theo|digital

Well, it’s Saturday morning 6 June.  You know what that means?

Official release day for the Palm Pre!

And since it also happens to be my second true day off since arriving in Estes Park for the summer, I’m off on an adventure to try to snag one.  I called two Sprint stores last night—Boulder and Longmont—which are my closest two stores at just about 50 miles away, whichever I choose.

Both stores said they are opening two hours earlier than their web-posted hours (8am instead of 10am), and both expect lines. Neither could/would tell me how many phones they expect to have in inventory or estimate if/when they’d sell out. Oh well, since I’ve never done anything like this before (chase an electronic product like a school girl), I figure their’s a first time for everything. Worst thing that happens? I don’t get one today.

This is one of those things where asking people to pray for you is really shady.

I could pee in my pants I’m so excited. This developer demonstration of Google Wave starts to make reality exactly the trends I have been predicting for filtering communities. This Google team notes that e-mail was invented forever ago–long before we had the Web, and is modeled on the metaphor of Postal Mail. I’ve been mentioning this for a while, now–that e-mail isn’t a native technology for a digital environment because it doesn’t think like a digital environment. We know from Pew Internet that among internet communications tools, today’s junior high kids use e-mail dead last, typically for communicating with teachers or older users–not friends.

This Google development team seeks to answer the question: what if we invented e-mail today?

Google Wave is what they’ve come up with so far. It’s exactly on the trajectory I think we’ve been doing (though we’ll see if they take it… notice many similarities to Facebook, which I still think is better positioned than Google to reinvent e-mail, etc).

This presentation is over an hour and half, but a few minutes of watching is prolly worth it.

Google Wave is getting plenty of attention, like this critic comparing it to a spork, but I think he like others is missing it. E-mail and IM and social networks are not irreducibly helpful tools combined, like the brew-and-grind. They are bring back together what naturally will be.

ps – other techy news:  Microsoft Bing.  Uses some Kayak looking tools with search.  Won’t amount to much.  Wikipedia vs. Scientology.  An interesting test case in filtering community ethics.

I love the Onion.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Classmates.com Employees Don’t Have Heart To Tell CEO About Facebook

SEATTLE—Employees at Classmates.com—an online service that enables users to find and communicate with people from their past for a monthly fee—have done everything in their power to keep the company’s CEO from finding out about the wildly popular social networking site Facebook. “He knows something is going on,” Classmates.com web coder Josh Krzysch said while combing his boss’s newspaper and removing any offending articles. “The other day he asked me why people aren’t interested in getting in touch with old friends anymore, and I told him that the Internet just isn’t very popular right now. What else was I supposed to say?” Employees claim that unless things somehow miraculously improve by next month, they plan to quietly pack up their desks and leave in the middle of the night.

–

Professor Ginny Olson pointed this out to me today. Harris Interactive‘s recent poll on social media (pdf) (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) had an interesting question included that, for those that know my thoughts, points directly to the key insight of the next few years

(chart reproduced from Research Brief from the Center for Media Research, reporting on this same poll).

This is the right question but the wrong audience. Most did not see the connection or possibility. They are wrong. Facebook IS the “new Google,” and I’ve been putting myself out on a limb on that for a few years now.

It doesn’t have to literally be Facebook of course (although they have a good chance–Mark Zuckerberg really understanding social media and the younger generation). The key is “filtering communities” that help us sorta and prioritize information. The days of someone saying “I got 1,456,333 hits on Google for X” are numbered… this will sound like a silly idea to us soon. A massive pile of information is a given to digital natives. The key is what floats to the top and how it does it. (think Digg). Model this on natural trust relationships (like Facebook), and you’ve got a powerful information filter that shapes your world.

ps – notice that older people were slightly more likely to think Facebook threatens Google, even though they are less involved. Is this because they are not immersed and can observe the relative importance in chatter they’re hearing their grandkids?

In yet another instance towards Facebook being the new Google, they held a VOTE this week to determine their terms of service. This makes perfect sense in the participatory media landscape, though traditional lawyers have thus far kept it from happening on other sites, where the terms are dictated. Interactive contracts (written by Wiki?) have to be a thing in the future…

Today, the Facebook site governance vote ended after a week in which you were able to voice your opinions as to which documents should serve as the foundation for governing the site. On behalf of everyone at Facebook, I’d like to thank all of you who participated by voting and the users and experts who earlier commented on the proposed documents.

The final results are now being reviewed by an outside auditor, but the preliminary numbers indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of users who voted chose the proposed documents – the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities – over the existing Terms of Use. More than 600,000 users participated in the vote.  More

The 600,000 participants is a small percentage of the 200 million registered Facebookers, but they (and I) would be optimistic that this number would change once people got familiar with the idea.

I haven’t yet been able to look at the study by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang due to be published by the National Academy of Sciences, but CNN is reporting that a new cognitive study shows that streams of rapid fire information decrease the ability for humans to form morally appropriate emotional responses.

“For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and refection,” said Immordio-Yang.
She said the study raises questions about the emotional cost, particularly for young people, of heavy reliance on a torrent of news snippets delivered via TV and online feeds such as Twitter.

The study apparantly used volunteers responding to real-life situations that were designed to evoke compassion, admiration, etc.  Apparantly some emotions are slower-forming than others, psychologically speaking.

I’m curious how the situations were constructed, and I’ll look forward to being able to read the actual study (I had trouble locating it online, so I’m assuming it’s not out yet?).  For instance, it seems as if 140 character bursts could be discontiguous (and therefore not allowing for emotions) such as:

or could construct a single narrative (which reminds me of the way you Tweet an event), like

With rising action, it seems like there’s a lot more potential for emotional formation.

Further questions:  what is the burst rate?  I only tweet about once a day…  maybe less.  And if tweet streams are received with multiple people, isn’t the discontinutiy more due to the number of people talking rather than the rapid fire rate?

I’ve heard about this from several places already: twspassionplay is the Twitter feed for Trinity Wall Street, an Episcopal church in New York who added twitter updates to their three hour passion play on Good Friday.  About 2,000 people followed online.

via @Mary_Mother_Of: They sealed his tomb at dusk. The stone stands between us, and I can’t leave. I am an old woman now, lost in the dark.about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @romanguard1: I’ve got dibs on his robe, but if you guys want to cast lots for the rest of his clothes I’m cool with that.about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @Mary_Mother_Of: I saw the water and the blood. I want to scream with him: Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @JosephArimathea: is sleepwalking through this. I cut the tomb, bought the linen, hold his body—and he’s gone.about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @Pontius_Pilate: They want this done by nightfall. I sent my soldiers to break the dead men’s legs. Are my hands clean of this?about 23 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @ServingGirl: Darkness and earthquake. I heard the curtain in the temple was torn in two. I wonder…about 23 hours ago from GroupTweet

Some not-to-in-depth observations:

• Narrative:  maintained characters, plot.  A level removed from setting, but no more than a reader’s theater that places parts as read on a black stage with isolated stools.  In true postmodern form, it picks up and depends on knowledge of the narrative, using only isolated memes.
• Global:  nicely makes real the idea that the worldwide Church is all celebrating Good Friday at the same time.  Live comments from California to Murcia, Spain.
• Human:  sometimes the form underscores the extended human emotion.  The terse, 140 character phrase I think makes Mary’s “I am an old woman now, lost in the dark” statement even more powerful.

Can’t resist posting this. It’s on it’s way up, and it fits right into my thoughts on how new technologies are always first used as entertainment (and critics decry them near the end of that first phase). Plus it’s funny.

Clifford Christians , a national expert on media ethics and communications professor at the University of Illinois, is also a Christian who has thought deeply about spiritual implications of new media.

Writing a recent book forward, he explains that, regarding new media technologies, a fundamental debate remains unresolved. The issue is whether communication is most productively oriented:

1. To the epistemology of virtual reality (What does it mean that our relationships are disembodied?)
2. To the nature of the human (What is authentic humanness in virtual space?)
3. To social structures (Are political and social formations offline and online fundamentally different?)

Christians writes his forward in Understanding Evangelical Media: The Changing Face of Christian Communication.  The book also features a website with additional content .

I’ve been awol from my blog.  My excuse:  my laptop died.  :-(  It was almost four years old, which is like 60 in human years (formula – times 15!).  So it was starting to get there… but I was hoping she would hold out for a few months.  At least until Windows 7 became enough of an imminent thing that places would be giving out coupons for a free future upgrade when it arrived.

As of now:  I have a new… Dell.  Never thought I’d say that, and I’m worried I’m gonna lose some nerd cred.  But Dell seems to have improved some things… and I’ll post some sweet photos soon.

And be back to on the Theology of Facebook.  I’ve got lots of thoughts, and I’ve also finally got a chance to read Shane Hipps book (which is very well done – except for the few pages here and there particularly on “virtual community” where he just misses it–is even inconsistent with the rest of his book!  But in general his stuff is right on target.  I’m sure we’d be friends…)

Anyway, more coming.