Eric Maynard

I couldn't have seen this at a better time. it be speakin' to me. - holly

I like to think of social networking using various metaphors. The one I'm stuck on now--thanks to M. Stephens is social networking as cloud computing--we are all little clouds and working together--well mostly. - Max Macias

Been thinking about this too. We've all got "text-only personas" that can sometimes even be dramatically different from our in-person selves. For 5,000 years or so of Written Word though, they've been mostly denied the back-and-forth our talking personae take for granted. 5,000 years buried in relative isolation and anonymity, and now, we are risen. Out-of-person, disembodied, web-spectres. Not so much computing in the clouds, from what I see, as dancing, hair down, freak on, in the moonlight: Everybody here is out of sight / They don't bark, and they don't bite / They keep things loose, they keep things light / Everybody was dancin' in the moonlight ... http://bit.ly/4BZ0jY. Or maybe that's just me. :-D - Mark Stiarwalt

Even though I live in a city with gazillions of librarians, I feel like I've found more like-minded souls via social networks. Maybe being in the social network is the real reason why I feel like my friends here are like-minded souls ("Hey, you're in the same club I am...kewl...ain't this club grand!") Or maybe I'm just intrigued by all the folks online who get web 2.0 technologies and use them effectively. - Stephen Francoeur

I like Joe's term - cyber-ego - Courtney S.

Steve, how very well put! And timely. I think this deserves some further development and rumination and may end up writing about it. I think Mark elaborated very effectively about the progression of this development. I struggle with this cyber- or hyper-ego daily as you all well know. My problem is that I try to be "myself" online, which is risky and sometimes unsettling since the cues we normally use to self-regulate in RL are mostly missing in text. - W!cKeD

Exposing a hyper-ego that is similarly open in the way we would present ourselves to close RL friends requires a certain amount of trust, a sense of security with who we are as a person, and ability to express ourselves without constant self evaluation of how we are being perceived. Not an easy task. Sometimes I fear that I reveal too much of my frivolous side and neuroses but less of my professional persona. It could be because my work is less fun & interesting than I am. :) - W!cKeD

i love social networking, it makes everyone a standup comedian, poet, philosopher, therapist, and at times that friend who offers you that warm hug you need. - Royce

It's a temenos, what we got here, what the Greeks called it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...). You can do alchemy and stuff in one, if you tend it well. And yeh, W!cKeD, I had you (among others) in mind when I wrote "hair down, freak on." :-Dance on, brother W!cKeD. Appreciate yer enthusiasmos. - Mark Stiarwalt

New word, neat! Thanks, Mark. - Dorothea Salo

@Dorothea: Every word I know I learned from James Hillman. - Mark Stiarwalt

@Stephen Francoeur: I've been trying to calibrate my understanding of how awesome this group of people is since shortly after I got on Twitter. It just seems too rare and wonderful to have come together all that randomly, and I wonder how many others there are like it, and how different they are from what came before the internet. Thus, anyway, we refute thee, "Bowling Alone." I suspect there's good work to be done weaving together conference attendees, social networking, chaos theory, and strange attractors .... - Mark Stiarwalt

Usually this is the kind of thing that would lead to time spent researching word roots and attempting neologisms. But for now, the tenemos (not so much royal in this case, very much common) and whatever word gets best attached to "outsourced psyche" work for me. - Julie Neff

BTW, thanks for all the fantastic ideas and comments. W!cKeD, I almost mentioned you as my outsourced id. ;) - Steve Lawson

This is the first FF thread I've bookmarked. Steve, it's interesting that you said that. My Id frequently wins over my super-ego but the battle rages on. I like to think that the super-ego wins in the important matters pertaining to people, but I AM very driven by the basics of life. Those elemental urges speak to the life in me that my contemplative side just "thinks about and ponders". I'm honored and will waive the cover charge. ;D - W!cKeD

The fact that I'm commenting on your post here is really meta. All of these comments only supporting the whole point of your message, no? - рneum@tic

(I too used to be very id-driven, so much so that I self-identified as "primitive," but that label d/n stick so well lately.) I think the threads I read and comment on most often contain q&a "Should I" or "Should I not." Or, "Here am I?" Yes, the last is a question because otherwise why bother? It is entirely validation. The external validation from this psychologically has a gestalt quality - not just because of numbers but because of the nature of the group. Yes? We chose this area, declare ourselves and the bits of us that make us. What we've done IMHO even just w/i this domain is social alchemy. XCUS BENIDRIL TALKIN KTHX - Julie Neff

W!cKeD, I was joking of course: your FriendFeed "id" is obviously highly filtered. You have chosen to reveal yourself in a different way than many of us, in a way that careens between the more elemental and more cerebral in a very engaging way. - Steve Lawson

