[Media] 26 (or more) big ideas about the Web

Missing: Games and Play. Banking (as in “personal banking”). Books/Literature.

Money/Finance – Online banking and financial marketing has connected the otherwise content (or not so content) rural inhabitant to the global money markets. This in turn increases their exposure to materialistic values. Some view this as a good thing – especially if you’re a follower of Keynesian principles which in this case allow those far away from the major city high streets to help spend their way out of the recession. There are all sorts of things that could be looked at here from both a retail/commercial and institutional viewpoint. Anyway, just an idea.

A short definition of each concept to help people understand your thinking would probably elicit richer answers.

I would add:

- Relationships, as the web is undoubtedly changing the way we interact and relate to each other, both publicly and privately. What is the likely impact on public relationships when there is so much disclosure. How will public disclosure affect corporate policies and culture? Whilst hiring agents may be using disclosed information to filter candidates at present, will corporations need to change their own culture in due course and accept that their employees are human as well as staff? How does so much pre knowledge of someone affect the way we interact?

- Generalisation, as in how does the web affect our cultural bias towards specialisation.

Under C I’d add Crime – positive aspect are the sites that give you crime stats in your area but the negative is the crazy increase in crime via the web. Have either affected the social movement of people?

Under Q I’d add Quality vs Quantity – a never-ending topic for debate re blogs, twitter, etc. Has the ability for people to pour out a huge quantity of thoughts affected the quality of our lives or the way we think? I know you explored this in the Revolution series but I think it’s a topic with huge scope.

A possible for S is Shrinking World. The ability for people that would otherwise have little ability to see the world and for whatever reason have little/no access to TV or libraries can often get on the web and see places they’ve never seen before.

Great suggestions. Play has certainly been affected; take the emergent Alternate Reality Games space. And banking? wow, that’s big one. I was thinking of tackling an aspect of that in ‘Value’, as in what we perceive of as having more or less value, possibly using the real money transfer from online games as a case study.

Yes, Anthony, a short definition would help. However, as you can see, space is tight. Also, this was a first draft, a scribble of a brainstorm, and so later drafts – indeed, the content of the examinations – will flesh out how I’m framing this project. I was going to approach your ‘generalisation’ idea within the context of ‘knowledge’. I feel they are synergistic concepts. I thought about adding ‘relationships’, but needed something for F, so ‘friendships’ and ‘family’ went in! Within these constructs, I envisage discussion of the development of friendship, of trust, of deception, of friend-bloat, and of the affect on close and weak ties.

Another suggestion via Twitter:
<a href="http://twitter.com/robram>robram says: “think ‘communication’ in general is missing and possibly ‘family’ and ‘fashion’.”

Link correction:

And Scott, you got in as I was writing my comment. All excellent.

M – Moral Bankruptcy.
The web has brought pornography into our homes in an unprecedented manner.My ten year old son has (despite my best efforts) seen stuff i had to wait until i was 19 to see (and I waited patiently I can tell you)
If this article is true, the porn industry has bigger turn over than Mcrosoft, Apple,etc etc…combined!!!! Is this really the case?
http://johnjumbotaylor.blogspot.com/2010/02/porn-industry-bigger-than-microsoft.html
What impact will this have on the coming generation of kids who can and do access porn on their phones in the playground is debatable and scary. How will children form meaningful adult relationships both sexual and spiritual when the currency of sex is so dreadfully cheap and brutal and accessible,also of course there is the new burgeoning branch of pornography I call shock/disaster porn. Killings atrocities violence captured on CCTV and mobile phones quickly appear on u-tube.
More rantings here.
http://www.johntaylorphotography.com/GAPE-i-126.html

Security – I’m thinking here of the 2007-2008 cyber-attacks against Estonia and Georgia, although they could also fall under “nationalism.”

I’d maybe strike “shopping” and replace it with “commerce.” It would better encapsulate things like the buying and selling of advertising (without which Google wouldn’t exist), all those ‘social media marketing experts’ whose presence looms large on Twitter and elsewhere, and the fact that older Web 1.0 sites like eBay and Craigslist are still around helping ordinary people who are more concerned with selling, not shopping.

I agree with adding crime or moral bankruptcy. The theft of intellectual property on the Web is an important issue — not just old-fashioned piracy but also the unauthorized repackaging of original writings (content scraping).

Crime keeps coming up – <a href="http://twitter.com/fishofsteel>fishofsteel on Twitter has also added it to the list with this comment: “Big feature of online life these days?”.

