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Things connecting people
Archive for Systems Theory
August 11, 2008 at 3:14 am · Filed under Litterature, Systems Theory
I recently stayed in New York City for a ten day vacation. I really enjoyed it. But why? I repeatedly caught myself observing that it was “just like in the movies and on TV”. When something did not corrospond with the image I had from the media it “Wasn’t really New York’ though obviously is was. This made me think of Jean Beaudrillard’s book ‘America‘ compiling travel notes from trips to USA. The book reflects on America from a European point of view, and is in essence subjective, but it offers some really interesting insights for any first-time visitor to America. Among other thought provoking statements Beaudrillard concludes that for an outsider whose main impression of American reality is constructed through the media, Disney World is the most ‘real’ place in America. Read it and wonder.
Everywhere I went I was met with unparralleled service and professional hospitality from the ‘ticket queue’ security check at JFK to the Lyic Diner at east 23rd street end 3rd avenue where I had several of my breakfasts. I caught myself choosing music venues, resturants, parks and sights after how ‘typically New York’ they were - how ‘real’. This was, of cause, staged. Everything was service, and I don’t think i saw a single business that wasn’t in some way providing service or trading shares in companies in the service industry. I even leaned that the old New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn where they used to biuld battle ships and air craft carriers was converted into movie studios and a plant that produces Sweet n’ Low (artificial sweetener you put in coffee and tea in restaurants and cafés).
Seing New York (Which is, I was told by a native waiting in queue for the men’s room at the Lincoln Center, not a part of USA but rather an international zone) as a tourist made me want to come back and find the REAL America. Is everything service and setting or is there more? Is it real and to whom, or is Jean Beaudrillard right when he classifies USA as a theme park? I intend to find out.
November 19, 2007 at 1:05 pm · Filed under Network analysis, New media, Systems Theory
After an irresistible surge of peer pressure I finally gave in and created a facebook profile this weekend. My initial resentment towards putting too much energy into maintaining yet another web 2.0 profile was spawned by the seeming lack of a shared theme or, in the parlour of computer science, a shared object like music on mySpace.com, communication on kommunikationsforum.dk or growing up rural on bondeknold.com. Normally I would expect every self-organizing web community to be exclusively differentiated and organized around a relatively narrow thematic code, but facebook doesn’t seem to work that way. Or does it?
Where other 2.0 apps organize around differentated themes, they don’t show off the users’ social capital to users that are not a part of your immidiate network. An intriguing paper in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication by Nicole Ellison et al. show that there is a connection between facebook use and social capital among students at the Michigan State University. Ellison’s study reveals a crucial clue to understanding what facebook does for me: it shows off my social capital (friendly connections) to a wide audience.
Facebook is to social capital what bling is to money. In stead of showing off your riches, it shows off how well connected you are. They even made little accessory apps to put on your profile to add a little extra ice. My favorite is called the ‘Friend Wheel‘ and it shows acircular ego network model as proposed by Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz in Watts’ now infamous book ‘Six Degrees - The Science of a Connected Age‘. Here is my current friend wheel bling:
Blue: People I grew up with
Turquoise: High School friends
Green University alumni
Yellow: Work colleagues
Red: Miscellaneous aquantances
Your friends are iced out bling and chrome rims on a big ass SUV!
