[Web4lib] The end of MySpace, SecondLife, and Twitter

[Robert L. Balliot]

Greetings,

I think that Rebecca makes some excellent points. Her
comments are certainly aligned with the past and hopefully
the future directions of librarianship.  I have been
studying social networks for only a short time, but I believe
we are only just beginning to understand their ramifications.

I believe that Second Life is an extraordinary accomplishment
in virtual interaction. Bravo to Linden Labs!

Recently, I attended a class in
SL where the presenter from Oxford discussed a paper he
had submitted to the National Academy of Sciences on
virtual reality.  About forty avatars were in attendance
from around the world. The virtual classroom fed
audio from the speaker and provided handouts and visuals 
on virtual screens. 

Any of the people/avatars in attendance could interact
privately with any of the other attendees using IM and
the entire presentation was also provided in chat. How
else could you go about creating the same presentation without
spending huge amounts of money to transport and coordinate
people?  The possibilities for education are enormous.

All of the processes will continue to develop and 
evolve.  What an interesting time that we live in to
be able to share our thoughts and worlds virtually.
How will all of this affect that way that we think and
interact?  Will we become more isolated in the real
world or will virtual help us to overcome barriers and
develop better social skills?

*************************************************
Robert L. Balliot
1-401-421-5763
Skype: RBalliot
Bristol, Rhode Island
http://oceanstatelibrarian.com/contact.htm
*************************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Parker
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:20 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] The end of MySpace, SecondLife, and Twitter

Hi list members,

I always follow the conversations on this list with interest, but as I
finished my Masters in Information Management (Library and Information
Studies) last week, I finally consider myself qualified to make my first
post!

I'm the first to admit that I'm not as sold on the validity of online
social networks as many in this group. I don't have a Second Life
avatar, I've never used Twitter or MySpace, and I only use Facebook to
keep up with truant friends overseas. Yet the Lance Ulanoff article was
so trashy and arrogant that even I objected to it! However, I think he
actually gave us some scope for intelligent discussion, (mostly
unintentionally I suspect). The link to John C Dvorak's column
(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2141525,00.asp) in particular
provides us with a topic for real scholarly debate, both on this list
and outside it.

Dvorak suggests that we consider archiving Twitter conversations for
future access. This is a notion that clearly exposes him to ridicule
(especially from Ulanoff), but while no one disputes the content of
Twitter conversations is ephemeral, immature, banal, and often downright
silly, Twitter might just prove to be a powerful means of recording
social history.

Dvorak argues that we would be very excited to discover conversations
between ordinary, everyday people from the past (his example is of
teenage girls chatting in 1907). I know I would be thrilled by that
opportunity; as a former student of history, it was always the
day-to-day experiences of people like us that fascinated me most, rather
than the battles fought by well-known public figures. The persistent
sale of biographies, memoirs and diaries of both famous and unknown
people suggests that I'm not alone. We continue to be interested in our
past and (attempt to) use our understanding of where we come from to
help interpret and design our future; the mere fact that we fail, and
regularly make the same mistakes over and over again, cements the
importance of the continued archiving and preservation of our history,
recording both the dynamic successes and the dismal failures. Future
generations should be afforded access to the same knowledge that has
made us who we are today, even if, like us, they don't know how to use
it.

Digital preservation is a complex process, not least because of the
never-ending problem of format obsolescence. The climate of cyclic
destruction perpetuated by the Web, where content is destroyed or
replaced regularly without a single thought for preservation, is our
constant enemy. Yet the biggest difficulty of all is not knowing what to
preserve, because we don't know what future generations will want from
us. We can't archive everything (we just don't have the means, or
especially the funding, for that), so we need to make educated guesses
about what will be interesting or valuable to our descendants. Our
Twitter conversations could be useful both for ordinary people as a
means of entertainment, and for academics as the basis for scholarship.
If future generations might potentially study linguistic patterns, the
history of technology, education/intellect and social climate all from
an archive of inane teenage prattle, why shouldn't we make it available
to them, even if it seems absurd to us?

Hope this provokes some discussion.

Kind regards
Rebecca

---------------------------------------------
Rebecca Parker
 
Digital Repository Content Manager
Swinburne University of Technology
John Street, Hawthorn VIC 3122