Stephen Fry: The internet and Me

Stephen Fry was talking technology on Radio 4 yesterday, and some of the highlights have been transcribed here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7926509.stm

Since Fry's probably more responsible than anyone else for taking Twitter over the tipping point and into the popular consciousness (in the UK at least), his views are worth having. Among his more piercing points, he talks of web snobbery, and in particular the platform migration of early adopters as the great unwashed swarm in (FB, is for example, now "low rent").

Interestingly, he defends txt spk, pointing out that when paper and ink were expensive in the 17/18C, words were at a premium: "letters were, as they say, crossed. You'd look at them writing horizontally and then there'd be vertical lines all the way down and round the margins. And 'your' is 'YR', you know just as it is in a text. It's exactly the same point - you're compressing." I might also say that compressed language allows quicker expression; literally less time for the word to get from the brain to the page, which helps keep the flow of thought. See also, Pepys' diaries written in shorthand - when the pen was the primary mode of inscription it was the cheapest and easiest way to get words out.

And here, on the metaphysics of presence, he talks of being able to have a proper conversation by email because all the bodily interaction is absent: "As I talk to you now, and as one talks, especially to strangers, all the terrible problems of class, differences in education, race and gender all have their part to play in the embarrassment of real life conversation, but the moment one's let loose with a keyboard or a pen you can express yourself properly." The writer A.S. Byatt made a similar point at the Digital Lives conference I attended last month. There she said that she preferred to give interviews via email, because there “you can have a real conversation.” All of which perhaps flies in the face of Dreyfus' worries about telepresence and the absence of bodies; maybe I need to read Derrida after all, which is something I'd been trying to avoid.

Later, a riposte to the dystopians: "I doubt you can find any sentence describing how human learning has degraded now that isn't congruent to a similar sentence written at the time of rise of the novel - about how people were no longer reading sermons and classical literature, but were reading novels from subscription libraries instead."

Good stuff.

Links, links, links

1. Another from AlertBox, this time tips on Blog Usability:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html

2. An article from the NY Times, 2002 "TECHNOLOGY; A Rift Among Bloggers" about the reaction of the "veteran" bloggers (Kottke et al) to the insurgence of "war bloggers". Kottke compares it to hating seeing your favourite band go overground (''It's like being the punk-rock fan who was into punk rock before everyone else") - a tone which certainly comes through in Blood's book (which I'm rereading - a posting on that to follow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/technology/10BLOG.html?ex=1024286400&en=e399bdc149d15532&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

3. An online article by psychologist John M. Grohol, entitled "Psychology of Blogs (Weblogs): Everything Old is New Again" - talks a little about the analogue, but not as useful as title suggests as he talks more about the similarities between blogs and online mailinglists than anything else. Also has links to other early articles about the psychology of blogging by the same author - not the most heavyweight of insights, useful though ...

http://psychcentral.com/blogs/blog_new.htm

4. An article by Travers, Uni. Washington, entitled "Blog Invasion! What Are They? Where Did They Come From?". A good source of references.

http://homepage.mac.com/dtraversscott/Academics/BlogHistory/index.html

5. Nielman Reports is a (student?) journal hosted at Harvard, looks like lots of articles about blogging as it relates to journalism:

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports.aspx

6. Article from Wired announcing the demise of the blog in the face of Twitter, FB, etc. So soon?!

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay

7. Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" 2008, figures and analysis:

http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

"Primates on Facebook" (Economist article, 26 Feb 09)

Just to archive this link: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176775

It's to an Economist article which quotes findings that although the average number of friends on FB is 120, the intimate circles of friends people are regularly, actively, in contact (Men=7, Women=10) is no bigger than pre-social-networking:

Quote: "people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever."

Social networking as social broadcasting...