Does the internet unite or fragment ?

[Folder]

I am concerned about fragmenting of society in general. I'm all for individuality, but it seems to me that the strongest option is a united collection of individuals.

 

 

Back during the summer there was a thread about the state of rock radio.

 

The majority of people on this forum seemed to imply that they really didn't care much about the state of rock radio because they had other sources for music and knew how to find good stuff on the internet.

 

One of my arguments was that I felt radio stations create a sense of community and that when everybody is listening to their own personal playlists on their ipods there is no longer a sense of shared culture. I don't think anybody commented on this and I felt most people saw no problem with it.

 

The internet is still very young and I think it's way too early to predict how it will impact society in the long run. A lot of people live in internet bubbles but as more information comes on line and people become exposed to different ideas and material I think we will see a lot of those bubbles begining to burst.

[MrKnobs]

Bravo. Very well said. But what are your credentials for saying this?

 

If two "experts" disagree here I just compare their post counts.

 

Not saying whether I choose the larger or the smaller to believe.

 

Terry D.

[UstadKhanAli]

If two "experts" disagree here I just compare their post counts. Not saying whether I choose the larger or the smaller to believe. Terry D.

 

Hahahahahaha!!!!!!

 

If that's the determining factor, you, my friend, should win every debate here on these forums!!!!! 75,177 posts is a huge number, the HC equivalent of Kobe Bryant scoring over 30,000 points in the NBA.

[Bookumdano2]

I use the web as a gigantic how-to guide. So, I'm not really engaged much. But the web is a cool replacement for my childhood WorldBook Enpsychopedia.

Dunno about uniting and fragmenting , but as I wander past all the kids, squinting at thier tiny displays, yakking about their restricted likes (or whatever), I'm mosying around the outer world, collecting all the money. Lotta old folks out here in the real world. Kids seem to be disappearing inward. So my vote is that the web is great at imploding people into the big black hole.

[Beck]

If two "experts" disagree here I just compare their post counts. Not saying whether I choose the larger or the smaller to believe. Terry D.

But so many of my posts are a page long or more, so we should get credit for word count instead of post count. Someone asks a one-sentence question and I respond with a two page answer... on this forum and others. So the ones with all the questions because they don

[Bookumdano2]

Someone asks a one-sentence question and I respond with a two page answer... on this forum and others.

 

 

I see dead tape recorders. They don't know they're dead, but they are. What do you spose is up with that?

[MrKnobs]

But so many of my posts are a page long or more, so we should get credit for word count instead of post count. Someone asks a one-sentence question and I respond with a two page answer... on this forum and others. So the ones with all the questions because they don

[Ernest Buckley]

The Internet like all things in life is what we make of it. It is a reflection of our consciousness.

[techristian]

 

Twenty years ago this type of help would have been much more difficult to get. It would have entailed hiring a consultant, going to classes or lots of reading.

 

 

LOTS OF READING ! I immersed myself in EM, Keyboard and Amiga magazines back then....well maybe 30 years ago.

 

Dan

[Ernest Buckley]

I am concerned about fragmenting of society in general. I'm all for individuality, but it seems to me that the strongest option is a united collection of individuals. I see fewer people caring about society as an organism with its own identity, that draws its strength from the collective individualities. SSS is actually a pretty good society. We have individuals with strong opinions and different backgrounds, yet they use that to contribute to this community. There's also a lot of interaction as opposed to posts that simply "broadcast." As a result, we have a working society. In that respect, we've brought our individual "fragments" into an arena where we can "unite."

Well, I`m a social-communist at heart if that makes you feel any better.

My experience seems to agree with yours when you say, "I see fewer people caring about society as an organism with its own identity, that draws its strength from the collective individualities."

The Internet is like I said in the previous post, a reflection of our consciousness. You can go anywhere you want on the Internet and its one`s thoughts that lead you to those places. Just like our regular everyday life. We consciously and subconsciously choose who, where, what we want to correspond with and give our attention, money, and time to.

I can`t tell you how many times while driving I will see people throw garbage out their windows. Or pull up to fast food restaurants or smoking... I don`t mean to be judgmental but we know these things are harmful to oneself and others and yet we continue to carry out these activities. I think there are a handful of people that honestly don`t care about society but I think most people are simply not consciously living their lives, they are doing what they do because they have always done that and they learned it originally from observing someone else and give little thought to why they do it.

A quick example... Several years ago my parents were babysitting and my mother was cleaning up after lunch and throwing everything in the garbage. I said to her that we recycled as much as possible and her response was, "Oh, I don`t care about that stuff, I won`t be around long enough." That remark really bothered me but I said back to her, "You may not be around long enough but your grandchildren will be and they`ll have to deal with the decisions you made." That completely changed her outlook and she now recycles.

I know this post may seem a little off topic because we are discussing the Internet but I think the same holds true for anyone who uploads anything on the net. We are for better or worse directing future generations and whatever we decide to "share" here will be here for years to come. We need to be consciously aware of that.

I may be in the minority but I really think the Internet needs to be regulated and we need to somehow limit accessibility to minors. I`m afraid of how distorted a child can and will become if they have complete access to the Internet. As a parent, I`m concerned for my children. Prior to becoming a dad, I was pretty liberal and I didn`t care but my priorities have changed and I know some will argue, "My priorities should not be dictated by someone else`s!" ... but I think we need to all ask the question, What is best for everyone?

It`s a socialist-communist perspective but I also think its a democratic one in that most people would agree that we need to protect innocence and freedom. And with that, we need more regulation and tougher guidelines as to where one can upload and how and who can gain access to that.

I`m all for freedom of speech but sites where content is inappropriate for minors should require authorization via a social security number or something. I know, I can already hear some of you screaming, thats a violation of my privacy! But thats really getting back to my original point, if one feels the need to keep their Internet travels private or secret, (out of fear, shame, or its "un-American"), perhaps one should reconsider their priorities and thoughts.

Peace,
EB

[blue2blue]

 

Back during the summer there was a thread about the state of rock radio. The majority of people on this forum seemed to imply that they really didn't care much about the state of rock radio because they had other sources for music and knew how to find good stuff on the internet. One of my arguments was that I felt radio stations create a sense of community and that when everybody is listening to their own personal playlists on their ipods there is no longer a sense of shared culture. I don't think anybody commented on this and I felt most people saw no problem with it. The internet is still very young and I think it's way too early to predict how it will impact society in the long run. A lot of people live in internet bubbles but as more information comes on line and people become exposed to different ideas and material I think we will see a lot of those bubbles begining to burst.

I've pretty much been running away from most shared culture since the 60s.

 

I don't mind sharing the Beatles, Stones, Frank Sinatra...

 

But when someone tries to drag me into the Taylor Swift/Lindsay Lohan sphere, I'm gonna be clawing at the walls to get out of that shared space...

[blue2blue]

With regard to protecting kids from the world, I certainly understand wanting to protect them from bad influences or outright threats.

But I think it's very easy for sincerely concerned parents to go too far. A child needs to develop his own sense of what's right and wrong. A parent can never protect a child completely -- without becoming perhaps an even worse threat to that child's healthy development. We need those teaching moments to help inoculate children from the very real dangers that run through life.

Happily, there are a number of ways of protecting the vulnerable on the web. The helicopter parents will immediately say, well, what if little Johnny goes across the street and uses the internet at his friends' house where they don't have any nanny-ware? Well, extend that to the 3DW. The real world has ugliness, just as it has beauty. We want to protect our kids but we can't be everywhere. That's why we have to give them a good foundation for dealing with disturbing influences they WILL be exposed to, sooner or later. If a kid gets his head on straight as a natural process of his expanding awareness of the world, it can protect him from the sorts of sometimes tragically rude awakenings that have victimized the over-protected since the dawn of civilization.

Censorship of public media tends to be not just highly ineffective -- and subject to manipulation for a number of potential reasons -- but it creates an artificial sense of 'protectedness' that may actually often prove more dangerous than free-flowing information.

As I'm older than many here, I well remember the idiotic blanket of ignorance that society and many parents tried to keep their children under. I was fifteen before I was able to start straightening out the incredible mess of misinformation I'd built up regarding human reproduction.

For years, I thought women got pregnant from simply sleeping next to a man. I was a mostly A student, a science fan, an avid reader and media watcher -- and that was the best info I could come up with. Later, after I put together a couple of graphic dirty jokes and the only 'sex act' I knew about [anal intercourse -- the street is an interesting teacher] I had a lot of trouble figuring out how a pregnant woman could defecate.

I've never shared that rather bizarre (and somewhat embarrassing) ignorance before in public -- but I wanted to here, because I think a negative example of what can happen when societal censorship is in place should be instructive.

