lovehate: Social Network Porn

Hot on the heels of a Reuters story that speaks of pictures of women breastfeeding being censored from the site, several question have popped into my mind regarding the future of social networking as a part of life... okay, the title was a bit of tagline baiting.

Obvious question: If it was a man breastfeeding (or at least portraying the act of breastfeeding) would the reaction have been different? (All Family Guy fans, here's the clip you're looking for.)

If it is acceptable for a woman to breastfeed in public, how is not acceptable that an online social network of the same people cannot accept pictures of said act?

Second obvious question: Censorship concerns aside, why would anyone want to post a picture of themself breastfeeding?

The article quotes a FB rep who claims"the photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain." ...which users? Doesn't Facebook work on the premise that those who can see your pics should be friends or acquaintances? Why is a stranger trolling FB profiles for breastfeeders?

If social networks are to become the consolidated evolution of social intercourse in our society, then surely the gatekeepers of these networks should reflect the global views of the people that inhabit them and not the outraged complainers.

Third obvious question: Does this mean we're going to have a rash of women posting pictures of themselves breastfeeding to make a point?

Now don't get me wrong, I fully advocate a website's right to dictate terms of use. I just think a platform like Facebook, which claims such acts are necessary to "protect children", has done little to curb pictures and videos of people drinking, smoking, or pulling stunts which cause bodily harm. Aren't these practices potentially far more damaging to children than happening to see a nipple or two? Wasn't Facebook supposed to be doing a better job at keeping children off it's site where they may be subject to predators... especially the one's trolling for breastfeeding pics?

Fourth obvious question: Why should Facebook get to define obscenity?

Let's put our cards on the table. Facebook and other social networking platforms and sites want to move a large chunk of our social discourse and intercourse online, and, I'll admit, I've bought in. I tweet, facebook, myspace, plurk, friendfeed, and ping a-plenty. But we are coming to a crunch where the line will either be drawn or crossed as to the degree I can take such online exchanges. I would hope that all things that would be acceptable in my everyday life, between friends, families and acquaintances, would be fine in my online dialogues. I would hope that I wouldn't have to live in fear of a stalwart social networking site, on whim, pulling the plug on a tool I have now turned to in directing much of my communication. I don't want to think of how many old friends I follow solely on Facebook that would be lost if my account was ever pulled.

I don't like a website having that much power over my network. And while I fully admit that I am the one giving them the set up for such a fiasco to occur... isn't that their goal? Isn't the idea that Facebook can go to investors and sponsors and say we've got this demographic at this percentage, and they would leave us if Barack Obama told them to on Twitter? All it would take is the following checkbox beside a newly-uploaded pic: "If you think a child under 12 or their parent could be offended by this picture, please check this box and we'll ask any viewer to confirm age before looking." Let the users police themselves!

We are not idiots. We are not disrespectful. We are trying it your way, but with a user-generated monetization model you'd best listen to most of us and not just prudish porn miners.

Don't become like television networks that refuse to allow real language, situations, or views of the human body for fear of advertising revenues. Be the user experience we want and need you to be and we will follow you to the end of the web... or the year... or until you sellout... or until something better comes along - hey, we're nipple - I mean FICKLE!

FBBF

lovehate: The Church of Baudhism

The WEB is my shepherd; I shall not doubt.
It maketh me to dive into vast communities: it leadeth me to confide my thoughts.
It restoreth my soul: it leadeth me in the paths of hypertext for the clean code.
Yea, though I surf through the torrents and flashes with spyware, I will fear no evil: your apps are with me; the scan and the quarantine comfort me.
Thou preparest a browser before me to learn of the faceless: thou anointest my mind with wiki; my apprehension becomes understanding; 
Surely CPUs and broadband will follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell with the Web and the Network for ever.

- The Word of Baud

While some of you may be railing in sacriligious overtones of blasphemy and heresy, surely many of you must realize that the Web has become the one of the largest churches in the world. Hundreds of millions of us attend every day to read the good words of the preachers and prophets and skeptics and soothsayers all contributing to the word of Baud.

Baudhism's followers as of June 2008 total 1.46 billion people. While still behind the 1.9 billion Christians in the world, this easily overtakes all other major religions. I understand that most you are thinking that there is no way the Web could be considered a religion. I ask you to consider the following definition of religion from wikipedia.org:

"A religion is a of way of life based on tenets (or a belief system) about the ultimate power. It is generally expressed through conducts such as prayers, rituals, or other practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality (the cosmos, and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience."

The Web is a way of life for many people. It helps to define their existence. It facilitates communication. It sets the boundaries for what's considered sacred and profane within its own parameters. It provides, challenges, and allows for diverse beliefs all in one system. It accepts differences while galvanizing them all in two common frameworks: Web - the word, and Web2.0 - beyond the word. Such frameworks are subservient to the ultimate power: Network - which is, beyond the servers and the cable, the minds which make it up.

The beliefs are expressed through rituals and practices that gather up flocks by interest or history or geography. We script, we blog, we message, we update, we tweet, we read the good word of other people, we interpret and we believe. It seeks to explain the unexplainable. It seeks to define good and evil. It encourages creativity. It has zealots to be sure, but is fully accepting of those who just visit from time to time to make their contributions.

The Web defines us by defining our times and by seeking to redefine history. The winners may have written the history books, but the losers now have a voice of their own and a worldwide audience.

Lastly, people have faith in the web. That Wikipedia is taken as gospel and social networks have usurped traditional places of worship happened in no small part due to people believing in the general good of the Network.

It is said of religion that one only gets out of it what they're willing to put in. Such is the same with the Web. Our most passioned advocates are those acolytes who devote their lives to serving the Network to make the Web better. For them there is no greater reward than the work itself. I'm sure that less than a century ago, people would have considered it god-like for one person's thoughts to reach almost everyone in the world within seconds. And the Web makes this possible.

Baudhism does not disavow anyone for adhering to another belief system based on traditional mysticism. Baudhism embraces diversity, tolerance, individuality, creativity and participation. The Network shall allow access and allow inclusion, but not ensure popularity or status. As any religion, the Web can be used as a tool for such things, but these are not the ends of the Web in itself.

Embrace Baudhism. Identify yourself as a Baudhist on your next census. Celebrate holidays of any denomination because they allow people to stay home and spend more time with Web. Send greetings, send mail, chat, upload, download, interact. Become part of the trinity:

You belong to the Web.
The Web belongs to the Network. 
The Network belongs to you.

The Web

lovehate: how we hide

When Aaron Sorkin's oft-imitated Colonel Jessop storms "You can't handle the truth!", most of us sit in eager anticipation for Tom Cruise to work his manipulative magic and rip the truth from the smug colonel's countenance.

Some of the most common themes in literature arise around the tug of war topic between appearance and reality. Fiction, however, does not hold eminent domain over such a struggle. Most people spend their waking hours delving into all aspects of trying to hide reality from others and themselves while, at the same time, demanding transparency from everyone around them.

Whether it's the "flattering" clothes we choose, or the cosmetic alterations, or the airs of grandeur we adopt, we do our very best to conceal and hide what we consider a flawed reality from everyone else. We work to fulfill expectations that aren't our own by wearing certain styles. While most people admit a fondness for being able to lounge around in a t-shirt and sweats on a weekend, we are quite willing to adorn ourselves according to expectations. We will don the business suit and tie and carry the cow hide portfolio. We will gather around the water cooler or surreptitiously open chat windows to compare notes on the previous night's reality television escapades or try to derive gossip from who's spending too long in each other's office. We would be horrified to find ourselves on the speculative end of rumor, but are quite willing to exercise, with reckless abandon, character dissections of others based on the most miniscule tidbits of information. It's a small wonder we take such pains to hide in public.

We decorate our houses in the acceptable fashions, buying furniture endorsed by television homemakers if over 35 and Swedish box store consortia if under. We hang posters and prints and pictures and paintings to microcast the inner-workings of our sensitive minds to those that walk by and ponder. We allow clutter to happily gather around us for a week and will relish basking in its fort-like structures until an hour before company comes and it all must vanish in an effort to convince friends and acquaintances that we foster pristine, perfect living spaces. We have collections of place settings that remain in cloistered velvet-lined boxes or on display in glass-doored cabinets that we only use with a special brand of event or assembly. We spend hours, days and sometimes weeks on crafting our yards into elaborate Home and Garden pictorials in an effort to send a message. If the medium is the message, and our front lawns are the medium, we need to learn new languages.

