Tuna Park

So, I’m back.
Back for 6 weeks already, in fact – how time flies – having spent an incredible summer with the family.  I reflected on my own situation when I read this in the Guardian, Forget the balance, this is the merge, a slightly depressing article for a number of reasons: firstly its conclusions (there is no balance), but also its assumption that only mothers need to consider time with their children (to the Swedish resident, it’s clear that fathers and children need to prioritise time together just as much).  Equally, those without children need their balance just as much, in order to grow as people.

Anyway, having spent several weeks largely away from screens (email, IRC… especially email), I felt refreshed.  And I had to consider this when reading the miserable story of a wretch from Lancashire who was “trolling” the family of abducted, presumed murdered, schoolgirl April Jones.

How does someone sink so low?  Well, people have always told sick jokes.  Not everyone – certainly I’ve always been too squeamish – but many do.  I tend to smile wanly, perhaps groan, to show I’m not amused but nor have I taken offense.  After all, once chooses to take offense, doesn’t one?

No.  Not always.  Not entirely.  Not when your daughter is missing, presumed murdered.  You’d have to be absurdly tranquil not to take offense.

Those of us in the Internet industry talk of “disintermediation” as the malaise afflicting network operators, excluded from being able to offer differentiated value-add to their users.  But the Internet disintermediates people too.  One only has to read a comments thread on -and I’m going out on a limb here- just about any online forum to find deeply uncivil exchanges.  People seem to delight in attacking each other online, and in hurting each others’ feelings.  There is almost a sense of liberation for so-called trolls: this piece, “Meeting a troll…” is very instructive.  The false sense of anonymity the Internet conveys allows people with limited imagination and empathy do very unpleasant things.  I pity the person who behaved so vilely towards the family of April Jones: he isn’t a fully-formed person, or at least, is capable of behaving like he isn’t one.  I’m sure he’s no parent himself.  I’m equally sure he wouldn’t behave like that in the company of that poor family.

But then, this isn’t just an Internet phenomenon.  In the mid 1990s, the term “road-rage” was coined, describing how recklessly and aggressively people could behave in situations of stressful traffic.  I’ve been a passenger in cars where the driver has “retaliated” for a perceived slight.  I may even have quietly cursed under my breath at being cut up myself.  Where does this come from?  I’m sure studies have been done, but my jaded perspective identifies three causes: busier roads seems fairly obvious; a self-righteous egotism or sense of entitlement (think Gordon Gecko); and the simple fact of being in your own isolated environment.  Or, as Gary Numan put it:

Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It’s the only way to live.

Now, the clever souls at Wieden+Kennedy think that Facebook  is like a chair.  And the rest of the Internet cannot wait to tell us what other things Facebook is like.

Well, let me make my contribution:

Those of us in the industry need to pay attention to the harmful effects, the lack of humanity, that existence behind a screen can give rise to.

The study of industrial economics is, what, 235 years old?  And it was only about 220 years old when I struggled through a joint honours programme.  There I was exposed to the eloquence of (inter alia) Dr Quentin Outram.  I recall his delight in exploring theory A and critique B before tossing both on the bonfire, with contemporary thought C, as he said with a chuckle, “in what we laughingly call the real world”.  His subtext (or what I understood it to be) was that our attempts to explain reality will always be doomed to revision, that there will always be a reality yet more real that the one we’re currently dealing with, just like in Inception The Truman Show The Matrix Fight Club.

So…is anyone actually using Google+ (at least, for what Google hope you’ll use it for?).  Facebook perhaps wasn’t a great original invention, but it generated what you might call “critical mass” and has quickly evolved into a platform.  Google+ seems to think it has identified the fatal flaw with Facebook: that one’s friends are not homogenous group but rather, several smaller circles.  Paul Adams of Google had demonstrated as much over a year ago. We have circles of friends.  That’s wisdom so great that it verges on common sense.

I read with interest the complaints of Violet Blue (if that is her real name) about Google+’s “drama”.  Google is, after all, desperate to get this right.  And they believe that they are fixing the fundamental flaw of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter et al.

Google+ will

make connecting with people on the web more like connecting with them in the real world.

Except it won’t.  It may yet be successful.  Google may yet bring to bear the massive quantities of information they have and gather up Facebook’s users, but let’s not pretend Google+ or Facebook or anything else are like connecting “in the real world” was, or is.  Facebook caters to (amongst other things) exhibitionism.  It’s partly popular because exhibitionism is easier in Facebook than it is in the real world.  And it keeps friendships alive that would not survive, or simply were not possible in the real world.

As for circles of friend – yes, they certainly do exist.  But “circles” is the wrong name for them, as they aren’t circles, at least, not from the perspective of the person who is at the centre of them.  They’re irregular, they overlap and you are not equidistant from all points.  Who has not, at some point, had a “best friend”?

Just as social media is changing friendships, so is the nature of friendship informing how social media works.  But after nearly two and a half centuries of the dismal science, events of the past two years tell us that we retain a great ability to wholly ignorant of how we “really” work.