Mar 29
AndrewLife in Digital Facebook, Internet, Technology, twitter
Raised on twitter and facebook and xbox games where you play against players in Indonesia, it’s no wonder that face time doesn’t have intrinsic value anymore to the next gen. These days, pretty much anything can be replicated and accomplished remotely. It allows us to date from afar, order take-out, even talk run a business without ever having a physical storefront.
Being old fashioned, I’m not so impressed that we encapsulate our experiences into 140 character snippets, nor update our so-called status everyday with vague and vaguely threatening lines like “I can’t believe that just happened to me.” It’s a breeding ground for misunderstanding and apathy. After all, a few non-sequitor status messages and it’s a lot like crying wolf too many times. It becomes totally meaningless.
I don’t think we’re completely beyond brunches and going out drinking with our friends after work, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the next gen is heading towards a mentality where those things become less the social norm. Technology has empowered us to communicate more efficiently but the cost hasn’t been measured yet. If everything is tasked and accomplished through an electronic medium, it essentially removes the need for human contact, the human element and devalues face time with other people. Is it crazy to suppose we are just turning ourselves into automatons where face time is replaced with remote time? One new generation at a time.
Dec 24
AndrewLife in Digital, Relationships cell phone, Facebook, Phone, Texting, twitter
Communication these days is such a weird negotiating process. When you meet someone new, or just try to talk to your close friends, you have to figure out the best way to get ahold of them.
It’s no longer a simple thing to pick up the phone and dial a number and hope that someone answers on the other hand. They might (if they like you, if they hear the ringer, if the phone is charged) or they might not.
It’s no joke, there are literally dozens of options to choose from to contact someone, text message, AIM, gchat, blackberry IM, Skype, phone, twitter, e-mail, courier pigeon to name a few. And every single one of your friends, family and acquaintances, new and old, has their preferred method to be contacted.
Myself, for instance, I listen to all my queued phone messages at one time. If you call on Tuesday, I might not listen to your voicemail for weeks, by which time, I have another twenty voicemails to delete and fifty missed calls to wade through. Your ninety-second voicemail takes me 3 and half seconds to delete, and that’s about how much time you have to convince me to listen to it.
Even before cell phones, I always used my phone sparingly. If I didn’t pick up when you call, I didn’t want to talk to you to begin with. Phone communication was traditionally at my convenience, not yours. The coming of e-mail was a godsend. And I usually respond to e-mails and text messages within minutes of receiving them.
While philosophically, that hasn’t changed, not only are there way more options to contact me than just a straight up phone call, my phone on its own caters to, let’s see, well…almost all of them. From my phone, I can take calls, e-mails, text messages, twitter, facebook, gmail, yahoo. Short of courier pigeon and the US Postal Service, there is almost limitless coverage of every conceivable mode of contact.
Because of that, the rules go out the window when I’m catering to someone else’s preference. I have one friend who will respond faster to text message than any other medium. We almost never actually talk on the phone. When dude calls me up to chat, you better believe I pick up the phone. That’s something special.
Likewise, my father isn’t so much an e-mail guy (he’s not so much a phone guy either) which makes those phone calls special when they do come in, no matter how much I disdain using the phone myself.
It’s all about negotiating. There should be an implicit understanding that if you initiate the contact, you use the preferred medium of the person you are calling, texting, whatever. But in reality, it becomes a question of who wants it more, the person calling or the person being called.
It’s not all a wonderland to have this many options. It’s led to a lot of less personalized contact. I think bulk updates by e-mail to every person you’ve ever met are impersonal and insulting to everyone on your distribution list. But sending out a mass message through facebook or twitter makes sense because those are designed for that purpose. There is an implied invitation to read someone’s status update. And e-mail (and texting) by its nature is an exercise in passive aggressive obstructionist behavior. It requires finesse to not read too much or too little into an e-mail lacking any clues but what you know about the sender already and just the characters on the screen.
The net effect of all these options makes meeting new people and making connections with them even more impractical. Communication preference is an extra layer of idiosyncrasy that we didn’t need, and one that has begun to get in between individuals. Instead of bridging the gap, e-mail, texting, cell phones, facebook, twitter, it’s all widening the gap between yourself and people you haven’t met yet.
