Is Web 2.0 Turning Us All Into Robots or: How I Learned To Swallow The Pill And Let The Web Follow My Every Step

I was intrigued by a statement at the very beginning of the Gleave et al article that stated, “Social life has moved online. From discussion boards, to wikis, to social networking sites, people do things together through digital communication. Those interactions leave behind complex records of who did what, when, under what context, and with whom. In other words, the interaction order is now electrified and self-documenting (1).”

This “self-documenting” environment that we now find ourselves in has many interesting facets and I have been slowing evaluating them to find out if I am a fan or not. The amount of peripheral knowledge we now have about ourselves is massive. For example I could tell you the exact time and date of the last 8,613 songs I have listened to in my digital music collection. I could even list them all in order from most resent, which was about 10 minutes ago, to the oldest, which was on August 1^st 2009 at 5:18 pm. 

As our daily lives are being merged with electronic media a digital residue is being left behind. We must ask ourselves what we are going to do with all of this peripheral information about ourselves.

Websites like Amazon and Netflix have already shown how this can be useful information. Have you ever watched a movie or bought a CD because your computer told you too? I sure have. Netflix will say, “You have seen these movies and based on the viewing habits of the entire Netflix community you will probably like these other movies.” Amazon has a similar practice where they will auto suggest items for you to view based on what you have looked at and what other people have bought.

Facebook has the potential of working in a similar way. This is especially true of the way it was originally developed with finite communities. Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe stated, “Our participants overwhelmingly used Facebook to keep in touch with old friends and to maintain or intensify relationships characterized by some form of offline connection such as dormitory proximity or a shared class (1162).” For instance, joining a group on Facebook adds information to your profile that potentially make it more easy to be found. This happened more often on MySpace for me personally. Once I listed my High School and graduation year onto my profile I began to get friend requests from people I had not heard from in years.

But you all know this already! I’m not presenting any unique perspective that we don’t already encounter on a daily basis.

This week I chose to take this digital residue self-documenting idea a step further. I joined two SNSs that are specifically designed to let others (your friends or the general public) know where you are or where you have been. The two SNSs I used were Foursquare and Yelp. These are both SNSs that I only know about based on other people’s experience but have never used them myself. Both of these sites use geo-tagging to let people either know who is currently at a location or who has been there before. Though out the week I checked myself into as many places as I could remember to see if either my social interaction could be improved by logging where I have been or to see if I could find out information about the places I have been that I previously did not know. I also wanted to see if the social capitol gained in using these SNSs led to any better or different social interactions.

Both of these SNSs can interface with Twitter and Facebook and help me quickly find friends who use these sites. Yelp was much better at this then Foursquare. At the end of my first day of using Yelp I already had accumulated five friends (all people I know in real life) while after using Foursquare for a week I still have yet to gain any friends.

Both of these sites use badges to communicate my activity with other users. What this means is that the person who checks in the most at a particular location will either become the Duke (Yelp) or the Mayor (Foursquare). Once you achieve this rank your picture will be seen by anyone who checks into the location. Personally, I did not find this aspect to be the best part of these SNSs. The most useful feature is that on both of the websites users can leave tips based on their experience. This is where I was able to connect with users the most, though in a very static non-personal way.

 

These are both tips left concerning Hamilton library. Through some of the info seems humorous to those of us that might be in the library 2 or 3 times a week it would be useful information for those who might be visiting for the first time.

I particularly enjoyed the following screen concerning Hamilton Library which I found on Yelp:

This aspect of these SNSs got me thinking about the statement in Allen, Colombo and Whitaker that said, “Individuals restrict interaction to those with similar identity, periodically mutating their identity and copying the behaviors (neighbors and strategy) of those receiving higher payoffs. The result is that an incentive structure emerges where free-riders become isolated (2).” As a new user I did not feel compelled to become the next Duke/Mayor even though the site was encouraging me to do so.

You can see in the image on the left that I am 6 days away from becoming a Mayor.

Also, I was not all that interested in connecting with people who I did not already have an off line connection with. These sites could have become more dynamically layered if these two aspects were important to me. As a newcomer to the site I did not feel like I was at a distance for those who had been using the site for a while. I did not feel hindered or restricted in any way when adding new information to the sites.

Most people are familiar with Yelp as a review resource for things around town but adding a geo-tagging aspect to the site made it a much more interactive experience. With this being said, the beauty of using these two sites together was the way they interacted with each other’s strengths. My experience and opinion is that I would be more likely to choose a restaurant to eat at based on information on Yelp. I could then use Foursquare to figure out what specifically on that restaurant’s menu I would want to eat.

These SNSs are perfect examples of Williams’ statement, “Socializing online can never compensate for lost socializing offline…the online world is a site for social activity, both original and extended from offline life (596).” Neither of these sites would exsit without people wanting to log their offline life in an online format. It seems increasingly evident to me that my online status is 100% dependent to my off line activity. Having a way to keep track of what I have done in the past through an online means seems to have increasing potential. Though the trust issue is the hurdle we must get past. Never did I feel comfortable to check in to my own home but I did check into a public park after dark. When information is made public there is always a chance that it could be used in an unwanted way. There are probably things I do that I would not necessarily want or need everyone knowing (for example when I checked into Costco).

Gleave et al states, “As more of the social world becomes essentially self-documenting, social roles will increasingly be observable as a function of both social positions, as with early block modeling efforts, and content analysis and ethnographic methods (9).” The social capitol on both of the SNSs I joined this week are more or less defined by individual users. The models proposed by Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe carry over as most of the interaction takes place off line. As the self-documenting aspects of these websites leave behind information about ourselves and our friends, patters can emerge and information can be gleaned. I would be curious if the next step for these websites is to create an option to auto suggest places for us to visit. A button on Foursquare or Yelp that will suggest a place for me to eat based on my past experiences and reviews plus my current location could create accurate suggestions.

Both of these SNSs could be improved by incorporating either more social capital by making it easier for  newcomers to gain badges or by diversifying the badges. Below are the first badges I earned on the respective sites.

 

I was particularly surprised when I checked into the library four times in four days and did not receive a badge for it. 

The sites would also be more enjoyable if more of my friends on Oahu were connected with me. I can see where all of my friends have checked in but when they are all in Seattle it does not do much good for me while I am here on Oahu.

I titled this blog is web 2.0 turning us all into robots because as we are self-documenting information more potential is created to find things we may enjoy. We can also quickly communicate with friends what we have been up to. Yet with all this being said I must ask if we really want our computers understanding our sub-conscience better then we ourselves do.

Final Project Idea:

I have been wanting to look into the potential of social tagging on library OPACs. Could user generated lists based on particular communities (i.e. a college course) help students find highly relevant resources? What would the role of librarians be in helping to maintaining the quality of these lists and social tags?

Update (3/1):

Another project idea: I would like to explore the impact/potential of the externalization of our personalities and the humanization of technology. What I would like to look at is the interaction between the real self and digital self and how the two communicate with each other and other's real/digital selves. This study would include looking into geo-note taking and real time location sharing and how our digital selves and communicate with each other and inform us of what friends in our proximity are doing as well as recalling past experiences that are location specific. I know this is a super abstract idea so I am looking forward to some dialogue. My inspiration: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/i-cyborg/Content?oid=3544597