|
Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Spokane Public Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In
computer news this week 05/30
/2012 Book Review
- Digital Vertigo Andrew Keen is a British-American technology writer who writes
books about the Internet. His previous book was The Cult of the Amateur,
which I have reviewed on Raw Bytes previously. The
theme was that the internet threatens our
values, our economy, and our American way of life, with its blurring,
obfuscation, and even disappearance of truth. In his new book “Digital Vertigo” he takes on social
networks and networking. He starts off
with a definition of the term HYPERVISIBILITY - We
would have lived our lives differently if we had known one day they would be
searchable. And of course with the concept of social networking
– your life will be completely searchable from womb to tomb. I realize this as I have created a youtube site of
videos of my Grandchildren primarily for family and friends to view, but I
realize this makes their lives also searchable from birth. Keens states: I was in a place called social
media - Facebook, Twitter, Google +, that permanent self- exhibition zone of
our new digital age where, via my BlackBerry Bold and the other more than 5
billion devices now in our hands, we
are collectively publishing mankind’s group portrait in motion. Rather than
a virtual or second life, social media
is actually becoming life itself— the central and increasingly
transparent stage of human existence, what Silicon Valley venture capitalists
are now calling an “internet of people.” He likens Facebook Social Networking to the hippie Peace and love movement of the
1960’s, Social Networking as the new electronic online Hippie Commune,
where everyone shares everything and everything about themselves. “Social
media is the confessional novel that we are not only all writing but also
collectively publishing for everyone else to read.” As we all think
back to our high school and college days, our first introduction to mass
sociality, everyone wants to be popular.
And many people pursue this and have hundreds of friends and contacts
online. But over the years as we get older, perhaps we all realize that
true friends are few and hard to find, and it’s nice to spend
meaningful time with a few good friends, rather than shallow social time with
a lot of acquaintances. We seek privacy
and quiet and solitude, and have grown out of the wild college beer bashes. Keen points
out that you can be trapped in social networking, until you have no privacy
or life of your own. Social
networking is where you go to reveal everything about yourselves, But What
If There Are No Secrets? Keen argues that the social media transformation is weakening,
disorienting and dividing us rather than establishing the dawn of a new
egalitarian and communal age. The
tragic paradox of life in the social media age is the incompatibility between
our internet longings for community and friendship and our equally powerful
desire for online individual freedom. By exposing the shallow core of social networks, Keen shows us
that the more electronically connected we
become, the lonelier and less powerful we seem to be. Digital
Vertigo by Andrew Keen, a thought provoking insight into the downside of social
networking, available online at Amazon
and in brick&mortar bookstores. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2012 MTA Micro Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbxmenu.html (509)624-7230 |
|
|
|
|