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Does Global Social Communication Cause Bad Behavior or Reveal It?

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / SL time

This Tuesday, Mar 30, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
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This Week’s Topic

Does Global Social Communication Cause Bad Behavior or Reveal It?

This week’s news of serious threats against politicians, after passage of the U.S. health care bill, got me wondering “Are the Internet, the media and video games the causes of increased bad behavior, has bad behavior actually increased, or has global instant communication revealed the reality of the human condition more clearly, in a way we were not expecting?”

Many articles (and people) proclaim that the Internet, the media and video games are the primary causes of increased bad behavior. It is easy to rationalize increased bad behavior based on exposure to the environmental messages from the Internet, media and games, however might not be the case. However, it wouldn’t be the first time that a seemingly obvious conclusion does not explain the nature of human behavior.

What is bad behavior, in the context of global social communication? Is it taught and learned? Is it different, and if so, how is it different than bad behavior in face to face and non-online settings? Do parts of our social belief systems encourage or support the on-going existence of bad behavior “by design”? Is it important to us for bad behavior to be present (just throwing out a random hypothesis here…)? Is there value in bad behavior, or can we extract value from it? Has bad behavior increased, or are we just now able to see the scope of it more clearly? What are the causes, can we determine them, and what, if anything can be done about it?

This week we’ll discuss the nature of “bad behavior” in this context, both to better understand what it is, explore the causes, and see what may lie ahead of us as global social communication continues to develop.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

How has our Networked Society Changed Personal and Business Relationships?

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / SL time

This Tuesday, Mar 23, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Wells/97/56/27

This Week’s Topic

How has our Networked Society Changed Personal and Business Relationships?

Today’s society has changed, and been changed by, the emergence of systems and tools that have provided a near real-time communications fabric that connects us individually and collectively in new ways. They expose our social graphs, encourage us to explore each others’ social graphs, enable us to meet new people and re-connect with people we’d lost track of, all with speed and a level of ease and fluidity that was unheard of a few years ago.

It is easy to find commentary denouncing these systems as the emergent cause of the downfall of individual relationships and society in general. Is it really all one-sided? Are there advantages and positive changes brought on by our new socially hyper-networked world, as well as some risks and negative implications? We are in the midst of an evolution that is only enabled by technology, but is far more about us and how we relate than the technologies themselves. A while back I wrote a post The Networked Audience is Here. Now. Are You Ready? That post focused on professional presenters, but the true impact has much wider reach. This week we’ll explore the effects of these changes on our relationships in general.

How has the emergence of our networked society changed the way we relate to each other, the way we communicate, the way we create and maintain relationships? Have we started to change the nature of human relationships—what it means to be social, what it means to be part of a society, or what culture itself means?

Much of the literature on the web about the impact of networked society on relationships focuses on personal and intimate relationships, and this bias is reflected in the reading links below. That being said, the same issues apply to many types of relationships, including family, purely social and business relationships, so please read them in that light, as we’ll be discussing this larger view of the topic.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

An Exploration of Game-Based Education

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Mar 2, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

An Exploration of Game-Based Education

The incorporation of game-like elements have started to become more common in educational settings, as well as in business. The typical reason for these additions have been to increase “engagement” and interest. In some cases there are clearly documented improvements in objective results.

In this session we will explore common game-based approaches, find out how game-based curricula and approaches can enhance education, and discover situations where game-based learning may be ineffective or even counter-productive.

… I wonder if I put up a leaderboard and keep track of points for number of comments in the discussion whether it will further enhance the depth and quality of the discussion? (kidding… sort of?)

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

How do Social Media and Virtual Worlds Affect Cultural Translation?

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Jan 19th, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

How do Social Media and Virtual Worlds Affect Cultural Translation?

Cultural translation happens whenever we try to communicate across cultural differences. These differences might be triggered by language, ethnicity, geography, time or other conceptual variations that create communication hurdles. This week we’ll explore how social media and virtual worlds affect cultural translation, in both positive and negative ways.

