Social Hallucinations

Public Privacy

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Image by PunkJr via Flickr

Privacy \ˈprī-və-sē\
1 a: the quality or state of being apart from company or observation : seclusion b: freedom from unauthorized intrusion <one's right to privacy>
2 archaic : a place of seclusion

I've lately found out some very personal facts about people I am connected with on Facebook but I have no close personal relationship with. It was a bit strange feeling. I felt like I was forced to peep into someone's life. Looking into someone's living room and hearing conversations without being seen or heard. I was wondering what should I do with this information, should I react or should I ignore. Of course, I should ignore as it wasn't my business but anyhow someone "forced me" to participate and in a way it became my business whether I wanted or not. I moved on, but I felt a bit strange for some time and took a closer look at different people's profiles. Now I was peeping into people's lives without being forced but drive by pure curiosity to see where the privacy begins. I was surprised to discover there were little privacy...People are literally life-casting and sharing the most private and intimate parts of their lives.

"I love you. I am so happy being married with you"*

"Morning coffee and sun in the garden, the dog has cold and in a minute cherries fall down on the terrace - life is OK"*

But let's start from the beginning. What is actually privacy on Facebook and other social networks? Is revealing your birthday date sex, hometown, Skype ID, trespasses the limits of privacy? I don't think so. Those are just a facts, external general signs of who you are that don't expose who you are a person. It is like showing your ID to someone in the real life, well people may learn when to send you birthday card and resolve the question - yes you are definitely the man - but they can't use those information to get any further into your life. Privacy has become the desirable value in 20th century after the fall of totalitarian regimes that were build around destroying privacy and spying on every aspect of people's lives in the name of protecting the ideology from the imperialistic enemies. We began to cherish privacy and the whole system of providing privacy was developed. We privatized everything from holidays to conscious and God. Then Interned bloomed and we were handed to tools to extend our social lives and we began to fear about our privacy even more...we fear people have access to our birthdays,skype ID's, location...while we freely and happily tell the word the story of our so private and protected private life via status updates, pictures, videos...

"Hey dad. Yes I come up on Thursday, I have free at 13.45. So we must just see if you have free before, otherwise I am just doing a little homework at the school .. Yes. I am also pleased to come up to you, and I am also looking forward to skiing with Mikkel and all the others, it will be great fun .." *

Our privacy has become public. The limits between privacy and public life are blurred. Our privacy has become public. We show our apartments, our friends, our parties, our newborn kids...Aren't we aware we are exposing ourselves to the world and people who aren't our friends? Did our  privacy zone shrink? Or are we using our private lives  as a form of creating ourselves (staging). Or maybe we just don't care cause we "aren't expanding our circle of friends but are strengthening our most important relationships"?

"have just received a very fancy invitation from the French embassy, I will do l'Ambassadrice de France the honor to attend the reception for the French national holiday, and I sit now and write reply..." *

What's privacy for you? Where does it begin?

 
*All quotes are from Facebook Wall Updates
 

Infinite Oz

Awesome website and storytelling experience. It is infinite. It sucks you in as you travel across the unique and fantasy universes. You are submerged with never-ending experience. Incredible and hard to stop to watch.

See for yourself

Ignore Everybody...But It's Not for Free

I've read to interesting books during my summer holidays: Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod and Free: The Future of Radical Price by Chris Anderson

And as I was clear and inspired on being creative after reading Ignore Everybody, I was confused after reading free. Hugh McLeod is fairly realistic about being creative, it doesn't come for free. It is paid with months of hard work, dedication, sacrifice and engagment while Chris Anderson writes about free that is part of gift econony but it is not free after all. After reading the last page I was pretty confused - is it free or not? What's the main thought of his? The confusion rose with every page and I felt many statements was rather contradictory. It was just like a collection of thoughts that weren't mature enough. There was something there, he touched upon it but haven't thought it yet. "Free" concept is rather difficult to work with as money are appearing always somewhere in the process. And when staff becomes free, only when money arent inolved? or are there any other forms of payments we should consider? Lot's of questions, few answers. And inspiration from Hugh MacLeod.

Read also Malcolm Gladwell's review and Chris Anderson reponse

Weekend Found

Amazing 3D movie - Oceansize - created by 4 students of Supinfocom Arles in 2008, Romain Jouandeau, Adrien Chartie, Gilles Mazières and Fabien Thareau.
You can check the official site for more stuffs and informations: oceansize-lefilm.com

Respect for the incredible work and atmosphere they've created.

Oceansize from Oceansize Team on Vimeo.

Branding Struggles

This visual is incredible. Branding path stretching for 110 years. It shows quite a struggle of Pepsi trying to find its identity while Coca - Cola stayed true to their visual identity through all those years. It seems it payed off in many ways, one of them is the fact that Coca-Cola is a more valuable brand than Pepsi.

