and I like free stuff – win win win.
Another creepy app (that isn’t widely used for obvious reasons) is google latitude. Latitude allows you to see where your friends are using GPS. I’m only connected with 2 other people, I rarely check it and it’s rarely right. It always says I’m about 5 blocks west of where I actually am. It also has said that one of my friends has been on the ben franklin bridge for about 2 months (highly unlikely). This app has no real purpose other than for stalking and therefore not too popular.
Sooooo in the end I feel very connected to the world with my smart phone, more than I ever did with my regular phone. Perhaps I’m at the age where this almost insane level of connection doesn’t feel uncomfortable, it’s quite nice. I like to know what’s going on, who’s doing what, the buzz of the world around me. I like having up to the minute updates and updating people about what I’m doing. Being able to check my email at every moment makes me feel powerful, it eases my mind a bit. I don’t need to worry about going home and checking my email or if I’m missing something, it’s just part of my day.
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