What are the possible triggers for cultural translation hurdles? Where do they originate? Have new hurdles appeared with the rise of the always on, globally networked society, or are they just exposed in new ways? Do social media and virtual worlds assist in reducing or removing these differences, or do they exacerbate the problems?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon! Read more…

We thought we knew the world of public presentations. We developed material, practiced the craft and delivered an experience to our audiences. Our craft was to entertain, to inform, to provide an experience. The audience’s role was to sit, absorb the experience, be quiet, and wait until some lucky few have had their chance to stand and ask a question or make a comment.

Then things started to change rapidly. Technology-enabled societal shifts started moving the ground under our feet.

The Rise of the Networked Audience

Through global communication technologies, people of all types now have access to each other and access to information at any point in time or space. They’ve gotten used to the idea that they can and should be able to discuss, rate, rank, prioritize, link and create conversations in text with anyone, at any time. They comment on and rate everything—movies, web sites, blog posts, music, videos, books, vendors, manufacturers… and you… and me. Social media everywhere has made this hyper-connectedness a part of everyday life.

They expect to do these things with the premise that everybody gains. That it’s their right. That sharing information and opinions is a duty, a core ethos of society. It gives us all the ability to help mold the world by collectively indicating what we think is good, and what isn’t so good. It’s a way to help other people make choices. It’s a new way of looking at the world. It is a new sort of collaboration.

This kind of communication can be terrifying because everybody in the room and around the globe can now Read more…

“I don’t want to hear about your stupid breakfast!” is loudly proclaimed as a-priori proof that status updates, using Twitter, and in some cases blogging in general are a waste of time. Could it be that this apparent nonsense, including Tweets that explain why you woke up late, status updates that shout that a movie is stupid, and comments that some person is a dork, are actually a sign of something good?

Much of the content on the web is far from trivial. It is published in blog, status update and long form, and continues to grow in depth and breadth. I believe these apparently trivial and self-focused uses of social media are side effect of the fast and constant influx of new users of these technologies, and not a sign of a problem of any sort. Large numbers of new people continue to start along a developmental path that leads from triviality to personal learning, synthesis, creativity and personal development.

Lots of people publish status updates and blog posts to share personal “what’s happening to me this minute” thoughts. Over time, people start publishing different kinds of material, and end up in a very different place than the one in which they started.

Based on study of the public output of others, many discussions and personal experience, I believe that there are consistent phases of personal development that mark growth through levels of personal publishing facility, capability and goals. It would be interesting to see statistically significant study results in this area – but lacking that, here’s my shot in the dark. What do you think? Does this match your experience? Does it match what you see in the experience of other people?

The 7 Developmental Phases Of Personal Publishing (continued below the fold…) Read more…

“Social Engineering Goes Massively Multiplayer – Are You The Next Target?”

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Dec 1st, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

Social Engineering Goes Massively Multiplayer – Are You The Next Target?

The explosion of social networks has enabled a new level of study in human behavior. Never before have large social networks been readily available easily for interactive engagement. Social media “gurus” proclaim that they know how to generate results with social networks, yet we are really at the beginning of understanding both how networked societies work and how to harness them (or change them) to achieve results.

A week or so ago I noticed this post Social Wargaming – Triangles 2.0, announcing the start of a social network enabled serious game to determine whether “quantitative methods and social network analysis allow us to consciously and precisely craft the shape of social systems online?”

The advent of quantitative research applied to the development and manipulation of social media and social networks may be the start of a new generation of ability for marketers to reach audiences, and a potential dark side, or statistically driven, highly effective social manipulation on a large scale. Public references to various academic work in process in this arena suggest Read more…

“What Would You Do If The Omega 13 Was Real?”

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Nov 17th, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

What Would You Do If The Omega 13 Was Real?

“In the far reaches of the galaxy, a civilization is under siege. They’ve searched the universe for a leader. What they got…were struggling TV actors.”  This gem of a movie has an interesting discussion topic hidden in it, but you’ll have to keep reading to get to it.

Maybe Galaxy Quest, the 1999 cultish movie send-up that relentlessly pokes fun at the Star Trek cast, show and fans, is not really in mind as “serious drama” or “serious film” or “serious anything” but it was a funny and surprisingly good movie. As they say in the infomercials, don’t take my word for it — see the Rotten Tomatoes review below — they gave it 89% and even said you don’t need to have Trekkie knowledge to enjoy it.

By now, you are probably thinking I’ve completely lost it…and…while you may be right, there is a real We Are The Network topic in here below the break.

Read more…