Steve, in the same way that your initial thought states, this process of feedback we all give and receive is very enlightening. We learn about ourselves by taking on the views of how others see us which feeds back into that loop by affecting how we present ourselves - more so than in RL I think. I'm constantly trying to understand who I am and understand others. If I didn't trust all of you, I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing like I do. Am thankful for a cohort I can be myself around. - W!cKeD

IRL can be very intimiding and far too intimate. You have deal with eye contact and personal space and so on. - Julie Neff

I make comments online that I would probably never interject IRL sober conversation. I have more fun expressing myself in text, and Julie is right, there is a certain distance and impartiality here that faciliates, or at least makes it easier to let down barriers. (dear godz don't let this be the last post on this thread - when will I ever learn to stop) - W!cKeD

LAST POST. - Meg vM

*plays taps* - DJF via twhirl

no but wait...you see the thing is...the dominant paradigm...what it all boils down to... - Julie Neff

I had a post ready overnight to re-fire this thread in case (hah) it didn't take off this morning, the gist of which was, "If lots of us are finding here, as Steve did, that some bit of our psyche suddenly has a room of its own now and is entertaining visitors, how much does this change the lay of the land too?" *Is* text-based conversational networking more world-changing, say, than emails, conference calls, and potluck dinners combined? (Might it be even bigger? Stirring an appetite that's been denied for 5,000 years may or may not be a small thing.) Or is it just more shiny new internet, a toy we'll grow out of? I'll say this, it's awfully infrastructure-dependent -- and Net Neutrality-dependent as well. - Mark Stiarwalt via fftogo

Mark's stuff always packs a punch. I've only got time for a short answer. I think it is game-changing for our time, just like usenets were in their heyday. More later. - W!cKeD

I see a feudal system emerging out of some of this, actually, speaking of infrastructure and neutrality. And yes my con't.. commenting on here is part of my staying active on compy until 4. - Julie Neff

can you expand on what you mean by a feudal system julie? - Eric Maynard

I gotta say 2 things first: I was on a heavy dope of Xanax, and this was a paranoid dystopian vision. We are the serfs - our content doesn't really belong to us here, it belongs to the company who provides the infrastructure and means of producing it. User-generated content is easy for companies to grab away, just as a lord would grab away like 80% of a serf's tillage just for the privilege of living on that land. The companies go under, the structures collapse, and where are we left? Again, it was more of a gut than an accurate analogy, but do you see what I mean? - Julie Neff

I'll go the paranoid dystopian biz one step further, and say that the one plot hole that's still bothered me from Little Brother is, why wouldn't a repressive government shut down a fully-encrypted ISP, in a heartbeat? Dial that back to the ongoing net neutrality battles -- yes even during and after an Obama administration -- and keep in mind that networked communities like this one are by definition, whether you realize it or not, "enemies of the state." Our corporate-guvmint combine has the means, motive and is itching for the opportunity to make what we're doing here more expensive, slower, and/or harder to access. We passed a milestone this last week -- we moved money around the country, in the decentralized, difficult-to-trace form of gift cards. Imagine thousands of networks like ours, moving around money, info, hope, and camaraderie independently of Big Media, Big Banking, etc. etc. -- and take time to wonder if Big Surveillance and allies haven't also taken note how this is now possible. - Mark Stiarwalt via fftogo

Even if Teh Boogieman is not out to get our sharing of hugs and gift cards -- and our outsourcing of our psyches -- we still stand to be collateral damage if we lose net neutrality and end up with an internet like this: http://i7.tinypic.com/5z6vt4n.... As Cory Doctorow and others have pointed out, we need alternative sources of bandwidth just like we need alternative sources of energy: http://www.boingboing.net/2008... They'd provide at least some of the antidote to the sort of serfdom Julie talked about. Izzat the sort of answer you wanted, Eric? - Mark Stiarwalt

I gootcha. I wasn't thinking on that high of a level, but I get the analogy. I haven't read Little Brother (wow! Cory has been prolific in the last couple of years), but I do recall that Liberation Spectrum left my mind whirling about just who really 'owns' the spectrum. I guess the SPs have a right to meter and assign a cost to the bandwidth, but if they seek to somehow meter the content as a by product, I think a 'revolt' is definitely in the works. - Eric Maynard

I think I need to get this thread its own domain. - Steve Lawson

That is so effing hilarious. Lurve it - W!cKeD

grandly funny - ♫baldgeekinmd♫

Context: The scene is from "Der Untergang" (translation is "The Downfall"), a film about Hitler's last days (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03...). I have a copy. It has been an entertaining meme for people to be creative with subtitles to this scene. Examples include Somebody Stole Hitlers Car (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...), Hitler has Vista Problems (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...), Hitler and the Superbowl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...), and Hitler Plans Burning Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...) - David Rothman (☤)

Almost makes it worth not knowing how to speak German. - Jere

I cannot "like" this enough. - Meg vM

I snorted! - MLx