‘Shopping’ can also fall under ‘persuasion’, as in the techniques and the tools used to convince someone to part with cash. Not quite the same as commerce which, as you say, also includes the buying and selling of advertising. It’s a big topic, for sure. may be worth keeping the two separate.

‘Moral Bankruptcy’ is a great umbrella term for some of the other elements I have on the list, and keeps it separate from ‘sex’ (although clearly there are cross-overs).

Online community? Think it really is community per se.

How about the big D: Democracy. The way the web enables involvement in the democratic process is really beginning to bite. UK 2010: the Twitter election? How about a ‘rolling’ democracy, involving the co-creation of policy in preference to big party voted in every four years.

Loved The Virtual Revolution by the way.

Aleks, I think the Contribution Economy’s a biggie, aka Return on Involvement, however you want to put it. Loving your work, best, Anne

thanks for all the comments!

@tim – needed something for ‘o’ and already had loads for ‘c’…
@stevew – i suppose I thought ‘democracy’ would fall under ‘politics’ or ‘social change’
anne – contribution economy could be an aspect of ‘economy’, and perhaps ‘social capital’ or ‘exchange’…

The growth of User Groups

You have a problem, the answer is usually found in forums following a specific topic. Information and misinformation a plenty. Also the forums contain the No 1 hate & joy of the internet in the Fanboys. Why do so many discussions have to lead to such flaming. Games forums are the pits at times. But for all their faults forums are the ‘golden jewels of the internet’

Aleks – I can’t help but think so many of these are wrapped up in one big subject. ‘Globalisation’, ‘Social change’, ‘Participation’, ‘Justice’ and as SteveW suggested, ‘Democracy’. Final episode of your documentary touched on these themes. The scope for encouraging democratic participation as well as accountability is almost limitless. It’s fascinating as well as vitally important (in my opinion of course).
(G) Globalisation – What about the Anti-Globalisation movements and the massive rise of social activism and lobbying. This could all so easily fall into all of the other categories or maybe just (A) ‘Activism’. You only need to look at the likes of Greenpeace, Make Poverty History, War on Want and the recent Robin Hood Tax campaign to name just a few among thousands.

As for ‘Democracy’, it’s only natural that political parties the world over will emulate Obama’s strategies for utilising social networking. All three of our big parties are already on that bandwagon and the election build up has barely started. But what about grass roots participation and possibility for a disinterested youth to reengage with politics as well as developing through social networking and access to 24 hour instant news an interest in social justice and social activism? Think of the Facebook generation 15 years down the line…..

Big fan of The Virtual Revolution by way. Awesome job!

Democracy
Participation
Design

When we design … structures of participation … which produce meaningful expression of all … (rather than simply “everyone gets to talk”) … in new forms of democratic aggregation of opinion … so the public conversation can be steered by the participants … THEN _________________ (fill in the blank)

You seem to be low on ‘I’ and ’O’s… therefore how about ‘Intellectual Property’, or on the flip side ‘Open Source’? I guess you may have plans for IP in ‘Music’ but I don’t feel its exclusive to that; so thought I’d mention. Also, you seem good for ’E’s but how about ‘Environmental Issues’? – maybe slip it under G (Green Issues)- but I realise (at the minute at least) its more of a corporate concern rather than a public one (so maybe not that interesting socially yet)

Really looking forward to your ‘Language’ week… have a tonne of suggestions but will wait for a dedicated blog, or mail me.

E

Hi Aleks,

Very interesting project to look at how WWW has changed all the above. I’m a teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages so have certainly been affected in my work by WWW in both positive and negative ways.

My suggestion would be for L – I notice you have Language, but not Literature. What about the growth in things like online critiques of literature (more by fans rather than journos) and fan-fiction??

Anyways, I’m looking forward to what you have to say about all of this!

Best

Mike

Some thoughts for the less well-populated letters:
A Aging and Ageism
B Bureaucracy
F Fantasy Family
I Illiteracy
K Kinship (not the same as friendship but could be under Family)
O Opinion
Q Questionnaires Qualifications
T Travel
U Universe University

Public services. Our access to Government services online has only just started. Both parties are talking about becoming community enablers. Bottom up government. That could only be done through online tools that could efficiently support those endevours. This is the next step in government with crowd sourcing but with a heirachy and structure that can deliver results.

Meetings and Collaboration. Might sound obsurd but a very powerful use of the WWW. Travel is a derived demand of meetings. The more people can meet using technology, the more they won’t need to travel. This increases environmental sustainability, productivity and access for work in rural areas, disbalbed people and many others. Webex, GoMeeting, Skype are environmental solutions. If you go though to any environmental body you will not see someone from the technololgy sectors.