Previously, I have discussed how Internet (particularly online dating) varies with age.  Today, I want to take a slight different tact and consider Internet use as a generational phenomenon.

These data, no doubt, confirm expectations that Internet usage is less common in older generations; however, the severity of the drop in Internet use across generational groups is greater than virtually any other category, including gender, race, and class.   The generation gap still constitutes the greatest digital divide in America.

For more trend data see Pew’s “Generation Difference in Online Activities.”

This Economist blog compares Wikileaks to Facebook as part of a broader trend towards transparency throughout society.

There are echoes here of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s famously aggressive position that society is evolving towards more transparency and less privacy (a belief which is certainly convenient for a social-networking site that wants to be able to sell users’ data). Maybe it’s something about tech geeks, or maybe it’s just related to the self-interest of people and organisations whose particular strength lies in an ability to get a hold of other people’s information. But it definitely seems like we’re learning a lesson here: while information may want to be free, human beings are usually better off when it’s on a leash.

Additionally, this New York Times story summarizes the Wikileaks issue.

Advertising on social media is more than those segregated paid-for-spaces that display ads paid for by companies (e.g., on the far-right of your Facebook screen). This sort of paid-advertising has been shown to be so highly ineffective that some have predicted it will be the downfall of the social web. However, these predictions do not understand that the fundamental point of the social web (2.0) is that users are prosumers; they are simultaneously both consumers and producers of content. And advertising is no different. Advertisements that we simply consume worked in a consumer medium, like television. However, social media is a prosumer medium, and today we are the ones doing the advertising work of integrating corporate logos and branding into our profiles and news feeds.

Facebook’s ubiquitous “like” button reflects our modern task of self-presentation (and distinction) based on our taste in just about anything and everything, documented and compared to the various “likes” of any other visitor to your profile (and remember: what someone “likes” may not be what they actually like but what they want others to see that they like). In modern consumer culture, this collection of displayed “likes” will include corporate brands that one identifies with. This might mean clicking “like” on the Starbucks or Victoria’s Secret pages, which then becomes a part of your profile. more...

The New York Times asked their readers how to balance the federal budget. Click the image below to see how the 7000 replies via Twitter panned out [article | methodology].

If Web 2.0 tools are all about “democratization“, how might democracies utilize the crowd using Web 2.0 tools? We’ve spoken about how user-generated content makes us all “prosumers” of the web, that is, we are both producers and consumers of content. Isn’t democracy inherently a prosumer form of politics where we are (hypothetically) both the producers and consumers of political decisions?

Last week, Wiley-Blackwell held an online conference, entitled: Wellbeing: A Cure-all for the Social Sciences? I was an invited respondent for a paper that might be of  interest to Cyborgology readers called, “Internet Technology and Social Capital: How the Internet Affects Seniors’ Social Capital and Wellbeing.”  Below, I have reproduced my summary and comments more...

Facebook and other social-networking sites subsist on information, though not just any information. These sites have an insatiable appetite for the intimate details of their users’ lives. In fact, your personal information is a sine qua non for social-networking sites on two levels: 1.) People, primarily, use the Web to learn about the people and things they care about (like you). 2.) The same information that draws people to your profile, is useful in targeting advertisements to both you and your visitors.

Because these sites feed on personal information, they develop strategies to elicit such information from users.  For example, you may have to register and build a profile before accessing content.  The result as a sort of pay-to-play system where information is the common currency.  And, in order for this information economy to grow and intensify, it must continuously solicit new information and make more of the existing content public. more...

In the future, we will all probably have some Facebook skeletons. They might be regrettable pictures in various states of inebriation and/or undress, unfortunate status updates, etc. I’ve argued that the media has overblown these risks because, as the digital dirt on our collective hands becomes more commonplace, the stigma it carries will erode. However, the 2010 midterm elections in the United States suggest a point that I previously neglected: the stigmatization of digital dirt may be eroding, but eroding for whom?

It seems clear that the acceptance of a little digital dirt is occurring much faster for men than for women. And, what the 2010 elections made clear is that there is a double standard for women to keep a perfect online presence, while men are more easily forgiven. more...

We’re not living fully in our lives.  We’re living a little bit in our lives and a little bit in our Facebook lives.

Sherry Turkle has never failed to be a provocative and insightful theorist of human-technology interaction, but on this point, I could not disagree more.  Unfortunately, Turkle continues to reify the false dichotomy between the digital and material worlds.  We are NOT half in the digital and half in the virtual world.  Instead, we are all fully immersed into an augmented reality.

Moreover, I would argue that Second Life has become red herring in the digital/material debate.  Most Internet users don’t even know what Second Life is.  The paradigmatic example of online-offline interaction, at this historical moment, is Facebook, particularly Facebook mobile apps.

In any case, you can read the interview here and judge for yourself.

Rather than compiling my own charts this week, I have gathered a number of figures created by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that address in the US.  This first chart shows that it was only in 2008 that 50% of adults in America first had broadband access at home.  These data might not be the best representation of access, however, because we know that many people, particularly blacks and Hispanics, are accessing the Internet through mobile devices and may be living in urban environments where public wifi is ubiquitous more...

The brilliant blog Next Nature has posted a fantastic 1969 Playboy interview with Marshall McLuhan for you to enjoy. McLuhan is one of the most famous media theorists ever to write. Check it out.

Because all media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are extensions of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment.