Killed

September 30, 2009 at 2:44 pm (Art, Blogging, Church)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Buggles

Self-Made Prophets ...

The Buggles told us the truth.

Video did kill the radio star.  And they added to that death by producing a music video that would be the first aired on MTV.

Now, other things are dying, but are being killed by the Internet.

A list of what the Internet is killing was published in The Telegraph, and is longer than what I’ve posted here, but these are the ones that got my attention. 

1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”.

2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity’s death
Twitter has become a clearing-house for jokes about dead famous people. Tasteless, but an antidote to the “fans in mourning” mawkishness that otherwise predominates.

3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There’s no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will “album albums” like Radiohead’s Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?

5) Punctuality
Before mobile phones, people actually had to keep their appointments and turn up to the pub on time. Texting friends to warn them of your tardiness five minutes before you are due to meet has become one of throwaway rudenesses of the connected age.

12) Letter writing/pen pals
Email is quicker, cheaper and more convenient; receiving a handwritten letter from a friend has become a rare, even nostalgic, pleasure. As a result, formal valedictions like “Yours faithfully” are being replaced by “Best” and “Thanks”.

13) Memory
When almost any fact, no matter how obscure, can be dug up within seconds through Google and Wikipedia, there is less value attached to the “mere” storage and retrieval of knowledge. What becomes important is how you use it – the internet age rewards creativity.

14) Dead time
When was the last time you spent an hour mulling the world out a window, or rereading a favourite book? The internet’s draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist.

15) Photo albums and slide shows
Facebook, Flickr and printing sites like Snapfish are how we share our photos. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing its Kodachrome slide film because of lack of demand.

17) Watching television together
On-demand television, from the iPlayer in Britain to Hulu in the US, allows relatives and colleagues to watch the same programmes at different times, undermining what had been one of the medium’s most attractive cultural appeals – the shared experience. Appointment-to-view television, if it exists at all, seems confined to sport and live reality shows.

18) Authoritative reference works
We still crave reliable information, but generally aren’t willing to pay for it.

27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart
After typing the digits into your contacts book, you need never look at them again.

29) The mystery of foreign languages
Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm.

31) Privacy
We may attack governments for the spread of surveillance culture, but users of social media websites make more information about themselves available than Big Brother could ever hoped to obtain by covert means.

50) Your lunchbreak
Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?

Powerful things here.  How true are these for you?

Leave a Comment

Letter

August 4, 2009 at 9:18 pm (Happiness)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

True love. 

Here it is for you, as clear as letters on a page.

Gulf War Penpals Get Married … 19 Years Later
by Stephanie Gaskell

It started with a letter – and ended in a wedding.

Nearly two decades ago, 13-year-old Jaime Benefit wrote a letter addressed to “Any Soldier” during the Persian Gulf War, expressing her support for the troops as they prepared to invade Iraq.

The letter made its way to Pfc. Jeremy Clayton, a 19-year-old soldier from Charleston, S.C., who was serving with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The two became pen pals, writing back and forth about sports, high school and their families.

“Just stuff to keep their minds off of what was going on and keep their spirits up,” said Benefit, 32.

After the war ended, the two stopped writing, but Benefit always wondered what happened to Clayton.

“I’d always kept his letters,” she said. “I had them wrapped in a red-white-and-blue ribbon.”

Earlier this year, she searched his name on Facebook and sent him a short note: “Were you in Desert Storm?”

Clayton, 38, now out of the Army, saw the message and had one reaction: “Shock and awe.”

“I just knew I had to find out what she was doing,” he recalled.

The two agreed to meet in March, and their fate was sealed.

“It took my breath,” Clayton said of seeing his one-time pen pal in the flesh. “I was actually shaking and I’m a pretty strong man. I just said to myself, ‘You have to do whatever you can to make sure you spend the rest of your life with this woman.’”

Clayton proposed not long after, and the two got married July 15 in a simple ceremony on the beach in Charleston.

“It was fate that I got her letter,” he said. “And her finding me 19 years later was fate.”

The Internet may have brought the newlyweds together, but they still rely on good old pen and paper to keep their bond strong.

“She writes me notes every morning and puts them in my lunch,” he said.

Leave a Comment

Chain

September 22, 2008 at 5:29 pm (Culture)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

You would think that social networking is a brand new thing.

The phrase, social networking, is new, but maybe not the concept.  But if you say the phrase out loud, and you may want to do so right now, it makes you feel good, almost like you know more than you’re supposed to know.

It is also the phrase most used to describe the Facebook phenomenon.  A recent article reported that Facebook is the number one social network website in the world.  In just a span of twelve months, Facebook added 75 million unique monthly visitors (from 40 million in April, 2007, to 115 million in April, 2008).  Of those 75 million unique visitors, 62 million were from places other than the United States of America.

