The New New Thing

A friend just asked – Do you revisit what you wrote a year back? And if you do, how often? And what is your reaction after reading it?

A very interesting question indeed. Here are my answers.

1. Yes, I do revisit my blog. Most of the times I revisit my old posts if I want to check what I wrote, back then. I also go back to my old posts in case I want to link them up to the new ones.
2. My reactions after reading most of the old posts is that how mundane, boring and commonsensical were they. This effectively mean two things. Either I am growing up as a person (and thus things that I wrote ages ago sounds common-sensical and a product from Captain Obvious) or my interests are changing (that I dont give as much importance to an event now that I gave, say a year back).

What about you? Do you revisit your blog? What is your reaction once you do that?

The Dream Job is here. Island Reef Job. This is truly a dream job for someone like me. It is about travelling, meeting new people, experimenting with things, blogging, photography and above all unprecedented experiences.

As like other great things, idea is fairly simple. Tourism Queensland is looking for an island caretaker and a blogger to stay/work on the Island for 6 months and tell the world about it.

The job description states

Tourism Queensland is seeking applicants for the best job in the world! The role of Island
Caretaker is a six-month contract, based on luxurious Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier
Reef. It’s a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities include
exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer.
You’ll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland
headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video
updates and ongoing media interviews. On offer is a unique opportunity to help promote
the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Other duties may include (but are not limited to)

• Feed the fish – There are over 1,500 species of fish living in the Great Barrier Reef. Don’t
  worry – you won’t need to feed them all.
• Clean the pool – The pool has an automatic filter, but if you happen to see a stray leaf
  floating on the surface it’s a great excuse to dive in and enjoy a few laps.
• Collect the mail – During your explorations, why not join the aerial postal service for a
  day? It’s a great opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of the reef and islands.

Sounds like an easy and EXCITING job. The selection process might be tough. You need to be able to share your story on a 60 second video, go through 4 elimination rounds before you land the plush job.

I am applying for it. Need suggestions and help. Any tips?

As part of the work at Creativeland, I need to observe current trends amongst the youth of country. Apart from other things that we do, I also use MobShare.in for the same.

MobShare is a mobile media sharing website. They have placed bluetooth hotspots across CCD outlets in India. Users can connect using bluetooth and uplaod their pictures and other media files on mobshare servers for free. These files are then made available on mobshare.in, WAP portals, mobile screens and are displayed at CCD outlets on DSN screens. Mobshare is all the more interesting because they are available across the country. Sitting in Mumbai, I can see what youth at, say, Kanpur is doing at a CCD.

Its amazing the range of images that users share. An account planner can easily spot certain trends. Apart from sharing pics of themselves (aspiring models? lure of a big screen? gratification?), there are pictures of groups of people (my friends are more important than anything else), bikes (bikes are still the “cool tool”), gods (how? why?), pets (understandable), movie stars (fandom still sells more cola in India than any other gimmick) etc.

Obvisouly it represents a small sample of population that goes to a Cafe Coffee Day AND clicks pictures AND wants to share AND reaches the website. But overall its a nice tool that I use on a daily basis. If I could add few features on the site, I would want

• A larger base. Probably presence at more locations (malls, other coffee shops, colleges etc.)
• An advanced search feature that allows me to search using tags, location, date etc.
• Ability to contact the people who uploads a certain picture. I dont know if this data is archived when a photo is uploaded. But this could be an interesting addition.

Do you know of more such websites where Indian youth actively shares media?

P.S.: MobShare is a product from MobMe. I have met Vivek at MoMo Mumbai Dec session. He shared the fact that they get more pictures from Kanpur as compared to Mumbai. Kanpur? Sharing more media than Mumbai? Hmm .. !

There exists a silent, underground network that has reached the cult status already – The Mutual Admiration Society.

The idea is fairly simple. You scratch my back and I shall do the same to you. Or in simple words, you promote me and I promote you. Lot of people join this society because they need some sort of approval on their actions and thoughts. You dont have to make sense. You dont have to create anything of value. You just have to sound good, be loud, scratch someone’s back and wait for the response.