 

Via We Heart Branding

How People Share Content On The Web

Facebook leads sharing but whats interesting is how many people use Twitter to share - it is the same percentage as per mail, which is interesting taking into the consideration the fact how many people use mail vs. people using Twitter. After all, Twitter is tailored for sharing as it makes it easy, accessible and fast - just exactly as sharing opportunities should be.

found on CHART OF THE DAY

Generation M and the Conflict of Generations

The situation, most of you will recall from the young years. You come back home very late. You  open the door quietly, so as not to cause noise, because you know everyone in the house is probably sleeping. You sneak slowly inside, creeping like a cat. You don't want to wake anyone, just head directly to bed to hide your too late arrival. But your efforts fail - there is always someone waiting for you. The conflict of generations - round one. Parents are angry cause they worried and feel deeply responsible for you and expect you to play by their rules and you are tired and think this is the storm in a glass of water cause you are grown up enough to decide yourself and do what you want - your independence from parents is crucial for you.

Each society has its own culture, a different era and different generations like every family. Every new generation is different and poses some other values, has other interests and what to emphasize and rationalize their otherness. The conflict of generations is as old as humans existed. Such conflicts seem to be an inevitable necessity. Only when two cultures / generations clash, their interdependence and fierce fighting can lead to the creation of something new, revelatory and riveting. Development as the result of conflict. Well, conflict doesn't need to have the negative staining. The secret lies in how we do play the rounds in the match between generations. How clever we are to use the old's wisdom to build something new.

Umair Haque writes "Dear Old People Who Run the World, my generation would like to break up with you." Every era has its own goals and tend to forget about yesterday's dreams, but trampling on the previous generations altars will not bring any good. I agree with Umair Haque that we need to "create an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity". We need to do instead of talk. But manifestos and breaking up will not take us there. In my humble opinion, it is interdependence along with fierce fighting and learning from the past success and fails that will bring us to the new set of values and allow to make a difference and move forward.

It is irrevocable, that everything is transient and the light of the young stars who just won over the old ones will be turned off later on in the curse of history as the new generations arrive. We need solid foundation anchored in culture and cores values to make a difference. Development. Otherwise we build house of cards. Every time the new winds blow, house falls down and the new generations come and build the new houses of cards, over and over again. In the result we never learn from the past and seem to start from the scratch.

The new generations like to rebel but overthrowing the old and replacing it with new manifestos doesn't guarantee the success. We can't cut off our heritage that shaped us and the society we are living. Not everything sucked what old people created as long as the new generation turned out to despise greed and crave for the new authentic and sustainable reality - we haven't been created in vacuum. The Generation M is the natural result of the collapse of the systems and economies that is happening in front of our eyes but it can't bury the past. It needs to learn from it. Generation M can't burn down the old monuments, it would be revolution and those usually lead to decapitations in the first place. Generation M needs to analyze the past, learn, blend and act, act smarter as it has the potential and tools to do so. After all, Generation M is a necessary reality, as if we don't introduce new trends, if we don't have ideals, and don't discover the new experiences, our world would be wishy washy and dull gray ... we would be stuck...

Photo by Pensiero

TicTac Micha Rocks Again

TicTac Micha is back. He didn't stop to entertain the world after the great performance in Copenhagen. The great response from all over the world, the lots of fan emails showed that TicTac Micha is great and there is the need for more.
So he is back with the World tour. The first stop was in Malmö, Sweden where he rocked at the midsummer party!


and here is his first performance from Copenhagen - watch TicTac Micha video here.

Stay tuned for more updated from Micha's tour by visiting his website. :-)

Back to Blogging

It's a long time since I've been here and wrote anything. It may look like I've abandoned my Social Hallucinations. Only spammers seemed to enjoy my absence, the less I wrote, the more spam comments and trackbacks they posted here. It's almost like hyenas that sensed that I didn't care. I did care but suddenly life struck me with its dose of suffering, serious problems to take care of and significant decision to be taken. I needed to prioritize. There hasn't been enough time for everything. With my fierce nature of jumping into projects and putting all my heart into them, it wasn't easy to find balance and put some things, like blogging and twittering on hold. It gives a perspective and fresh look. The less time I spent on twitter the less updated I was and unread posts in RSS feed piled up. What I've discovered was how much pollution I was exposed to. 3000 unread posts, maybe 100 worth of reading, thousands of tweets each day, 95% crap, social media guru-shmuru bullshit all day long, self-promotion, mutual masturbation of experts supporting and RT one another. I've realized I was trapped in the hunt of information, in the unfulfilled need of being on and up-to-date all the time. Why? Glittering lure of the new social web where there is little social but majority of information being pushed via various pipes. I took a break, looked at the blue sky and I realized I needed to clean up. So here I am at the beginning of my summer break ready to clean up the information clutter I've created around myself. I am ready to cut down and balance the digital life. And I am looking forward to get back following and having interesting conversations with some great people I've met in cyberspace, writing down my "social hallucinations”, getting wiser and just having fun. I do start it with reading paper book of Hugh "Ignore Everybody". Have a great summer! See you around :-)