We create online personas that seek to enhance our best qualities and obliterate our worst. We try to impart wisdom in 140 characters or less. We post links to oddly-interesting websites that we think other people will also like, but, more importantly, will create a perception of cutting-edge cool in whichever milieu we choose to categorize ourselves. We social network with people we met one night at a bar and will never see again. We've seen pictures of their family and friends in our feeds and, for the time being, seem to know more about them than some of our own family members. We reduce our 3D reality down to 2D profiles. We use Facebook as a verb. We twitter, plurk, friendfeed, ping, and google each other to derive snippets of information that will further feed our eternal quest to think we "know" about someone better that they think we do.

We speak less than honestly, but rarely completely dishonest. We know how to spin a message yet get infuriated upon discovering the media has. We want to divulge enough to stay relevant but not enough to make us obsolete. We obfuscate better than any press secretary. We politic better than any politician. We can manipulate as well as any cult leader, though sometimes our guilt gets in the way. We find ways to avoid conversations when the topic seems too tedious. We find ways to push conversations when our comfort zones allow for insight. We can cut to the quick to make a statement, to make a point, to make an enemy, to make an ally. We throw up shields. We duck and cover. We block emails, unlist our numbers, disassociate and move to new streets, cities and countries all in the effort to avoid truth.

Colonel Jessop was right. We can't handle the truth. Because while it sits out there like the Grail, the Fountain of Youth, or the Pot of Gold, the quest is always more important than the prize itself. What do you do when you find the Holy Grail? Have a pint?

thinglets: Amazonian Horrorshow

The TimesOnline in the UK has reported some practices of our beloved behemoth of online sales: Amazon. Apparently leading the charge in terms of web commercialism comes at the cost of human and workers' rights. And this is not in a developing country, but in England:

a) refusing to allow workers sick leave (six days sick leads to dismissal)

b) a compulsory 10.5 shift at the end of every work week

c) workers must hit 140 packages an hour to reach quota no matter the size

d) bonuses to workers over quota that come from workers who don't make quota

e) walking up to 14 miles/shift in the packing warehouse

f) one fifteen and one twenty minute break per 8 hour shift

"A spokesman for Amazon said anyone not willing to work “many hours” should not accept a job with the company. He confirmed workers would be penalised for being sick."

amazon

lovehate: Living in the Chrome Trench of the Browser War

So for the past two weeks I've been trying an experiment. And while I'm loathe to call anything I do shiny or sparkly, I suppose, in a very metaphorical way, both those words would apply. I've come to the realization that I'm slowly becoming a Google fanboy and, with this in mind, I have been exclusively using the Chrome browser for the past two weeks.

Let me lay a little browser history on you though. When I first started on the net, it was through BBS calls at all hours of the day and night. Such exchanges basically included forum posts back and forth between a small group who has been permitted access. Soon after (when the www became a reality) I moved to the Lynx browser which handled only text and was, at the time, the greatest tool I'd ever seen - I honestly didn't even know what a gopher was before Lynx. Browser reality changed forever with the onslaught of NCSA's Mosaic. Which allowed for graphical browsing for the first time and consolidated many of the existing internet protocols so almost all of them could be viewed in one web application... I can't believe that was only fifteen years ago. Mosaic gave way to Netscape and Netscape Gold, which I was a fond devotee of for at least a couple of years until one day I woke up and found myself an Internet Explorer disciple, unwavering and unflinching for many years.

Sometime last year, I finally made the Mozilla Firefox leap and was glad for having done so. IE was falling quickly falling too far behind the times. The add-ons and plug-ins opened up a new realm of browsing that seemed a natural evolution. But, like those of us that filled our early web pages with animated gifs and flashing text, I realized that, ultimately, the overbearing number of tweaks and add-ons to my Firefox experience was creating a garish experience. The browser was taking a minute to load with all of the plug-ins and the five homepage tabs. While I knew I could strip down the options within Firefox, my fanboy meter was piqued when Chrome was released a few months back.

So while I was still having fun with my two dozen Firefox add-ons, I made a conscious effort to pare down my browsing frills. I had dabbled a bit with Chrome and the speed was definitely impressive. Two weeks ago, I began an experiment that has led me to making Chrome my default browser with no desire to turn back.

The benefits are numerous: speed, integrated search/address bar, speed, more screen real estate for web pages, incognito browsing windows, and probably the most appropriate portal browser you'll be able to get for the ever-expanding Google Labs, Betas, and other Apps. Also, because it's my default browser, my computer now contains nostalgic remembrances of the electronic game Simon for every html icon. 

There are drawbacks as well. When one gets used to the multi-functionality of two dozen plugins like TwitterFox, Digg, weather reports, autoposting to various microblogs, the diversity of options can be infectious. I struggled for a couple of days trying to figure out how I could survive in Chrome without having to go back to Firefox all the time... such an examination, however, yielded serendipitous results in may cases.

I immediately downloaded Tweetdeck after months of convincing myself I didn't really need it with a plugin like TwitterFox. Now Tweetdeck has a permanent home on my screen real estate. I discovered I really didn't miss Digg pop-ups every 5 minutes and that my ability to one-click post to Pownce was... well, poor Pownce - we hardly knew ye. I found the Google Application Shortcuts were a great way to always have my calendar available in an instant and that I could make almost any page into it's own browser app.

All in all, I'm quite satisfied that this Chrome conversion will have some life to it. I'll admit, there still are some bugs to be worked out in terms of some page that just don't seem to want to render smoothly every time, but those are few and far between. I'm hoping that when the onslaught of Chrome add-ons hits over the next few months, I will have the tempered resolve to not go too crazy and only pick what I need.

I don't do product reviews on lovehatethings in the traditional sense. I've maintained that short of a willingness to love or hate something, I will reserve judgment until further review. I don't do stars or thumbs ups or "out of 10s". So when I say I've put Firefox aside for the time being, I don't want to imply I hate it. I still love Firefox. I just love Chrome a little bit more... but I'm fickle - blow me away Flock!

chrome

lovehate: mashups and the artistic process

toiletblendercup

I have always been an advocate of the idea that art did not matter as much as the artistic process. I believed that while it was almost impossible to determine the difference between art and craft, the realization of the difference could become clear by understanding the process that went into creation. After all, how is that some people could claim that the ready-made movement of the early twentieth century was art when the process was perceived to be simply dumping a toilet bowl in an art gallery... pardon the vulgar double entendre. That the interpretation of a toilet bowl in a gallery could be scoffed at by some as meaningless and some as brilliant, by some as a waste of time and others as a masterpiece, shows the true subjectivity of the qualification of "art".

I maintain that the "art" in any piece is the direct result of the process which results in a work's existence in a specific time and place. I cannot agree that a Crane 31138 Economiser Bigfoot is a piece of art when it comes off the line although the design contains artistic elements. I have to deny the "art" qualifier on this piece not because of the way it looks, but because, in the same way I'm ready to accept a building or bridge as "artistic" but not "art", the form is encumbered by function. If the bridge or toilet designer was allowed to create without concern for function, I would be fully willing to accept a fire hydrant or a blender as a masterpiece. This said, the artistic process that places a coffee cup inside a blender that's mounted on top of a recliner, has the potential to be, in some people's minds, a masterpiece, but, in my mind (at the very least) art.

And I raise this aesthetic qualifier to do one thing: ponder how technology and the net is facilitating and encumbering the artistic process, art, and the artist.

The artistic process has been consumed by the mashup. Similar to a DJ taking samples and remixing them into a new piece, web wanderers have  become quite adept at meshing multimedia into bold statements or time wasters. The artistic process is still intact however. Whether it's a toilet in the 30s or a slideshow of pics from various Flickr accounts, the process to create something new from the sum of its component parts remains a valid exercise. Again though, the question of functionality creeps in.

The result of a creative process may not be art at all, because, indeed, that creativity may lie more in craft than in art. If someone creates a pimped out new banner for a website, I can't buy it as art because the primary function precedes the form for its own sake. And let's not pretend I'm holding up art as a paragon of achievement and dismissing craft somehow. A four year-old's fingerpainting may be truer to this definition of art than a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, but I'll take the crafty car over the arty attempt. The final product of the mashup may have indeed gone through the process, but unlike the toilet, blender and coffee cup that I can buy, own, and reuse at will, almost everything that a creator has access to on the net is non-transferable. My concept of art, as a product, is that there must be an intrinsic sense of ownership on the part of the creator - not of just the process, but the result itself. While the net, with its worlds of content, inspires imagination and possibilities, the resulting mashup product can rarely, if ever, be called art.

And while generations of young and old minds are inspired to craft new works and enter into processes that verge on the artistic, there will have to be a concerted effort to move the truly gifted from a satisfaction with mashups that are never completely original to new and vital artistic works. Let's allow the net to inspire and motivate, but push beyond thematic assembly to free creation for the work's own sake.