What shall I be today?

I started this blog 3 years ago when I was in the middle of a 6 year long bout of chronic insomnia. I was having trouble with my dissertation and, consequently, had nights in which I never fell asleep. At all. I'd lie awake in bed, thinking, and get up once I saw light in the sky.

I'd usually force myself to stay awake and go to bed early but sometimes, at least once a month, I'd go two days/nights without sleep. I did my share of chemical experimentation when I was in college but nothing can compare with going without sleep for 40 or 50 hours. You enter a different stage of consciousness, between wakefulness and unconsciousness. I used to put away my car keys so I'd stay off the road...I think sleepy drivers are a bigger cause of accidents than drunk drivers.

So, I started this blog as a creative outlet, a place where I could put out random thoughts and ideas, sort out things in my mind. And it was mine alone, I think I wrote on and off for a couple of years before I had anyone read my blog and post a comment. I was frankly shocked. I know the Internet is about the least private medium that exists but I was lulled into thinking of this blog as a personal diary.

Against the common wisdom that bloggers want bigger & bigger audiences, I haven't known how to handle having people read my blog, commenting on my entries. In one sense, it is extremely flattering and I'm grateful for the interest and people taking time to read but most people act differently when they know they have an audience. Before, no one knew who I was so I was free to say whatever I wanted because no one was listening (that I knew about!).

Since Twitter, all that has changed. I'm engaged in conversation with a lot more people online than I ever thought imaginable...and because I wanted to fill out the Twitter bio and there is a website link, I linked to this blog. In a sense, that was inviting, maybe even advertising, for readers.

So I've been trying to sort out in my mind what this blog should be...should I continue with the personal stuff that is more intimate and of limited interest? Or should I focus my writing on a topic like Twitter or social media and try to make an intellectual contribution, linking to other blogs and participating in a larger discussion?

The common approach now in social media is to blend ones personal and professional lives together but this goes against all of my training as an academic. I don't think that people interested in my social critiques want to hear me complain about my cat.

But I could be wrong! Let the experimentation continue!

Rend your hearts...Reprise

...not your garments (Joel 2: 13)

I always loved this passage on Ash Wednesday. I think it means that true sacrifice, opening one's heart and soul to change is preferable to large, emotional displays of grief and penance, overly pious attempts to beat oneself up, psychologically speaking....where one wallows in despair rather than making oneself vulnerable to the realization that we are imperfect.

Ash Wednesday is seen as a solemn ritual, one where you reflect on sin/errors, ways we've disappointed ourselves, others, or God, and how limited is our time on this Earth. But it is also about second chances, of leaving behind the wounds of past, those done by us or done to us. As the song says,

We offer you our failures,
We offer you attempts
The gifts not fully given,
The dreams not fully dreamt.
Give our stumblings direction,
Give our visions wider view,
An offering of ashes,
An offering to you.
"Ashes" (Conry)

We burn our past misdeeds, the sources of shame in our lives, our failings, into ashes and, like a phoenix, "create ourselves anew", hopefully, into a person more faithful to one's self and one's community. This can involve discipline and sacrifice but also forgiveness and redemption, and the happiness that can come from having integrity and a clear conscience.

May this Lent bring you to a clearer understanding of yourself and your place in the universe.

Edit: I am taking a Social Media fast day but broke it to repost this blog entry I first posted on March 1, 2006. It still holds true for me.

If you're unfollowed on Twitter, you probably shouldn't take it personally!

First, it's been 2 months since my last blog entry: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!* I felt like I had to have something worthwhile to say or something I felt strong about and lately, I've been reading more and writing less.



Second, this post is about Twitter. Since you're reading this, I'm 99.9% certain that you got here through my Twitter bio. If not, well, welcome & I hope you'll get something out of this blog entry anyway.

I'm writing this morning because I am feeling disillusioned. I'm a heavy user of Twitter and thought I "got" it. You post updates & share links, you start following people who post interesting things or who are friends of your friends, some of them follow you back, some don't. No big deal.

There are those people who intentionally keep their circle of conversation small & intimate and don't actively seek to make it larger. But most people who use Twitter see a slow but steady growth in followers as the number of individuals who use the network increases over time.

Early on, I learned about spammers, those annoying people & bots that are trying to get you to buy things from them. They mass follow people, hoping you follow them back and they can then deluge you with pitches for their products or services. They really are no problem unless you automatically follow users back. If you add followers one by one, well, you can ignore them & never get their messages so I didn't see the harm in their presence.

Over the summer & fall, however, many users got annoyed at spammers so the Twitter powers that be started enforcing Following limits to discourage spammers from following tens of thousands of people. There is now a 2,000 person following limit and, as I've been told, over 2K, you can only add up to 110% of the number who follow you...so, for example, if you had 10,000 followers you could be following up to 11,000 people.

I didn't pay much attention to all of this because while my account has grown faster than I expected, its growth has been fairly organic. I keep finding interesting people to follow and, somehow, people find me. I thought this is how most users on Twitter approached their participation on this social network. Oh, but I so naive!

I recently was clued in that there were users with thousands, no tens of thousands of followers who've only been on Twitter for a couple of months. What's up? Do they have special wisdom & insight? Stock tips? A hotline to tech heaven? The address book of The_Real_Shaq? Reading over the content of what they've contributed to the larger conversation on the network, it's been baffling to me. Who are these people & why are they so popular?

