Here is an interesting link and useful guide to using social networking sites like Facebook. It includes warnings of some of the dangers and how to avoid them.
One of the problems with Facebook (and many other social networking services), as the link points out, is that it has inadequate categorisations of degrees and kinds of friendship. It askis you to say how you know the person you link to, and I find that most often the answer is “none of the above”.
It should distinguish between close family, extended family, close friends, old friends, colleagues, acquantances, people you do do business with (clients, customers), people in a particular field of expertise and so on. But it doesn’t, and nor do most of the others.
I’m not as paranoid about privacy as the author of the article. There are times when I’d like to keep in touch with or reestablish contact with old friends and social networking sites can make it possible for them to find one.
One of the better social networking sites is Tribe.net, and yes, you can find me and my blogs there.
I’m not impressed with MySpace, despite its popularity. It’s clunky, difficult to navigate, and not much use unless you are looking for people who like the same kind of music. I registered there when Yahoo “lost” my Geocities web pages for two months (and they still haven’t “found” my Yahoo 360 pages, which they lost a couple of months later). It was after that that I seriously began trying some of the others.
If you’re looking for old friends, though, or want to find out if old friends are looking for you, one of the better sites is http://who-me.com
4 Comments
15 March 2007 at 9:54 am
Steve
I’m really fascinated by the way in which current online life has affected and contributed to community at large.
If you are an active seeker of community, such as I am, thyen you are sensitive to what constitutes authentic and false community.
Some areas in which I have grown in conviction are
1. G-d is a conversation, so any attempts to know G-d must be interactive. Blogs are a positive way of doing G-d.
2. Creativity in digital culture is maturing, so our endeavors to deepen community must take cognisance of digital creativity.
3. The definition of belonging is no longer limited to the geographical. My closest soul mate is in the UK, for example.
How is your sense of community affected by your online presence?
20 March 2007 at 11:38 am
Nic,
I’ve been communicating on line for nearly 20 years, beginning with local BBSs, then BBS networks. As soon as they became available, it struck me that they had enormous potential. Groups like churches spent enormous amounts of money ferrying people to face-to-face meetings, with great travel and accommodation costs. It struck me that BBS networks could make face-to-face meetings much more effective by preparing for the meetings with electronic discussions, and similarly with follow-u[p afterwards — it would enable those who were at the meeting to keep in contact. But nobody ever did make use of it.
Even today, when far more people have modems or some sort of Internet connection, it is just as difficult to get them to use it. I was at a church history conference in Rome in 2002: “Rescuing the memories of our people”. Everyone promised to keep in touch, and especially the people from Africa. But most of them never have. There has been no follow-up — just an overseas junket with nothing useful accomplished.
More recently SAFCEI, the South African Faith Communities Environmental Institute, held its AGM. At a planning meeting in October I suggested they start a mailing list (eg at YahooGroups which is free) so people could prepare by discussing their concerns and things that might come up, but nobody responded. Well, the Organising Secretary ressponded to say that he didn’t want any more mail in his inbox. If he’s so uninterested in communicating with members, there’s no reason why I should want to continue to belong to the organisation. As a result I never attended the AGM. I saw no point in travelling to the Cape to go to a meeting cold, with no build up. Even a web community, such was http://www.tribe.net, could have provided some point for contact or discussion and dissemination of information.
We have a marvellous tool for communication, yet few are prepared to use it.
20 March 2007 at 1:22 pm
I’ve always been a technical sceptic, and perhaps remain so, because of the inherant virtualisation risk involved. But this virtualisation is not new – TV is perhaps the most virtualising technology to date, and because it is more or less read only, it is far worse a risk than the blogosphere or read-write web.
However, I am aware of a very basic shift in the way we are as humans. Or maybe its just a shift in my perceptions. I said that G-d is a conversation. If this is true, why do we worship G-d via read-only means? Surely these wineskins are not up to the job? It only makes sense if G-d is a military man, or a dictator, to keep things one-way.
This shift for me means that I now seek to worship in a very different way than before. I see some virtue in the charasmatic church as it has taken into its practice the potential for G-d to speak personally and spontaeneously. However other aspects of its practice are totally outmoded, such as high emphasis on sermons, wordage, top-down management approches, and a low regard for creativity and contemplation.
How does the Orthodox Church fare? Is it Greek, Russian or Serbian? How long is your beard?
21 March 2007 at 10:15 am
While Protestant worship tends to be word only, Orthodox worship tends to be McLuhanesque, with an all-at-onceness about it. You see, touch, taste, smell as well as hearing, and in the first week of Lent you feel forgiveness in your things.