The best antidote for bad speech is good speech.

[Sillypeoples]

Arab Spring / Occupy Wall St wouldn't have happened without social media.....so aside from people arguing over tone, in the macro view it's obviously pulled large groups of like minded sorts together. Keep in mind as well, as much dissension as there can be on forums, the fact remains, like minded people are HERE where with out the internet they would not be. So yes, it unites.

 

A personal observation is that social media has allowed us to enjoy humanity at a much more rapid pace...we come in contact with more people and their thoughts now.....good or bad...translates to being connected maybe through a skill set/knowledge base/affiliation, but at the same time finding so much opposition in the ranks.....

 

The problem is the mods that allow everyone access with no credentials. 2000 years ago, anyone that was an idiot was not allowed to argue with Socrates...so this concept of enabling and entitling everyone to a voice, might sound very democratic, but eventually it will shake out to less anonymity, less access by the morons...and the truth, knowledge, evolution of the net so to speak should embark once the idiots are culled from the ranks.

 

Right now social media is a frat party...idiots with lamp shades and beer bongs screaming and yelling, a fight out back, with me and a few folks in the kitchen having a beer and trying to talk about something real, trying to hear each other over the loud music.

[UstadKhanAli]

Arab Spring / Occupy Wall St wouldn't have happened without social media.....so aside from people arguing over tone, in the macro view it's obviously pulled large groups of like minded sorts together. Keep in mind as well, as much dissension as there can be on forums, the fact remains, like minded people are HERE where with out the internet they would not be. So yes, it unites.

That's a great example of unity through the internet.

Right now social media is a frat party...idiots with lamp shades and beer bongs screaming and yelling, a fight out back, with me and a few folks in the kitchen having a beer and trying to talk about something real, trying to hear each other over the loud music.

And extending the metaphor, I'm part of the band, smiling and drinking beer and passing out the hummus and chips while playing Can-like trance grooves for 23 people are dancing and swaying to out back, and I'm switching between a telecaster drenched in analog delay playing through a Carr Rambler and a Korg MS-20 monophonic synth adding ethereal filter-sweep textures, biting leads, and rumbling rich bass.

Seriously, I don't think it's so much like a giant frat party as it is kinda representative of life in general. There's people who are eating, drinking, going to do things, shouting from soapboxes, organizing, sharing art and photos, trying to cut a deal, trying to save the world, trying to be funny, keeping in touch with grandma, grandma trying to figure out how to upload photos of her beautiful grandkids, cat lovers (a LOT of cat lovers! ), musicians, vegans, foodies, hipsters, geeks, porn addicts, creeps, idiots, intellectuals, poets, average intellects, scientists, military peeps, lovers of nature, lurkers, mild-mannered folks, special needs people, insanely shy people, people looking to hook up, and weirdos.

Just like real life.

[UstadKhanAli]

But when someone tries to drag me into the Taylor Swift/Lindsay Lohan sphere, I'm gonna be clawing at the walls to get out of that shared space...

 

If someone is dragging you to that, I think you need to find some new friends.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

A quick example... Several years ago my parents were babysitting and my mother was cleaning up after lunch and throwing everything in the garbage. I said to her that we recycled as much as possible and her response was, "Oh, I don`t care about that stuff, I won`t be around long enough." That remark really bothered me but I said back to her, "You may not be around long enough but your grandchildren will be and they`ll have to deal with the decisions you made." That completely changed her outlook and she now recycles.

 

 

A lot of people don't take the long view, which is unfortunate, or think only terms of themselves when throwing cigarette butts out the window.

 

You can get really nihilistic going down this road, though. I know for me, sometimes in the midst of thoughts of keeping the world clean, you wonder how that's gonna happen when people can't even keep an airplane bathroom clean on a three-hour flight. But then you look and you see genuine progress and it puts it in perspective.

 

 

I may be in the minority but I really think the Internet needs to be regulated and we need to somehow limit accessibility to minors. I`m afraid of how distorted a child can and will become if they have complete access to the Internet. As a parent, I`m concerned for my children. Prior to becoming a dad, I was pretty liberal and I didn`t care but my priorities have changed and I know some will argue, "My priorities should not be dictated by someone else`s!" ... but I think we need to all ask the question, What is best for everyone?

