What's new is old again. It seems a lot of people are confused by the community aspects of new media and personal broadcasting. The terms fly about user-created content, and community this and that.
Most of us know, by common sense, there will be a portion of the public that will love to get their names in lights, or contribute their time, photos, video, or other personal or professional items to the greater community. Their motivations may be to make a difference, or to make them feel unique, or to get an ego boost, or to commuicate frustrations, attack others or help others. It may be they feel alone. The motivations are different but all have common threads.
We may feel something by connecting with others, no matter the form of communication. It may be we express our issues, because we can, and it's our form of communication. If you stumble on old letters of your parents, grandparents, or that of earlier generations, there are many of the same issues. You could simply change the dates on the letters, put it up on a blog, and it would be new, or would it be old?
For 10 years, I've been thinking about the digital soul. What makes the Internet into the next version, and in which it really crosses the barrier to touching and reaching out to someone. I thought about writing a book on this long and hard, mostly to figure this out for myself, and find out other opinions from smart people.
Yes - you can touch someone, but there's still something missing in this technology tangle of connections. Even when you go to a webpage today, it's impersonal and distant, despite the personal photos and words.
In a cover story I wrote awhile back on Bill Gates and digital media for Digital Media Magazine (Streamline Publications), I labeled this (current) generation the digital me generation. It was about the new ability to have better control over our interactions, media, communications.
Once we can do all this, I still wonder if we really will have control, or perhaps we will feel that we do.
Pre-Coffee ramblings,
Peg
Friday, February 02, 2007
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