MySpace, in the same time span, has not grown enough to even chart it’s progress.

Facebook began as a toy for college students, almost a tongue-in-cheek graduation from MySpace.  But, as you may know dear reader, your friend list, if you are on Facebook, includes people outside of that demographic.  It’s rate of growth has outpaced other social networking sites.

And the reasons for its success are almost immediate.  If you have your own Facebook account, you will notice a few things.  One, you were probably asked to join a network, which, according to Facebook, most people do.  Another, is that you are asked a slate of questions about yourself, and you almost feel compelled to answer them accordingly. 

In it’s purest form, Facebook is almost about vanity.  You are telling your own private world, in online terms, what you value, who you like, and even your current mood.  And you are given complete control.  No one in the real world can force anything here. 

Because, as I’ve written before, millions of lives are now lived on computer screens.
__________

I have a theory. 

Facebook has made relationships cool again.  We have taken a phrase, social networking, and made it sound almost technological, and very much inventive, though, at its core, social networking is just a new way to describe relationships.  And Facebook has given us a place to invest in relationships.

And I guess we need that.  The cultural swing of America has gone from small towns to a scattering of friends across this continent, and has placed us in isolated areas, away from family, and away from longtime friends.  The Internet was, for a time, the savior of relationships, with email being the hottest ticket in town.  But that became cumbersome.  So cell phones became the rage.  But rates were too high.  So text messaging followed next in this evolutionary tale.  But we wanted to say more.  So MySpace happened.  But MySpace is a public page, and maybe we don’t want everyone to see what we have to say, and the need for control developed.  So there was a need, and the development of Facebook filled that need.  But it also provided competition for MySpace among those who use each one.  One psychologist even cited research that both users MySpace and Facebook could be seen through socio-economic lenses.

So even relationships, lived online, are now divided among class lines.  Interesting, isn’t it? 

In the end, though, Facebook offered privacy, and controlled access.  And most people seem to like that.  So Facebook is the student who has become the teacher. 

But what holds Facebook together, and makes it work so well, is the accountability that ensures that these relationships survive.

The information in any given profile is checked every time new access is granted to your profile by adding these friends.  And, in turn, whenever you are given access to someones profile, by the unique privilege of being their friend, you can check their information.  And you will ask about something that doesn’t play well.  And you will be asked about something that someone else disputes.  Facebook would not be the most dominant social networking site in the world if accountability wasn’t so accessible, or so necessary.  It is what makes any relationship work.
__________

It would seem, though the lens of technology, that humanity craves a chain of people, where we find ourselves connected somewhere. 

But, of course, it isn’t the first to offer such a place.

The greatest social networking site on the planet is in the lobby of any church.  Try it this Sunday and see.

Leave a Comment

Filled

September 15, 2008 at 7:05 pm (Culture)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I found the following statistics in The Journal for Student Ministries this weekend, and thought they were worth sharing. 

(Before you read, I must tell you that the more I read them, the more I felt like a small bit of ice in an ever-growing snowball.  Each stat heaped more evidence of a clutter-filled life upon the previous statistic, and when I finished them, my head hurt from the overwhelming success culture enjoys at garnering the attention of the American teenager.  It’s a little frightening.  And it should be.)

TV

  • TV consumption among teens is up slightly to an average of 11.9 hours a week.
  • Teen boys watch more television than teen girls, averaging about an hour and a half more (13.2 hours a week).
  • For tweens (8 to 1), the average amount of television consumed during a typical week is 12.2 hours, with tween boys watching about 14.5 hours (during the school year).
  • Three of ten guys’ top-five favorites are animated, led by The Family Guy, followed by The Simpsons and South Park.
  • The Office moved up nine slots to the third most popular show among all teen males.
  • Biggest mover for teen girls:  ABC Family’s Greek, which came in tied for eighth.
  • For tween viewers, American Idol is no longer number one; now it’s Hannah Montana.
  • For tween girls, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars moved up four notches to land in the fifth spot.
  • For tween boys, it’s all about SpongeBob and Zack & Cody.  The biggest mover was the ABC comedy The George Lopez Show, which shot up 10 spots to secure the seventh spot.

Internet

  • Teens spend 12.5 hours online while tweens spend only 6.4 hours (typical week during school year).
  • Teens have grown tired of MySpace and have moved on to Facebook in the past couple of months.
  • Only a couple of virtual worlds are on tweens’ radars.
  • The top sites tweens visit — Webkinz among both tween boys and tween girls.  Then Neopets, owned by Viacom’s interactive unit, as well as Nick.com.
  • Club Penguin remains in third place for tween girls and dropped from 11th place to 13th place for tween boys since last summer.
  • AddictingGames is fast becoming the top casual gaming site among all youth.