 

 

I don't know. Your perspective does change as an adult. I don't have kids, so I tend to be on the side of parents needing to be the ones who regulate and monitor what their kids see. It's not easy. But you can have good learning experiences over discussing what is appropriate. Just like people have regulated TV or books/magazines for decades, smartphones and computers need to be regulated by parents as well, from my perspective. That's what I do at school, and that's what parents should do through general awareness as well as choices in software. I get a little nervous when the government starts regulating the internet. It's a slippery slope from there. You don't want to end up being like Burma or North Korea. YMMV.

[blue2blue]

Arab Spring / Occupy Wall St wouldn't have happened without social media.....so aside from people arguing over tone, in the macro view it's obviously pulled large groups of like minded sorts together. Keep in mind as well, as much dissension as there can be on forums, the fact remains, like minded people are HERE where with out the internet they would not be. So yes, it unites. A personal observation is that social media has allowed us to enjoy humanity at a much more rapid pace...we come in contact with more people and their thoughts now.....good or bad...translates to being connected maybe through a skill set/knowledge base/affiliation, but at the same time finding so much opposition in the ranks..... The problem is the mods that allow everyone access with no credentials. 2000 years ago, anyone that was an idiot was not allowed to argue with Socrates...so this concept of enabling and entitling everyone to a voice, might sound very democratic, but eventually it will shake out to less anonymity, less access by the morons...and the truth, knowledge, evolution of the net so to speak should embark once the idiots are culled from the ranks. Right now social media is a frat party...idiots with lamp shades and beer bongs screaming and yelling, a fight out back, with me and a few folks in the kitchen having a beer and trying to talk about something real, trying to hear each other over the loud music.

 

 

Forum moderation... now there's a tricky job.

 

 

I was more than a little taken aback when I was asked if I wanted to moderate the Songwriting forum here at HC (now the Songwriting Workshop, name changed by popular demand of the regulars).

 

The forum hadn't had a moderator actively assigned to it in a while and the few hardy regulars there had become cynical and wary about newcomers -- since most folks just came by to drop a little blatant self-promo for their latest upload or single or vid and didn't engage or add anything to the forum -- or even look at any of the other promo-drops littering the forum.

 

HC, of course, has a pretty wide-open reputation among online forums. The notion of forum rules and firm on-topic guidelines was a bit of a stretch -- even for the long-suffering regulars.

 

(It should perahps be noted that I first came to the SW forum to dump some blatant self-promo. In the late 90s and early part of this century, I was pretty tireless in that regard. But a guy burns out. Still, I knew the turf. I'd seen the half-dead songwriting forums, filled with no-response posts saying, "Yo! Check out my new tune!" I knew how little actual benefit there was in spamming those forums. But spamming was what the viral/guerrilla marketing gurus all basically told you to do. An increasingly bad scene.)

 

So, over a period of months, working with the regulars in the forum, we developed a very clearly defined set of on-topic guidelines -- and then developed a couple of spillover institutions to take care of all the quasi-essential little bits that didn't fit the narrowed purview of the forum. We ended up limiting thread topics to either songwriting craft/profession discussion or requests for feedback/critique on a work in progress. (That last has occasionally become a sticking point -- it sort of has to be an honor system kind of thing. But if you don't have some kind of rule, there, people will keep pulling old favorites out of their hat they have no real intention of rewriting. I know I probably would. I was not just a blatant self-promoter, but a shameless one. I've joked before: maybe forum moderation is a little like hiring a marshal on the 19th century western frontier -- you're probably going to end up having to hire a reformed gunfighter.)

[blue2blue]

Arab Spring / Occupy Wall St wouldn't have happened without social media.....so aside from people arguing over tone, in the macro view it's obviously pulled large groups of like minded sorts together. Keep in mind as well, as much dissension as there can be on forums, the fact remains, like minded people are HERE where with out the internet they would not be. So yes, it unites. A personal observation is that social media has allowed us to enjoy humanity at a much more rapid pace...we come in contact with more people and their thoughts now.....good or bad...translates to being connected maybe through a skill set/knowledge base/affiliation, but at the same time finding so much opposition in the ranks..... The problem is the mods that allow everyone access with no credentials. 2000 years ago, anyone that was an idiot was not allowed to argue with Socrates...so this concept of enabling and entitling everyone to a voice, might sound very democratic, but eventually it will shake out to less anonymity, less access by the morons...and the truth, knowledge, evolution of the net so to speak should embark once the idiots are culled from the ranks. Right now social media is a frat party...idiots with lamp shades and beer bongs screaming and yelling, a fight out back, with me and a few folks in the kitchen having a beer and trying to talk about something real, trying to hear each other over the loud music.