This society manifests itself in even better manner on the Internet. Internet has made publishing fast and easy. Everyone with a computer and an Internet connection is now a publisher. Needless to say a lot of noise is added to ever diminishing signal.

Few unwritten and unspoken rules of the MAS society could be

1. Thou shalt be loud AND secretive.
2. Thou shalt not have less than 500 friends on Facebook, more than 500 connections on LinkedIn and follow more people that who follow you on twitter. (BTW you can follow ME here. :D). And yes, flaunt these everywhere.
3. Thou shalt have 2 page long signatures with links to every single word you ever wrote on the Internet.
4. Thou shall have a blog and would repost and reproduce content from other members of MAS popular bloggers. And thou shalt pimp the links on facebook, twitter, orkut, signature and every other imaginable place.
5. Thou shalt at all times adhere to these rules and make them more inclusive with time.

What other rules can MAS have? Can someone also point to few members of this underground revolution that is sweeping over the online world? Obvisouly, I shall keep you behind the anonymity veil.

P.S.: This post also marks the beginning of a new category on my blog – People Watching. Its an attempt to observe people and make interpretations. After all, the great Yogi Berra said …

You can observe a lot by just watching.

Prof. Michcael Wesch, probably best known for his Youtube vids on Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us delivered this awesome lecture/vid titled Anthropological Introduction to Youtube at Library of Congress. More details are available on his website at mediatedcultures.net.

In this lecture he talks about few very powerful ideas including

1. Impact of youtube on society and impact on the participants
2. Participant observation as a tool for anthropological research
3. Youtube vids permeating across time and space
4. Loss of context on youtube vids
5. Anonymity of watching vids on youtube
6. Talking to a camera rather than talking to a real person
7. The very first youtube vid featuring Jawed
   

He also talks about few Youtube memes like

1. Charlie bit me (first introduced to me by @Sheetal_Kini via this update)
2. Lonelygirl15
3. Numa Numa (the meme that started it all)
4. MadV – One World (surprisingly I hadnt seen this earlier)
5. Freehugs

Here are my notes from the vid. Please note that these would be incoherent and probably would not make sense to anyone but me. The text in ( ) is addition of my thoughts to what Prof. Wesch has spoken.

1. Most youtube vids are created for less than 100 people
2. Youtube is a medium for self immersion – people use youtube when they are enjoying themselves and they dont care
3. The web is no longer about information or data. (At the very core, it is about linking people. Sharing of information and collaboration happen because people collaborate.)
4. Web allows people to collaborate across space and time.
5. Web is about user generated content creation, organization (delicious), filtering (alltop) and counting (technorati).
6. Web is an integrated media scape with user at the center. Most of the youtube users are between 18 and 34.
7. Remixing is as big as content creation itself. About 15% of vids are remixed versions.
8. A lot of videos are addressed to the youtube community itself. (I lost the number when I was watching but this is very important for me at least. When am addressing something to the community, I am actually fulfilling my primal need to belong to a group and being together with someone. On the Internet I am alone and yet part of a group. Any new Internet meme has to address this.)
9. More individual we become, more we want to belong to a community.
10. All the youtube users are addressing an invisible audience.
11. You dont know when, where are they watching you. You dont know the context in which they are watching you. The context collapses.
12. When you are on youtube, and you create your videos, its like everyone is watching and yet there is no one. (You actually give permission to random strangers from across the world to watch you).
13. On the other side, when you are watching, you are anonymous when you are watching someone (compare yourself to the Big Brother from 1984. You are in control and the other person would not even know that you are watching him)
14. When you are watching, you are distant from people. And hence they are relaxed and there is no social anxiety. True emotions thus are discovered.
15. (Comfort of crowds – Everyone else is doing it and I dont mind doing it myself)
16. (Internet puts a wall between real you and physical you. Actions in real life are carried out by the physical you and you are accountable. One the other hand, behind the Internet curtain, you are not accountable for your actions and you can be yourself. You don’t mind doing things on Internet that you would not do in real life)

And these notes obviously sparked a lot of new ideas. Overall a good video and again must see (like other notes on my blog).

What do you think? Did I miss something? What are your thoughts?