As a guest lecturer at @panomatic’s Designed Play visual studies class yesterday, I thought aloud of how we are increasingly inter-connected with one another. Although in varying degrees, there are some like me who are inclined to explore the extremities of self-awareness.
Perhaps not now, but little choice later…
Note that I take the perspective of being hyper-connected as a choice at this point, though I believe that it will be unavoidable in the near future. As my friend MrBig already noted, even when he tries to have online presence through pseudonymity, the dilemma comes where his friends connect back to him, verifying real-life information about himself (e.g. Facebook).
Since information shared online by others around and about you would likely be beyond your control, having some form of online presence that’s verifiable by people you know, would act as a findable official reference from which you can control. Even if you aren’t interested in promoting yourself online, having presence acts as a defense mechanism for your namesake / reputation.
To contrast the diversity modes of online presence, I talked about my personal experiences in attempting to share and store consciousness via two routes:
1. Taking the High Road – VIDEO
+ High Cognitive Bandwidth; hard to multi-task / browse
+ Visceral, im-mediate reality
+ Technological accessibility: smaller sensors, cheaper storage
+ Mobile live video streaming (e.g. Ustream.tv, Qik, etc)
+ Searchable video via thumbnails, keyframe tagging, face detection
2. Taking the Low Road – TEXT
+ Low Cognitive Bandwidth: easy to multi-task / browse
+ Imaginary, requires prior experience
+ Scalable Complexity: twitter (low) to blog posting (high)
+ Democratic participation: twitter, SMS/txting cellphones
+ Highly searchable; naturally mashable / remixable
Points discussed in class during presentation:
- identity, expression and self-awareness
- mediated realities phenomena (i.e. Strange Days film, JetBlue ‘Out of Body’ experience)
- human drive for self-enhancement; explaining transhumanism (H+)
- memory prosthetics; both self-generated (Steve Whittaker’s Digital Memories) & communally-generated (Richard Smyth’s Collaborative Memory, e.g. Facebook friend tagging)
- media + participation literacy (e.g. Trebor Scholz’s literacy syllabus)
- ambient intimacy by Leisa Reichelt (i.e. closeness despite time & space)
- findability; tagging, detection (e.g. Viddler.com, Geotagging media by Rick Prelinger, Polar Rose’s Video Faces)
- personal security device; see Steve Mann’s Equiveillance
- collective intelligence or Smartmobs (e.g. twitter for low-level coordination; protest mobilization)
- enjoyability – how fun/indusive/addictive systems can be, based on Amy Jo Kim’s Game Mechanics
Finally, the means of communication often creates avenues for serendipitous encounters, which could explain why we are attracted to use social devices such as twitter.
ASIDE: I’m keeping track of related information at http://theory.wikispaces.com/Social+Cyborg
UPDATE: I’ve share the presentation on Slideshare.net
