A close friend of mine recently got married and moved to Toronto where his wife’s family lives. When he lived in New York, he and I used to get together when we could but we were both very busy and at times didn’t talk to or see each other for a couple months at a time. This was all fine and good because when we did see each other, we acted as friends who speak to each other all the time. The relationship didn’t change because we didn’t talk or see each other often. We were both busy a lot. That’s life.
Now that he is living in Toronto, he wants to talk on the phone more often because he’s so far away. I don’t see a difference in the situation whether he is 5 miles away or 500 miles away. If I don’t see him, I don’t see him. The rate of phone conversations should stay relatively the same, no? He’s a close friend of mine so I’m happy to speak to him whenever he and I have time. This whole situation, however, makes me wonder about how physical distance affects digital relationships.
Is there a difference whether a friend lives down the block or across the country? Does the potential of seeing them (hopping the car for 10 minutes) change the way or how often you communicate with someone? I’m guessing it does, which is extremely interesting. Everything is moving towards the ability to communicate with people remotely as if we were in the same room with them. For the first time this week, I had a video chat with my in-laws. It was fun and I’m sure we’ll do it again soon. No matter how realistic this communication becomes, I still think the proximity to this person will affect the way you communicate with this person. Maybe the next generation can get over this psychological need to be close to somebody in proximity. We shall see.
Some of my most memorable moments of my childhood and young adult life happened when I was away from the day-to-day happenings. Specifically, when I was a camper and counselor at camp where I was taken away from the world that I knew and was placed into a temporary ecosystem of bad food, no communication with the outside world (cell phones and the internet weren’t in your pockets back then), and a new social environment with summer-only friends. These absences from real life provided moments of clarity (especially in my young adult life) where I was able to contemplate my life’s goals free of distraction.
Are the youth of the next generation going to have this opportunity? How can they escape from the world and contemplate life with cell phones and web-enabled phones so prevalent? It goes beyond the youth. When was the last time you didn’t use the internet for more than 48 hours? It’s getting harder and harder to isolate yourself. As an adult, I can turn off my phone on vacation to spend quality time with my family. As a youth, however, I never would have shut myself out voluntarily.
This is just one example of how the new digital age is going to change the way we live. Our children will never be away at camp disconnected from the world where they can be a part of simpler, slower lifestyle. I’ll miss getting disconnected from the world. Only when I’m disconnected do I realize how connected I really am.
The current disagreement between Facebook and Google brings to light the the bigger issue of data portability which was summed up quite well by Steve GIllmor over at Techcrunch. This is a HUGE issue which needs to start being talked about outside of the tech world. I’ll try to sum up the situation in simple terms for those who don’t know about it (or as my wife would put it, not as nerdy as me).
Your personal information is spread out all over the web. Your email provider has it, as well as other sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, WSJ, NYTimes, Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc…). You might not be signed up to many sites where you have a username and password but you definitely have a few. What these sites did with your information could sometimes be ethically questionable. Some sites sold the ability to market to you (you might know it as junk mail or spam). Others were more responsible and kept the data private but might have kept your personal information on low security servers which made your information ripe for the hackers taking.
The problem here is that YOU did not control your data and how it was treated. And because every place that would need our information is now becoming digital, this lack of responsibility of managing our information is quite the cause for concern. Because of these issues, the idea of you having control over who has your personal information and what they do with it has become a popular concept called Data Portability. Here, watch a video.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=553DckaDiko]
This Data Portability issue is becoming a hot topic lately because of the Google-Facebook controversy. Google and Facebook both understand that users are going to start demanding their data be portable. So both companies create programs that allow you to take your information outside of their walled gardens. Regardless of whether you think it is within Facebook’s right to bar Google from using Facebook’s API, there is one thing we have to acknowledge. Neither company is providing true data portability. They’re just changing their walled gardens into walled tunnels that allow us to traffic what they feel we can share, not what we think we should share.
For too long, companies have made money off of our personal information. It’s about time companies are forced to provide good quality services to get our eyeballs/business. Feel free to support Google and Facebook’s new approach to letting data outside of their sites. But understand that this has to be just one step towards true data portability. Otherwise, our data is still held hostage by a corporation that is only interested in its own bottom line.
I’ve been noticing a lot of battles amongst Web 2.0 giants lately. Let’s just take a look at a few of them:
What I find most interesting about these battles is that, only recently, are we seeing the dark side of business with some Web 2.0 darlings. eBay and Craigslist! They’re such good companies that have helped consumers communicate and get better prices for their goods. Why are they fighting? Well, it’s because eBay bought 25% of Craigslist and then launched a competing service. What about Michael Arrington and Wired? Well, Techcrunch is going to be syndicated at the Wall Street Journal website and Wired is pissed about it.
What is comes down to is that none of these companies (even Craigslist) is about anything other than money. Each company has its own agenda and it all comes down to dollars and cents. Find me one successful web 2.0 company that seems to be altruistic in its ways and I’ll show you how all they’re doing is focusing on the $$$. You have to love capitalism.
Yesterday Google announced a new initiative to bring our social connections outside of the stronghold of social networks. A video of how it works is embedded below
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIEwUxMrJ4Y]
While we can see that concept of having one ID across the whole web is in its initial stages, I believe it can have significant impacts on businesses in the near future. I’ll discuss those in future posts.
A close friend of mine recently got married and moved to Toronto where his wife’s family lives. When he lived in New York, he and I used to get together when we could but we were both very busy and at times didn’t talk to or see each other for a couple months at a time. This was all fine and good because when we did see each other, we acted as friends who speak to each other all the time. The relationship didn’t change because we didn’t talk or see each other often. We were both busy a lot. That’s life.
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