The Golden Age of the Hermit
Carrie Fischer was in Star Wars with Harrison Ford who was in The Fugitive with Tommy Lee Jones who was in Batman Forever with Val Kilmer who was in Heat with Robert Dinero who was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon.
Six degrees of Kevin Bacon is based on the concept of six degrees of separation that was developed around 1967 by Stanley Milgram who proposed that any two random U.S. citizens were connected by a chain of six acquaints on average.[1] Also commonly referred to as the “small world phenomenon,” actually suggests that there are many small worlds that are connected by a few “stars” who act as cohesive members between groups. These people vary from the hyper involved who will pursue a number of interests to the drifters who move casually between groups with no long term sense of attachment.
The key connector between all of these people is the social network. The social network can generally be understood as a web of connections. The network often has social implications beyond the apparent ones, where make-up and size of the network will influence ones potential connections.
The development of social networking communities online has developed from simple webrings into vast networks of users in pursuit of common goals. The social implications and associations vary based on the group. Groups and websites have been established based on any number of shared interests or desired methods of interaction.
One of the recurring social connectors in history has been music. The social importance of musical tastes and preferences has regularly developed into a level of cult worship. Ones musical tastes can make or break a relationship. Since the development of the radio and later the LP, the ability so share music allowed for the growth of the music industry and the development of a wider range of musical choices.
The release of Napster in 1999 rekindled the importance of the social aspects of music.[2] By sharing and receiving music with peers, many of which you have never met – and will never meet – gave people a brief glimpse into the lives of what became millions of users. The popularity of certain songs and genres could be tracked in numbers of downloads and could begin to allude to the size and dominance of the social groups associated with the various genres.
Anonymity, ease of use and the free distribution made Napster a runaway hit. Everyone and anyone could use the program and could share a piece of themselves in a non-invasive and safe way.
The distribution of music in a widespread and easy to access manner is complimented by the corresponding tool for information – Wikipedia. Wikipedia was founded in 2001 as a means of providing open access to a free encyclopedia.[3] The founders utilized a similar system to peer-to-peer networking, like Napster, by not only allowing users to change or add content, but encouraging it.
Collaborative authoring allows the site to address a wide range of topics without the costs associated with the creation and writing of millions of articles. Everyone can add or edit content regardless of background and education. Though this has been criticized as a means of dispersing bad or incorrect information, the democratic nature of it acts as a sort of social commentary and provides a living and changing understanding of the world. Social, political, economic, and cultural trends can be tracked and understood as a shifting assortment of facts, theories and opinions. The constant evolution of the website and the individual articles shows the importance of personal interpretation of facts and issues that is often missed in traditional sources. In fact, it is among the top 20 most visited websites, making it one of the most influential sources of information.
But perhaps the most omnipresent and inescapable of the social networking trends is the dominance of friend’s websites like Myspace. Myspace – developed in 2003 as a way of developing social networks and sharing personal information – claimed 106 million users as of September 2006.[4] The vastness of the network can be attributed to the ease of use and users inviting or referring new users from their own social networks. Much of the attraction to the site is due once again to the anonymity. The buffer that the internet provides for social interactions emboldens people.
The illusion of separation between the Myspace life and the outside life is changing over time as more and more people – employers especially – are becoming savvy enough to search Myspace to learn more about potential employees. There has been sharp criticism that Myspace makes it too easy to act in a manner not generally considered socially acceptable and is leading to a breakdown of social precepts.
But a new trend is developing in social networking websites that has shown the decrease in use of the site as the users age. The original group of users is entering college and is switching to a more active social life in the traditional sense. This group is also of the group that has been pushed to do everything under the moon by their parents and teachers. Hyper-activity for generation M – those born in 1980-2000 – is less a statement of an inability to focus but the tendency to focus in more directions at once.
Though the collapse of western civilization is unlikely, these sites have begun changing the expectations of community structures at a faster pace than radio, rock music, and television had managed to accomplish. The television and the car provided the means of operating away from the city center and made the periphery accessible, in what we now know of as the suburban environment. The development of the personal computer and the proliferation of the internet has reestablished the importance of the center, but of multiple centers rather than a single city center or agora. This X-Urban environment[5] is dependent on and compliments the social networks that exist on the internet. These networks make it possible to exist independently – living, working, and socializing in an isolated bubble. Just as the automobile made travel an independent and isolated experience, the development of the cyber social network makes everything from shopping to dating safe and secluded.
The golden age of the hermit is at hand.[6]
posted by Heather at 5:27 PM
1 Comments:
How do you feel about wikipedia as a source? Will you use it as a tool to look up other information or do you feel it is sufficiently reliable reference?
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