Entertainment and Pop Culture

  • During a typical month teens seen an average of 1.8 movies (in a movie theater).
  • Tweens see an average of 1.3 per month.
  • Tween attendance is consistent with a year ago, while the average number of movies teens see in a typical month has increased slightly from 1.5 movies a year ago.
  • Most appealing movie genres for teens:  Action/Adventure titles, followed by comedies.
  • Tweens prefer comedies, followed by animated features, then action/adventure.
  • For the third straight year, Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp retains the title as the most popular Hollywood celebrity among teen and tween females.
  • Funny man Adam Sandler is tops among the boys, followed closely by the two Will’s — Smith and Ferrell.
  • The most popular female celebrity among teen girls?  Miley Cyrus, followed by Reese Witherspoon, Keira Knightley, and Amanda Byrnes.
  • The top female celeb among teen boys is Jessica Alba for the second straight year, followed by Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale, and Alicia Keys.

Retail and Shopping

  • During a typical month teens spend an average of $135 across nine product categories.
  • Nearly half of their spending goes towards clothing and accessories.
  • For 16 and 17 year-old teens who have part-time jobs (minimum of 5 hours per week), their spending across the same nine categories jumps sharply to $264 a month, just about double the average among all teens and about 45% higher than the average for all 16 and 17 year-olds.
  • For tweens, it’s all about candy, gum, and games.
  • The most-visited specialty clothing retailer among teen females is Victoria’s Secret, followed closely by Hollister.
  • Teen males visit American Eagle Outfitters more often than any other specialty retailer, followed by Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister.
  • Old Navy, for both tween boys and girls, remains the most shopped at specialty clothing retailer by a considerable margin.

It’s all a little overwhelming, isn’t it?

Leave a Comment

Write

September 12, 2008 at 2:49 pm (Church, Opinions)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

it’s how the kids do it these days.

and it’s a brand of communication i swore i would never do.

and yet, i do.  i love the english language.  i love the nuances of the language, and i love the way words are put together.  words are powerful, and they are powerful when they are spoken, and they are powerful when they are written.  and since i do both, and do both frequently, i figured that i would never demote the english language to such frivolousness as writing without capital letters.

and then i found facebook.  and since i direct a rather large student ministry, and since most of my students live their lives on facebook, i go where the kids are.  and that’s where they are.  and this is how they communicate.

captions for photographs are written without capital letters.  status updates are written without capital letters.  favorite movies.  favorite songs.  interests.  all of these things are written without ever pressing the shift key on the keyboard. 

and that poor little shift key.  once so important.  once used to start a new thought, or a new sentence, and now it has been left behind, ostracized.  and it is lonely.  now, in this new found mode of communication, where words are never capitalized, the shift key may be used only when SOMEONE IS VERY ANGRY.  and then again, it could be overlooked for the simpler caps lock key. 

writing without capital letters, really, is a way to communicate an attitude.  using all lower caps indicates that what you are saying is not very serious, or that your current mood is one of normalcy.  and it is different than the structured world in which we live, where homework must be written in proper english, and where reports and presentations must be written in strictly professional ways.  it really is a sort of rebellion, and so we decide that with friends and family, and our facebook crowd, we’ll only communicate in the ways we believe we talk, and surely the words we say are never capitalized.  and surely, talk of sports and relationships and movies don’t need such heavy restrictions, such as the usage of capital letters – we can just save all of that for when it is absolutely necessary.

so the little shift key is overlooked. 

but really, how much effort do we expend to press the shift key, anyway? 

wait.  i just used the shift key there.  so it needs to be used when you place a question mark at the end of your sentence.  so, we have found another use.  and an important use.  (even though you need it for parentheses, and apostrophes, in my common experience, neither are used much, and pale in use to the all powerful question mark.)  the shift key’s primary purpose, in this cyber-communication world, then, is it’s need for questions.

and there a lot of questions in this lived-online world.  it’s the normal, back and forth conversation, that usually involves statements and questions.  and when you mostly talk through your keyboard, face-to-face contact becomes tough, and awkward, so we just stick to talking with words that omit all capital letters.

because life is lived on the screens of millions of computers.
__________

we are now seeing the emergence of a new, common, vernacular language.  it is the underground language of the people.  it is the way to communicate to a great amount of people in this particular culture, so much so that if you enter this world, and use that little shift key, you’ll be seen as someone who doesn’t belong, or who doesn’t understand.  and whether you do understand or not is really irrelevant.  it’s that your appearance says otherwise.  and in an attention-deficit world, every edge you have to be relevant you take.  and if that means forsaking the beloved english language for teenage typing, then it must be done. 

because in an online world, appearance is less about clothes, and more about words. 

because words are powerful.  even how you type them.

3 Comments