IRC
seeing irc in class on thursday brought back memories of middle school for me. both the large number of participants in the porn and warez channels and the hierarchy of users gave my an internal chuckle. i remember downloading software, mp3s, etc and having random conversations with strangers to pass the hours. it was a good time to explore. tinkering with different scripts and learning how the communities worked was fun and admittedly dorky for me.
today i installed ircle 3.1.2 and joined undernet for the first time in maybe 10 years. i feel old. so to report, i have very little response so far. i tried to share my kidnapping story in two semi-popular channels:
#ChitChat: mrbenjamin MaKeR MoonLight Taline Sami DarkNight mushrOOm evilmaker SuperWoman Chipsy TheJustice Disaster @X @NoobSaibot Gandulf Magician Daniella EvilGirl Super^Girl LadyWolf Queens SweetRose DraCkuLa FireDragon @Lawrence22 WereWolf +Salubri
*** End of /NAMES list.
*** Channel Mode is +tnl 29
*** Channel created at Saturday, February 16, 2008 12:57:32 PM
mrbenjamin: hey all
mrbenjamin: anyone have a good story to share?
*** Signoff: MoonLight (Ping timeout)
*** MoonLight (law@Fatal.Buffer.0verflow.inf0.ws) has joined channel #ChitChat
#blackjack: mrbenjamin @Lacccc @___CKERS_ @Saten @Nocc @SC0OTER @Akcent @CRACKERS_ @EDD @Spot @Procesing @Synopsis @Haos @Lac @Pois0n @Dune @Akamai @Iupi @CRACKERS @Claumed @Monki @Monte_ @Diabolica @Polar @Orbit
*** End of /NAMES list.
*** Channel Mode is +tnl 33
*** Channel created at Friday, September 5, 2008 4:26:25 PM
mrbenjamin: anyone interested in hearing a relatively random story? kidnapping, extortion attempt, black jack…?
either people weren’t interested, simply idle, or there’s some other issue. i’ll try again maybe tomorrow, and see what happens. also, i wonder if having the application installed on my machine will be motivation enough to get back into any kind of regular irc usage.
. . . 3 days later, i’m not motivated to log back on and tell my story to anonymous irc users. i’m thinking that the number of friends and acquaintances that one can make during the latter teen years and early 20’s, sortof eliminates a desire (at least mine) to connect with any of the listed groups. i keep forgetting to check out this site mentioned in clay’s book called meetup. apparently it has been thriving for some time. not the same as chatting, but the face-to-face component of the groups or communities seems like it would be more attractive for sharing a good story.
Here Comes Everybody
the other piece of our assignment was to read chapter 4 of clay shirky’s book – here comes everybody. i read the whole book last week, since i noticed it was required for first years. it was a good return to itp primer… really got my brain waves moving. i’ll need to go back to chapter 4 and blog a bit more. that’s all for now.
. . . 3 days later, I remember – “publish, then filter.” (81-108)
some key ideas in the chapter:
- it is a mistake to think that everyone blogging or similar is broadcasting to the world.
- 1-1, 1-many, many-many relationships.
- fame is when incoming messages are too many to realistically have an outbound response.
- relationship between intuitive and familiar.
- “by lowering transaction costs, social tools provide communities of practice.” latent communities.
- motivations of love and money are turned upside down.
- progression of technology-> introduction, normal, ubiquitous, invisible
- now users are potential creators AND consumers.
- consumer as a temporary behavior versus permanent identity
to relate this information to my world, i started to think about facebook, flickr, blogging, inviting itp list readers to join me in the park. much of what write or post online is for personal record and practicality for school assignments, but one has to think about which elements should or could be seen and decide whether or not to leave the “window” open for anyone, or to add privacy. for example, would the content stir any emotions? put someone at a disadvantage? we need to be aware of the potential consequences and/or the potential value of what we choose to release or share. regarding my posting to the list about the day, the context from my perspective would be that most list followers (a population of ~200) would read the email, but few would respond, and that’s perfectly fine. i could have also decided to specify precise activities, but left the day open and mainly wrote with the intention of creating social possibilities.