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

Thu Jun 21 00:08:16 EDT 2007

Oh, sorry. Included both a posterity and "generations to come" in one line.
It's late...:-) .

Sarah Boyd
Columbus Public Library
Columbus, GA

On 6/21/07, sarah boyd <sarah.tennisfanatic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello, everybody
>
> This is my first time posting!  And I've followed this discussion with
> interest.  Microsoft and the British Library teamed in May to create an
> archive of British emails--called Email Britain.  The purpose is to save for
> posterity a "snapshot of British life" in emails "for generations to come."
> While email isn't social software, there is a great interest in recording
> these kinds of things.  Maybe in 100 years the "Who ate my muffin" email
> will be seen as quaint...
>
>
>  link to email Britain:   http://www.newhotmail.co.uk/emailbritain/
>
> Sarah Boyd
> Reference Dept
> Columbus Public Library
> Columbus, GA  31906
> <http://www.newhotmail.co.uk/emailbritain/>
>
>
> On 6/20/07, Rebecca Parker < RParker at groupwise.swin.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> >
> > Phone: +61 3 9214 4806
> > Email:   rparker at groupwise.swin.edu.au
> >
> >
> >
> > From:   "Dan Lester" <dan at riverofdata.com >
> > To:     <web4lib at webjunction.org>
> > Date:   21/06/2007 03:15 am
> > Subject:        [Web4lib] The end of MySpace, SecondLife, and Twitter
> >
> > and maybe Ning as well?
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2145408,00.asp
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm not quite as positive as the author is, but he's looking at it from
> > what I consider to be an appropriate view.
> >
> >
> >
> > dan, old enough to remember when "Push Technology" was the next big
> > thing.  It has been long enough I've forgotten the name of the desktop
> > app that everybody had to have....
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you;
> >
> > it's what you leave behind you when you go.
> >
> >
> >
> > dan at riverofdata.com
> >
> > Dan Lester, Boise, Idaho, USA
> > _______________________________________________
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