Tangent Roundup - 8/8/07

I've been slow to get on this here blog thing, for mostly the same reasons I don't have a blog of my own -- basically, I never know what to write about. But I was struck in class the other day with the following idea: someone should be collecting the many tangents and sidebars that happen in the course of our hour+ with Paul and linking them up. And dagnabit... that should be me! Because I love tangents! And the internet! It's like chocolate and peanut butter -- put the two together and you can do no wrong.

So in customary fashion, I sat on the idea for a week.

But, now, I sit no longer! Or well, I am still sitting, but now I am also typing. We'll see what we end up with.

Most of the class discussion centered around the opening pages of Internet and Everyday Life. One of the key messages (I starred it in my notes, and everything) seemed to be that despite what people will always write about new technologies, technology doesn't really change people, people adapt the new technologies to do things they've always done. Paul, in discussing how the need is to connect to people and the node is the internet, had a nice analogy about the high school girl in crisis through the years: We've gone from the "Please Mr. Postman" deliver de letter to the lonely girl by the phone to the refresh refresh refresh of today's email.

Big Ideas in little bitty references
In looking at Wellman's chart of change, we talked about whether networked individualism really does have the results he lists, and this led to referencing Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, in which he argues that social capital has declined since the 1950s, using your local bowling team -- or lack thereof -- as proof. Read more in Wikiland >>

Richard Florida was also namedropped for his The Rise of the Creative Class, as an example of how the more people are networked and able to establish voluntary connections with special interests, the more powerful they'll be. Or -- as stated in this Washington Monthly article -- why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race. See fancy pants site >>

Death by Video Game
Not sure how we went from networked individualism and Bowling Alone to here, but we moved on to discuss the ultimate "game over" -- starting with the first case in S. Korea and confirming there have been several incidents since. Some links:

• BBC: S. Korean dies after games session


• Second gamer dies after massive binge


• More recently: Man dies after three-day web bender
  


• A much older death from 1982

Left Behind: Eternal Forces
A more natural jump from video games -- we briefly touched on this Shoot 'em up for the End Times. From Wikipedia: "In addition to extensive spiritual warfare, armed conflict ... is an additional aspect of the game ... In its description of the game the Left Behind Games Company states 'The remaining population – those who were left behind – are then poised to make a decision at some point. They cannot remain neutral.' "

A reflection on Paul, pre-internet
This was the parting thought the class was left with: Who was Paul Jones before the internet? Feel free to post your own hypothesis in the comments.