Please stalk me

First there was Compuserve and Altvasita – sites for neatly categorising the Web’s early emerging content; then came the dominant force of Google. Some time later, “Web 2.0″ arrived – facilitating interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. In essence Web 2.0 constitutes anything from Blogger.com, to Flickr and its definition also extends to the more recent advent of social networking in the form of services like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo.

It is this form of Web collaboration that has taken the world by storm in recent years. Putting sharp perspective on just how much things have grown, the Metro newspaper reported yesterday that Facebook is subscribed to by nearly half of the UK population. The interest is forever high and forever growing. Users share millions of pieces of personal information in the form of text, video and audio, and whilst the visibility of user information that flows through Facebook’s pages can be restricted through a variety of (complicated) privacy settings that even the likes of Bill Gates would struggle to comprehend, users of the site are increasingly opting instead to open the doors on their personal lives; sometimes knowingly, but more often than not without in fact realising they’re doing so.

More recently, a new contender has stepped into the social networking ring: Foursquare.com. Foursquare is a “geo-location” service. It aims to connect users through geographical data; this not only includes physical global positioning, but information users provide on anything they find at any given location, be that a restaurant review or details of what dodgy alley ways to avoid after dark. The result is obviously a rich tapestry of information which subscribed members can make certain use of. You want to know where Uncle Jonny is today? Simple, jump onto Foursquare and there he is, sitting outside Hyde Park Corner tube station. Daddy’s late home from work and you want to know why? Log on to Foursquare to spot him at his secretary’s house again. The power of this application is undoubtedly phenomenal. Being able to track and be trackable wherever you are in the world has its obvious advantages and with the site recently hitting the milestone of 2 million members, it’s quite clear that people are more than willing to divulge their whereabouts to the world wide web. But at what cost?

The Guardian newspaper today took us on a stalker’s journey (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/23/foursquare). Using Foursquare, one of their reporters was able to quickly track and meet with a lady by the name of Louise within a matter of minutes. The ease at which the information was acquired and then made use of is quite an eye opener and a big warning to those of us keen enough to share with the world our wearabouts to maybe take a second thought or three before doing so.

I’d like to ask the question though – is all this personal information over-share really so bad?

I remember reading a year or so ago, that the days of privacy are dead and, if we want to get by in this world, then we must embrace the openness. I was reading an article at the time which voiced the concerns of residents of a local community on what they deemed as the unfair and over the top use of video surveillance technology. They were fed up, they said, with being watched.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, I read, people are installing cameras in their home for the sheer fun of it. The “enjoyment” of being watched is something more or less pioneered by the likes of programs like Big Brother and it is a reality that people are fond of the idea. Some people have gone so far as to claim that within fifty years we will all be enjoying the delights of being constantly filmed at home.

Sound crazy? Well we’re not that far from it already, when you think about it. How many of us get a kick out of telling the world what we had for breakfast this morning? Answer: a lot of us. So imagine the world watching what we have for breakfast instead. It’s really not that inconceivable, is it?

But back to my question: is all of this openness and invasion of privacy so bad? I think the answer to this is it is of course both good and bad. Good in the sense that we have a more open, transparent existence, bad in the sense that you may well be three clicks away from finding out I’m at the local sex shop. The pros and cons are clear.

But it is also inevitable. As people continue to jump on board with things like Twitter, things like Facebook, things like Foursquare, they go one of two ways: they either love it and stick around, or hate it, leave but never completely forget. The idea is planted and the appeal of the thing is eventually replaced by necessity. “You don’t have a Facebook? Are you mad, how can you possibly keep up to date with people!” It has become the norm to have these tools at our disposal and to fully embrace them without fear of ridicule.

Something like Foursquare pushes this to a new level. At first the idea seems ridiculous, overly invasive with no concern for privacy. Exactly right. But on the other hand, forget all that, embrace it and pretty soon you won’t be able to live without its benefits. And you think you won’t? Just give it a year or two.

Workspeak

For decades the working man has used a selection of phrases, acronyms and buzz words to motivate, inspire and in most cases confuse his fellow workers. The rule of thumb tends to be, the more confusing the phraseology, the more mystery it creates, leading to (initially) admiration for the speaker, increased productivity and a greater tendency to fall in love with the speaker and/or arrange coffee dates. Sadly the positive effects can only linger for so long. The admiration for the speaker deteriorates over a matter of hours or days and is replaced by acute confusion, followed swiftly by a noticeable break-down in communication and understanding.

I ask you, am I the only one who wants to cut through this crap? I don’t imagine I’m alone. In the ten years (yes, ten whole years now — fuck!) I’ve been in and out of digital publishers and creative agencies the city over, I’ve experienced more than my fair share of what I like to term as bullshit phraseology. Why just yesterday I sat through an hour long meeting where the man in the chair used such phrases as “In this new dawn…”, “We have to shoe-horn this functionality…” and, my personal favourite “We’ve got to pick the low-hanging fruit while it’s still hanging.” Jesus, it’s enough to make you consider momentarily that the man in charge might in fact be a closet poet. Or to consider momentarily killing yourself – I’m not sure which (sometimes I flit between both ideas; different scenarios play out in my head: in the first, he’s dipping a quill lovingly into a pot of thick black ink, looking up at the summer blue sky with wonder, before looking down upon some crumpled paper and carefully writing the sentence “In this new dawn of low hanging fruit” on the page before beaming back at the rest of us with a satisfied smile. In the other, I’m standing up while he’s full-throttle on his corporate preaching, making my excuse to suddenly leave the room due to “toilet trouble” and heading for the roof, making long strides towards the building’s edge and praying that the fall doesn’t just break both my legs).

I mean it’s just unnecessary! That’s my point. It’s just plain unnecessary to attempt to tart up what will always be, no matter what, an absolutely dull and lifeless line of work (let’s face it, all office work is dull and lifeless, I don’t care if you work for Apple or Google, it’s still shit) We don’t need this crap – our days are depressing enough as it is without having to try to translate the mystical dialect of the corporate preacher. Just give it to us straight. Instead of “low hanging fruit” how about “obvious opportunities”? Instead of “new dawn” how about “well it’s kinda, like, different now…” – or whatever! Get my drift? Stop thinking you’re Obama, or Ghandi. If you think you’re Obama or Ghandi then stop working in an office and start hanging out at disused polling stations and so on.

There is no place for such language at work – We’re tried and tired enough as it is.