 

 

Forum moderation... now there's a tricky job.

 

 

I was more than a little taken aback when I was asked if I wanted to moderate the Songwriting forum here at HC (now the Songwriting Workshop, name changed by popular demand of the regulars).

 

The forum hadn't had a moderator actively assigned to it in a while and the few hardy regulars there had become cynical and wary about newcomers -- since most folks just came by to drop a little blatant self-promo for their latest upload or single or vid and didn't engage or add anything to the forum -- or even look at any of the other promo-drops littering the forum.

 

HC, of course, has a pretty wide-open reputation among online forums. The notion of forum rules and firm on-topic guidelines was a bit of a stretch -- even for the long-suffering regulars in the SW forum.

 

(It should perahps be noted that I first came to the SW forum to dump some blatant self-promo. In the late 90s and early part of this century, I was pretty tireless in that regard. But a guy burns out. Still, I knew the turf. I'd seen the half-dead songwriting forums, filled with no-response posts saying, "Yo! Check out my new tune!" I knew how little actual benefit there was in spamming those forums. But spamming was what the viral/guerrilla marketing gurus all basically told you to do. An increasingly bad scene.)

 

So, over a period of months, working with the regulars in the forum, we developed a very clearly defined set of on-topic guidelines -- and then developed a couple of spillover institutions (monthly showcases for all the stuff that doesn't fit the main forum, like career news, new releases, vids, awards, articles, basically wide open but contained in one monthly thread; the popular Friday Influence Threads; semi-regular collaboration opportunity threads) to take care of all the quasi-essential little bits that didn't fit the narrowed purview of the forum. We ended up limiting thread topics to either songwriting craft/profession discussion or requests for feedback/critique on a work in progress. (That last has occasionally become a sticking point -- it sort of has to be an honor system kind of thing. But if you don't have some kind of rule, there, people will keep pulling old favorites out of their hat they have no real intention of rewriting. I know I probably would. I was not just a blatant self-promoter, but a shameless one. I've joked before: maybe forum moderation is a little like hiring a marshal on the 19th century western frontier -- you're probably going to end up having to hire a reformed gunfighter.)

[Raymar]

If you want to really see how the internet truely unites people go over to the Political Party forum and its just like the 60s all over again! Its as if they're all high on acid, painted their faces and bodies, and are dancing in a big circle in the park!

[Philter]

 

If you want to really see how the internet truely unites people go over to the Political Party forum and its just like the 60s all over again! Its as if they're all high on acid, painted their faces and bodies, and are dancing in a big circle in the park!

 

The political forum is full of people with diametrically opposed ideologies who would most likely rarely encounter opposing view points in their day-to-day life offline. Yet here they are in the same forum duking it out.

[Beck]

The political forum is full of people with shallow bumper-sticker politics based on party talking points and rivalries between TV personalities from MSNBC, Fox News, etc. Some day many of them will realize how they

[Mark L]

I visited the Political forum once

 

Never again

[UstadKhanAli]

The political forum is full of people with shallow bumper-sticker politics based on party talking points and rivalries between TV personalities from MSNBC, Fox News, etc. Some day many of them will realize how they

[Folder]

But when someone tries to drag me into the Taylor Swift/Lindsay Lohan sphere, I'm gonna be clawing at the walls to get out of that shared space...

I think a lot of today's popular culture has been dumbed down and I loathe a good bit of it. But at least I'm aware of it and can complain about it.

[Anderton]

The political forum is full of people with shallow bumper-sticker politics based on party talking points and rivalries between TV personalities from MSNBC, Fox News, etc.

 

This. There seems to be very little independent research or fact-checking, they just take whatever they're spoon-fed by their media outlet of choice, and parrot it.

 

I've found the fastest way to end a thread in the PP is to present an objective, factual post based on researching different points of view, and giving links...which makes me think that maybe people are there just to shout, not learn.

 

One of the most shocking aspects is getting private messages from the most jingoistic/doctrinaire/hostile posters. One-on-one, they're almost invariably polite and literate. It makes me think some of them are really just adopting personas and participating in an exercise in stress relief.