Early Adopters, Laggards, and Blogging

Gartner Inc., a tech research company, predicts that the adoption of blogging softwares will peak in 2007 and then level off. The CBC reports that this is not due to an inherent flaw in blogging but that this is characteristic of all new products. I learned this in an undergraduate course on marketing. First, early adopters snatch up flashy new products and through word-of-mouth spread news and hype/trash about the good. New customers follow in waves depending on their relative openness to new goods. With techie goods this tends to have a very rapid progression; DVDs for instance were one of the most quickly adopted formats. Laggards are the type of people that still use a VCR and disdain DVD technology, searching stores for VHS cassettes.

The article on blogging notes that those who would want a blog would have started one by now, and those that had one and were disenchanted have moved on. Sure, those who are into trends have probably moved on somewhere else, but I think blogs have great potential, especially for research, collaborative work, and distance communications. I have seen many grad students blogging for posterity, posting their findings and jotting down preliminary observations. When I worked at MDCN, we blogged questions, process, sources, and plans. Finally, with the many profs and students one meets at academic conferences and meetings, blogs make a great method of keeping up with diverse research projects.

Obviously, my position as a student researcher flavor my view of blogging. I know some of you out there blog as a professional endeavor, as a personal diary, and as a method of keeping in touch with loved ones. Do you see a future in blogging beyond the rise and fall of consumer goods with planned obselence?

MySpace Goes Medieval on Sex Offenders

The CBC reports that MySpace, in collaboration with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp, is now using the software Sentinel Safe to locate and subsequently remove registered sex offenders from the site. The software works by comparing the data of the sex offender registry to the information in users' MySpace registration, including name, age, hair color, distinguishing marks, and hopefully in the future, email addresses.

I have two seperate problems with this, neither of which have anything to do with defending sex offenders. 1) Do people really think sex offenders on the prowl on MySpace would provide their actual name, age, or other information? Furthermore, do you think, with the ease in using public computers and signing up for free email addresses, sex offenders looking to do no good would honestly register all of their email addresses? 2) What is implicit in this project is that the administrators of the website regular troll your personal information in order to surveille and regulate their site. Why do we have rooted problems with the government doing so, and yet none with commercial websites? MySpace is only one example of the freedoms we extend to commercial ventures and yet fight against in RL (for instance, zero intellectual property rights in MMOGs).

Obviously, in theory the idea is pretty nice. But you know what really protects people against sex offenders, including children? As I noted in my previous post, media literacy. This includes navigating virtual communities where a person could come into contact with just about anyone. Instead of assuming that the structures of a given site will protect you or your kids, teach them and yourself how to deal with people online, including keeping your personal information guarded, never making plans to meet someone alone, and always keeping in mind that anyone could be behind the adorable screen name.

PS3 Can Cure Cancer? I Knew It!

It must be true, cuz Sony said so. To quote the extremely credulous CBC article, "when Cure(at)PLAYSTATION 3 is launched, PS3 owners can register their machines with Stanford, download specially designed software and leave their machines online to process data when they're not playing". This is all supposed to go down when the console is available worldwide, which means at least spring 2007.

Damn, and when I read that headline, I thought the stone cold foxes of Eyedentify would infiltrate yet another place they should not and magically laser tumors through your TV screen. Bummer.

CBC's former Middle East Bureau Chief Gets a Second Life

The CBC's online portal today has a feature by Adrienne Arsenault about her forays as a "cyberphobic" in Linden Lab's Second Life. I am always drawn to news of Second Life because of my own lack of experience in this area (somewhat like reading about the techno cultures of Japanese youth). The article serves as a basic introduction to the virtual world and its two most salacious elements, money and sex. Yet I was warmed by the account of several Second Life users with cerebral palsy who were able to move around and make friends in a way they were not able to in their 'first life', and who used the money they made in this virtual world to contribute to a tsunami relief fund.

I was also interested in her citation of Tim Guest, author of a forthcoming Second Life book, who stated that the mass migration towards virtual worlds offers an ease of the pain of real life, which includes greater isolation and reduced economic health.

What bothers me is the resemblance of Second Life to MUDs, MUSHs, and MOOs of the 'olden' days, except with a thorough proliferation of commercial interests. But, from the sound of it, these capitalist influences have not kept people from staking their virtual homesteads (in the words of Howard Rheingold) in Second Life. I wonder how people navigate this....