Part 1: What Does it All Mean, Anyway?

On the homepage of a typical social network like MySpace or Facebook, I can see as-they-happen updates from a vetted group of friends, networks, groups and organizations. The answer to the open-ended question “What’s on Your Mind?” gives way to a cacophony of information equivalent to a bunch of people shouting into space. Twitter, perhaps the most extreme exercise in brevity, allows for detailed minutiae of one’s inner monologue in 140 characters or less.

A new form of communication has been born: a medium that allows top-of-mind banter to be shared with whoever has the will to read it. Lifestreaming. Thoughts, images, links and video of the very innate variety can be posted for the world to see. There’s no excuse for someone with access to an Internet connection to not have the opportunity to be heard.

Is this the new public forum – a place to openly hash the public sphere and allow for interpersonal discourse at the local and international level? Or is it passive and mundane chatter amongst so-called “friends”? Because these sites vary by locality – decentralized as Twitter, Tumblr, Friendfeed or Facebook – it’s hard to say. Each island has it’s own population and the inhabitants are speaking a dialect to everyone, yet no one at all.

Why are we so eager to participate in a phenomenon without a distinct cause or purpose driving the madness? Maybe in part because most of these services are free, but what’s the real motivation?

Not too far in the distant past, privacy on the web was a hot button issue. We were hesitant to use real names in email addresses, give clues to things like real age, location, race, and gender, let alone details of political views or religious beliefs.

Despite the fear of releasing personal identity, the willingness to openly communicate with others remained clear. Chat rooms, message boards, emails…all lit up immediately with a new way of reaching out to the rest of the world.

Today, the thought of strangers openly chatting in online chat rooms seems dull. Gone are the days of emailing total strangers or using handles to appear anonymous or intriguing. We now strictly communicate in methods we have absolute control over with those we know – or audiences we feel comfortable sharing with.

We allow constructed personalities and messages to become on display in a one-way feed by communicating specific bits of information to these enabled groups or communities. We’re keen to openly divulge personal information – because we’ve come to realize that we have total control over what is being revealed.

This evolved way of communicating creates a one-sided conundrum whereby we are ultimately talking to ourselves.

We’re sharing information as a way to connect with others to fulfill individual needs of the ego. The reflection of who we present online is a reflection of the ideal self. We are not creating outlets for self-expression or meaning, but rather building upon an artificial construct of self consisting of imagery, text, number of friends – a pastiched cultural relevance that the ideal me would find significant to present to others.

We are an amphitheatre full of egos all shouting for recognition and importance – if only from ourselves.

Later in the series, I’ll take a look at how this affects the concept of the public forum by taking into account issues at the local, national, and international level.

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Twouble with Twitter: