hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
2010,
11:51 GMT
Why Peep Trumps Privacy
Posted by: Hal
Hey everyone, here’s a short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why, despite all the warnings about privacy online, we just can’t bring ourselves to care nearly as much as we should.
A taste: “Oh but haven’t recent polls demonstrated that we are more concerned than ever about our privacy online? Sure they have. But they have also shown that our concern doesn’t actually translate into action. We may tell pollsters we are concerned about our privacy, but we don’t actually do much about it. Surprisingly few of us can actually be bothered to adjust the privacy settings available to us. (A Pew Research Study put the number of us who change Facebook privacy settings in the 25 percent to 44 percent range, which is to say that not even half of us are motivated to protect our most intimate details by taking five minutes to click a few buttons.)”
Read in full:
2010,
14:20 GMT
Death on Facebook
Posted by: Hal
Here’s an article in the New York Times about how Facebook is struggling to deal with the pages of deceased. They used to delete them. Now family or friends can request to have the page turned into a memorial, frozen in time save for the comments that those who have already been accepted as ‘friends’ can continue to post.
The assumption from Facebook (not questioned by the Times) is that this problem can be solved through technology – we just need better algorithms more capable of determining when someone has died so that their page can be then locked down with all necessary sensitivity.
But our widespread embrace of Peep Culture suggests that we might want something else: new ways to continue living on through social media after our deaths. Why should the dead not be allowed to have any new ‘friends’ (when, after all, those friends are entirely virtual and illusory anyway?). Why can’t the dead decline to attend events, leave comments on other people’s pages, etc. etc. Why shouldn’t the dead continue to discuss their own wants and needs?
Perhaps in the future we will pay people to continue to maintain our various profiles and blogs after we are gone? (In the Jewish tradition, it is not uncommon to hire a Yeshiva student to say the required daily prayers Jewish law requires be said for the dead.) I know, I know, this is getting pretty weird. Nonetheless, the dead have more in common than the living when it comes to their online presence. The dead are disembodied, the dead are virtual, the dead exist only in the bits and bytes of our imaginations. And the dead, like our Facebook profiles, live on forever, long after we are gone.
2010,
0:32 GMT
Peep Diaries in the London Review of Books
Posted by: Hal
The Peep Diaries is described as a “bracingly informal book” in a 5 book essay/review that appeared in the recent issue of the London Review of Books. Check out the whole piece here. The other books discussed are
The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich
The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future by Craig Watkins
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin
The Tyranny of Email: The Four Thousand Year Journey to your Inbox by John Freeman
2010,
20:48 GMT
Debating Reality TV on TV Ontario
Posted by: Hal
Last week I was on a long panel discussion about the impact of Reality TV on culture and society. A lot of interesting points were made. You can watch the whole thing here.
2010,
18:08 GMT
My Reaction to Reaction Videos Article in Washington Post
Posted by: Hal
Actually the headline should read: My reaction to the Reaction Videos article in the Washington Post that quotes my reaction to Reaction Videos. Got that?
Well, it doesn’t really matter. Check out the article, the piece does a nice job with the whole reaction video phenomenon. My take on it gets mocked (see the end of the piece), but I probably deserve it.
The Bloggist
Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
New content on the Broken Pencil website! Short fiction: Shack the Clam Girl + How to Make Your Own Game Cabinet http://bit.ly/b6CHLP
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