Well, apparently, not only spammers but real, live, flesh & blood users are mass following fellow Twitterers, apparently randomly, often taking names from the public timeline and unfollowing users if they don't automatically follow them back so that they stay under the 110% limit.

This seems so purposeless--why just collect random followers?--that it never occurred to me that it would be to any one's advantage to do this. It was growing your connection purely for the sake of growth.

Apparently this is quite common behavior, people expending what I can only imagine is a great deal of time & energy to get on the "top" users lists not based on the value or entertainment they provide to others but instead based on their strategy of accumulating a lot of followers in a very short period of time.

So why do I feel moved to write about this? This behavior doesn't violate any rules, doesn't hurt anyone and only affects the status lists of who are the most followed people on Twitter. Most people might refer to "A-list celebrities" but they actually have very little day-to-day contact with this elite circle of users. So who cares who's on or off of these lists?

Well, I frequently see Twitterers posting a plaintive message about why something they said caused them to lose a follower or two. Most likely though, it was nothing you said, it was just someone unfollowing you because you didn't follow them back within 24 hours. They weren't after actually connecting with you but gaining a few new people to add to their follower lists. Truthfully, that is no real loss to you!

So, to put a twist on the words of George Costanza, "It's not you, it's them. It's really, REALLY them!"


*Latin: My fault, my own fault, my most grievous fault.

Oh, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter

You don't realize how much you depend on something or someone until it is gone. Twitter is down and instead of the old, familiar and friendly Fail Whale they've substituted a new graphic which is a bit too cutesy for me. What do you think?

What do you mean, there's an election happening?

I don't have much use for political advertising but I came across this one on my friend Michael Chin's blog (http://www.michaelchin.me/)that I thought I'd share because it's more creative than the standard ads. Love the last line, especially.

Thanks, Michael, I hope you don't mind me "lifting" this!



P.S. As you can tell, I didn't win the Izea Blog makeover contest but I'll try to do something to spruce up the place within the confines of what Blogger allows.

Izea Blog Makeover!

The good folks at Izea are running a Blog Makeover Contest which I'm entering to win with this blog entry. I've never done a post related to a commercial product/organization before but in this case, they are a great company and this is a wonderful opportunity I can't pass up.

This blog, Spiral Scratch, is overdue for a makeover by a graphic designer. I created it over two years ago and it originally existed as a place where I could write during my frequent bouts of insomnia. So, the posts were personal, reflective and what you might expect from a sleep-deprived person...a tad inspiring but all over the map.

In the past six months, I've immersed myself in the world of social media and have really learned the amazing things that can be done with a blog, how they can become their own kind of forum, and I ache to move this blog from the personal & eccentric to the personal & professional.

I've begun this to a certain degree by changing the template from a beige, bookish, librarian model to one that is sleeker but I'd love to have a custom made logo and design even if that means I move my blog to another platform that would allow more customization.

I can't say I deserve this more than anyone else but I can say that the timing for a makeover of this blog couldn't be more perfect. The visual changes would be reflected in a refinement of content which would focus more on communication, social networking and the social impact of technology.

I've been debating for a while whether I should start a second blog but in this instance, I think a makeover, in style and content, might be a huge step forward that would benefit me and my small but growing readership.

To anyone who is curious, Spiral Scratch is a title of a song but 1970s/1980s band, The Buzzcocks, and refers to what a vinyl record essentially is...one very long spiral scratch. It was also the name of my first radio show. I'm hoping that a visual and content makeover would help me bridge the gap between old & new technology as we discuss how technology is affecting our culture in both large and subtle ways.

Thanks, Izea, for considering this entry!

Don't Stop Believin'...in Web 2.0?

In the wake of the steep decline of the U.S. stock market, there is a lot of breast beating going on online with tech experts saying that the financial excesses of some Internet companies and the end to easy financial credit signals the end to the social networking phase of the Internet commonly referred to as Web 2.0.

Entered as evidence is this video featuring staff members of Facebook, Drop.io, Blup.tv, and a Wall Street Journal reporter along with their friends. These 20 people, who are sharing a gorgeous house in Cyprus, created a video lip syncing a Journey song filmed as they wander around the house and swimming pool, clearly enjoying themselves on a beautiful Mediterranean day.

Seeing these young entrepreneurs having fun on vacation while their own investment portfolios were declining in value was too much for some online journals including Venture Beat who titled their article, "Silicon Valley Lip Synchs While Market Burns" and featured a photo of the Roman emperor Nero.

Even more dire was the tone of TechCrunch which launched a brief jeremiad:

They leave behind an absurd video that would have gone unnoticed a month ago. But this week, with the walls tumbling down, they look like a bunch of jackasses who have no idea what’s going on back at home. And this video will always be associated with the end of Web 2.0.

Judge for yourself:



The irony is that here are 20 people sharing a house on vacation in Cyprus while other tech people were attending a conference in nearby Greece and all of these entrepreneurs have undoubtedly have taken equally, if not more, excessive vacation trips with their friends and family. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

I'm sure you could find 20 well-off 20somethings from a variety of countries sharing beautiful vacation homes at any point during the year. The fact that the majority of the ones in this video work for Internet countries does not signal the demise of Web 2.0 which is a cultural shift in the way we use the internet.

Yes, it is a little painful to watch people enjoying themselves while you are losing your shirt or, in my case, are unemployed. But feelings of envy & jealousy aren't a solid basis to make predictions about the end of the world as we know it.