It's Not Working: The Pitfall of Immediate Expectations

Social networking is an art. I'll say it again, social networking is an art, on par with the art of dinner conversation. Social media is not some magical Houdini, ready to find you a job at your earliest command. It's more like a marriage, where years of commitment and trust build the foundation for your relationship, but one night of unfaithfulness can bring it all tumbling down.

Developing your presence online is in effect marketing yourself to future employers (this is not news in our class). It takes years to build up a readership that respects and follows your comments and posts, but beware one mess up or poorly worded facebook status could leave a rather unfavorable but nevertheless indelible impression on a future colleague of your chosen industry.

I've learnt this from personal experience, after a few poorly chosen "facebook arguments". Arguments in general rarely produce anything substantive, since arguments usually involve 2 or more people already stubbornly set in their beliefs. Arguments online are downright useless, and yet it is so easy (almost like an online siren call) to get sucked into a political debate on your facebook status.

I've had some pretty ugly arguments online with other progressive activists online that I regret, largely because I either currently or will soon be working with them as a colleague. I've also had some amazing discussions and colleagues who have approached me in real life letting me know how much they love my updates and article links.

Botton line is, social networking is a tool, and you can use it to either cut the fruits off a tree or to cut your own hand.

Help This Kitty

There's a disease on campus, and it's spreading. It's spreading right now off campus and indeed throughout the world. Symptoms include wild outbursts of derision, thinly veiled hostility and refusal to acknowledge alternative viewpoints. What's the name of this diabolical disease you say? For lack of a better snarky name, I'm going to go with wiki-phobia.

Wiki-phobia (n)- The irrational hatred of wikipedia, as conveyed to your helpless students, while preaching the advantages of trekking to a library to discover facts out of a physically worn-out book written by a bunch of old white guys with a limited viewpoint of the world.

I'm no utopian, I am quite aware of the dangers of relying on just one source, including wikipedia. Why is it however, that we are willing to over-emphasize the flaws of new media approaches like that of wikipedia and not the flaws of old media.

Professors are losing a crucial opportunity to make their students aware of the flaws inherent in any form of human recording of the world around them and collective history. Instead, most professors' commentary on the subject of sourcing consists of: "Scholarly Sources Good! Wikipedia evil, bad, dogpoop!"

It's quite amusing really, seeing how full of themselves most of my professors seem to be. Forgive my use of language, but I've spent four years in an educational facility telling me that you cannot contribute to history if you don't have a degree. I'm a first generation American, 1st generation to graduate high school and 1st generation to attend college.

I didn't magically appear on campus one day. The skills I learned from my mother and grandmother got me to this point, and their knowledge and input about the world and history made it possible to be where I am today. If we're going to educate about being aware of your sources, then let's do it, but targeting one medium of knowledge is counter-productive to the goals of an educational institution.

What Motivates Productivity Online?

Response to "The Strange Beauty of Virtual Teams"

Online teams is a reality in my life, even outside of college. I intern at NARAL Pro-Choice America, and I'm working with 2 people in different time zones whom I've never met to put together a conference call for dozens of our affiliate organizations.

This is probably the highest form of online team work I've ever done. Our communication is solely through email and the occasional conference call. Frankly, I feel more responsible to people I haven't met than my best friend.

In fact, I work in a small department at my internship, and one of my colleagues who I work on projects for is based in Chicago. I've only met her once, and only for 5 minutes at that. Our relationship is kept up through email correspondence and GChat. Outside of the workplace, she frequently comments on my facebook page, which has developed kind of a a closer relationship with us, built on 5 minutes of real time and hours of online time together.

Of course I am much more productive with online teams at my internship than my school. Theoretically they are both the same, I am participating in both to further my career, but the different is in the short term I'm paying AU, but I'm being paid by NARAL. Being paid is a key reason for my quick correspondence online.

Perhaps It all comes back to the biggest motivators: Money and/or fame. Without those, would productivity (anywhere, let alone online with a team) exist?

Second Life Tea Parties

So I barely understand Second Life. I'm struggling enough as it is to get my character to have the right hair type. I mean seriously, how much harder could they make it? I was hoping for a user interface a little more similar to SIMS.

Naturally, this is as frustrated as I was when I first discovered blogging, or tweeting, or facebook. Now I'm obsessed with all three of those things. I feel over social networked. I love Second Life as a concept, but I feel overcommitted online. We all have to recognize our limits, but a program like SecondLife makes me wonder if I'm actually interacting with people or playing a game. Is there a distinction? The human race after all is a playful creature.

Anyway, I decided to look up some ideas about Second Life as a political tool. I don't feel like commenting about them, but I wanted to share them with you all because I found them enlightening. Thank you Institute for Politics, Democracy, & The Internet! :

Fewer logistical nightmares and more timely political events . – In Second Life, a laptop, a free hour or two, and an in-world venue quickly moves the event from conception to execution.

Shadow political parties and shadow conventions. – The official meetings and conventions of state or national political parties are often unwieldy beasts. We might see the official party organizations holding open meetings every so often in Second Life. Or, if they choose not to, we might witness activists organizing parallel meetings in the metaverse, where time is spent plotting the takeover of the official party apparatus.

Metaverse fundraising . – Not all too long ago, the cutting edge in raising money online was having a bat graphic that was colored in as the contribution dollars piled up. By doing away with many of the bonds of reality – time, space, physics, and (to some degree) social constraints – Second Life has blown the doors off of the old models of fundraising.

Reaching out to early adapters . – Second Life opens up a wide range of possibilities for the execution of political advertising. At the least, we might soon see political ad firms setting up shop in Second Life, running virtual galleries to display their wares.