I saw this article just today. It eases the mind just a bit on the challenge of creating a social graph as Google has created a web graph. Mark Andrejevic writes that it is already happening to an extent. We know that everytime we post something about ourselves there is another thread leading to the whole person. We only need the bridge to tie them all together.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-johnson-social-graph/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29
Hello Sue,
ReplyDeleteAndrejevic's article is definitely interesting but it makes me wonder whether or not we want a tightly knit social graph? Does it make connecting online easier? Yes. But what about who we want to portray ourselves as online? I have always preferred to keep my Facebook profile and my Linked In profile different for two very distinct purposes (the social versus the professional). This article made me think of what Andrejevic wrote in "Social Network Exploitation": "It is not hard to imagine a world in which those who eschew networking sites will seem as outdated, hard-to-reach, and perhaps overly protective of their privacy as those who don't have an email account or carry mobile phones. In the social factory, the boundaries between spheres of labor and leisure, domesticity, and consumption upon which the distinction between consumer choice and workplace coercion relies, become blurred. To the extent that our communicative, educational, and social lives are folded into the social factory and become the resources that we draw upon and sell to employers, access to resources for online networking becomes a crucial component of generating value" (pp. 96-97). It is exactly this "folding into the social factory" that bothers me to a certain extent. I was part of the generation of students who were undergraduates in college when Facebook very first appeared and (as we discussed in class last week) the purpose of Facebook has changed so entirely now that it frustrates me that I have to "alter" myself on Facebook to meet this new flattening out (now my Facebook is becoming more like my Linked In profile), which I feel forces me to adhere to a singular online identity and that this identity must be chosen wisely in the face of professionalism.