From the beginning of Web101, it struck me how much negativity existed in the digital world. It was as though the level of anonymity that the Web afforded people was being used to make people feel good about themselves, by making others feel worse. People seemed to be able to say things to others, under the username of anonymous, that they would never say if it were a face-to-face conversation. Has the explosion of the digital world turned us all into experts in every field, therefore we need to point out very single error in anything anyone does. What ever happened to the idea, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”?
It was from this I decided that I was not going to follow along with the crowd; I was going to attempt to add a positive voice, encourage people in their endeavours and share things that are good. In an early blog entry I termed the positivity “pay it forward 2.0” in reference to the social media that I would be studying. I asked anyone who was reading my blog, that in their travels on the web, if they saw something they liked, thought was interesting, or felt like someone was putting in a lot of effort, to let them know. My hope was that people would take more notice of what they were consuming via the web and share some encouragement rather than criticising peoples ideas.
Before undertaking this unit, I was a casual user of social networking media. I would contribute to Facebook, and was looking into the world of twitter, albeit, mainly as an observer. I had long threatened myself and others that I would write a blog, and even set up a few, but I find writing without an audience quiet difficult. This is probably the fundamental shift that has occurred from this unit. My Opinion of blogging prior was that you write because people are reading. It was possibly only two or three posts and I was writing for myself and if others read it, well and good.
Rebecca Blood poses an interesting question in her article Weblogs: A History and Perspective. She asks if blogs are of any interest or importance to anyone who does not produce one. (Blood, 2000) It is Rebecca’s answer to this question that I have found true in my experience with blogging; particularly considering the direction my blog has taken. She says, “It reveals glimpses of an unimagined web to those who have no time to surf. An intelligent human being filters through the mass of information, packaged daily for our consumption and picks out the interesting, the important, the overlooked, and the unexpected.” (Blood, 2000)
Selecting the contributing nodes that would be included in my web presence was done in an organic fashion. In essence, I signed up to as many different web 2.0 sites as I could, and allowed the most relevant to become evident through use.
The first to be decided was Twitter, as it is this form of micro-blogging that is the most efficient and allows instantaneous connection with a vast number of people. My second choice was to use Delicious as it enabled me to save and tag interesting sites that I came across, or things that provided me with inspiration and about which I could share on the blog. “As these tags accumulate, they evolve into a folksonomy that allows anyone to search for content through the use of these keywords.” (Leaver, 2011a) Folksonomy is a fascinating word and one that I have never come across before. It is a “type of distributed classification system. It is usually created by a group of individuals, typically the resource users.” (Guy & Tonkin, 2006) This means they are a complementary method of organising information, and ordering search results. I found this to be immensely helpful when trawling through vast quantities of bookmarks, trying to find the one you are looking for.
Throughout my blogging venture, I still wanted to share my thoughts and things that I had found with other people. Twitter is a good place for this, however it takes time to build a level of followers that will read your posts, and as stated in the course notes, twitter is like a river that you check in and see what is happening at any given time. So unless followers are checking their feed at the time you post an update, it is likely to go unread. (Leaver, 2011b) This led to the selection of my third contributing node.
I chose to use Facebook as my third contributing node. I already had a list friends I was able to share my writing with, so setting up a dedicated Facebook page seemed a logical choice.
From the outset of this blogging adventure, I was not quite sure where it was going to take me. I was unsure what I had to say, or indeed if I had something to say at all. One interesting point that I have drawn from Rebecca Blood’s article is from blogging you discover your own interests, and a by-product of this is a greater value of your own point of view. (Blood, 2000) This experience has provided a deeper understanding of what I find important. It has opened my eyes to the importance of using the web as a space for positivity, but also shown that we still have a long way to go in fully coming to terms with the digital age.
My aim for this blog and future interactions with the digital world, can not be expressed any better than, “we urgently need to cultivate forms of self-expression in order to counteract our self-defensive numbness and remember what it is to be human.” (Blood, 2000)
References:
Blood, R. (2000). Weblogs: a history and perspective. Retrieved from http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
Leaver, T. (2011a). Topic 2.4 - content sharing. [course notes]. Retrieved from http://lms.curtin.edu.au
Leaver, T. (2011b). Topic 3.2 - social me(dia) rivers [course notes]. Retrieved from http://lms.curtin.edu.au