My friend met a boy who said “call me” and he meant it. He never responded to a single text message she sent. But in failing to acknowledge the text messages, all he is doing is making it harder for them to connect. This isn’t even a case of him making her do all the work. His preferred method of communication was talking on the phone, and he never failed to either answer or call her right back. But how do really you tell someone ‘we can’t go out if you’re going to insist on sending me text messages’? Look, people do all the time now. It is actually acceptable to freeze people out until they learn to communicate on your level.
Hey, I’m as guilty as anyone else. So either send me an e-mail now or wait until I’m damn well and ready to check my phone log and maybe I’ll get back to you sometime. It’s your call.
Jul 29
JeremyLife in Digital Facebook, lawsuit, Scrabble, Scrabulous
Following up on our earlier articles about Scrabulous, the highly popular knock off of the board game Scrabble hosted through Facebook, SmartReMarxcom has learned that the game has been shut down. According to a message posted at the application’s Facebook link, “Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice.”
The creators of Scrabulous have been engaged in a legal tussle with game rights owner Hasbro, which they now appear to have lost, at least for the moment.
For more background on this controversy, please check SmartReMarxcom’s previous news and opinion articles.
Jul 08
JeremyLife in Digital, Society and Culture Facebook, Internet, social networking
The internet has really done it this time. It’s not enough that the ‘net has gone and made all this music free for us to steal. Now, it has done the unthinkable: it has created free-ware versions of classic board games that just anyone can go and play without a paying a dime! Now with game maker Hasbro to accompany it, the RIAA is no longer lonely in its victim chair.
The prime example of this internet controversy is Scrabulous, an application that can be installed on a Facebook profile that allows users to mimic a game of good old-fashioned Scrabble. The brainchild of two brothers in India, the game is free to players, its costs borne by on-page advertising. The problem is that it is not licensed or authorized by Hasbro, which owns the rights to the official game in North American (but not the rest of the world). So far, Hasbro has been unsuccessful in its attempts to shut down the Scrabulous application, which boasts 518,641 daily active users, according to its information page. Now, they have gone an alternate route by contracting with Electronic Arts Inc. to provide an official version (which is presumably simply a way to collect licensing fees). Which will only be available to those of us in the US and Canada, so anyone who likes to play with friends overseas would be S.O.L. in this scenario. That’s because Mattel owns Scrabble elsewhere and has already contracted with RealNetworks to provide an online version of the game. Confusing yet?
A friend of mine who recently created a Facebook profile asked me what all the hype was about Scrabulous because everyone seemed to be talking about it. She had never played Scrabble before in her life and was unfamiliar with the rules, but she decided that she would give it a try anyway. While she enjoyed it, she also immediately recognized that the electronic arena could never replace the fun of a true board game. Just perhaps, playing this online, unlicensed, unauthorized version created a new Scrabble player in the non-virtual world.
It has been suggested that illegal downloads of music have actually helped the music industry by allowing artists a greater breadth of exposure that has created new demand for legal purchases of their music. Despite this, the RIAA and music companies have chosen to treat internet downloads of music as dangerous and have pursued all possible legal action to stop it and punish offenders. Hasbro is on the verge of doing the same thing. Perhaps, in being so worried about the threat, they have forgotten that all publicity is good publicity. By letting go some control, they could instead create a new generation of players who, just like those who hear a good song and buy the CD, will go out and buy their own Scrabble board.
The internet and its endless possibilities for free content are a gateway for these companies to move forward in the digital age. If they choose to reject it, they lead themselves down the path of rejecting their own relevance. Soon, the victim chair that Hasbro and the RIAA choose to inhabit will be the quiet spot where they sit while society passes them by.
Jul 08
AndrewBusiness, Life in Digital Facebook
Move over Scrabulous, Scrabble is ready to compete with its own Facebook application. The new app, designed by Electronic Arts, Inc., will be the officially licensed, authorized Scrabble game. It will be launched this month.
In the absence of an official version, two designers created a reasonable facsimile know to Facebook users as Scrabulous. The popularity of the copycat had Scrabble scrambling to shut Scrabulous down. But a new plan will be to launch the authorized version and hope that users will switch.
The new Facebook application Scrabble will only be available to U.S and Canadian users due to licensing issues outside of North America.
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