Les réseaux

(2012) - Library High Tech News - Hot off the Press (2) - Web Culture and Social Medias

in LHTN, Vol. 29, Issue 3, 2012

Hot off the Press! is a column dedicated to new trends and tendencies in information technologies and social networking, with a note of the items' value to technologies in libraries. Also mentioned in the column are new books on topics such as mobile computing, social networking, and even novels with a focus on technology. Highlighted are some technology blogs, web sites, archived webinars, movies with a technology theme, and more.

Web Culture, an encyclopedia

What is the common point between Chuck Norris and the French politician Frederic Lefebvre? Answer: both of them were the targets of net surfers and thus they belong to the history of the web. The web is now a common media, going inside the life of everyone, with its rules (or its nonrules[...]), and is in continuous development. This world, the world wide web, needs some explanation. This has been done by two young French journalists, Titiou Lecoq and Diane Lisarelli who present their Encyclopaedia of the Web Culture (ENCYCLOPÉDIE DE LA WEB CULTURE de Titiou Lecoq et Diane Lisarelli. Paris, Robert Laffont, 258 pp., 23 euros).

Focusing on 100 words, they offer a large range of the characteristics of this media, even as it is permanently evolving. With a lot of humour, the encyclopaedia covers both futile and serious subjects: "It would take a thousand years to look at all the videos on YouTube" or "André Breton invented the blog before the Internet". If you were asked, do you know what a "kikoolol" is? ("a pre-adolescent having the characteristic of expressing him or herself exclusively in texting language on a forum, a social network or an online game"). Do you know the history of the word "spam"? The term, which appeared on a forum "dedicated to Monty Python at the beginning of the World Wide Web", was "a spiced ham registered trademark"[...] Indeed, "during the second world war, the soldiers of the allied forces were largely ‘spammed', with 15 million boxes of ‘spam'[...] According to the BBC, the forum parodied radio publicity for the famous ham, and finally popularized the expression ‘spamming'". With these definitions, you can see the general tone of the encyclopaedia[...] You can also receive some useful advice like "The golden rules of a good password" or discover what it means to be a "troll" on the internet ("a bad guy with bad intentions").

The encyclopaedia offers some more serious contents such as "Political clout on Twitter in 2011" or some information about social media such as this: "Although very connected, the Japanese do not have the same use of the social networks as the French, and they attach to it less importance." For proof, "they would have a score of 20 friends on average on Facebook, against 95 for French". Further, with the letter Q, one discovers how "the porn industry has invaded the Web" between the beginning of the year 2000 and today, with "12% of world Internet sites are pornographic (that is to say 25 million sites)"[...].

Writers' houses: where the creators create

The New York web site "Brain Pickings" (that I recommend for its originality), brings attention lately about the houses of writers and the fascination they exert on the public in general, and on the readers in particular.

For some travellers, during a trip, the visit to the house of a writer is a required passage: Einstein in Bern - Switzerland, Dürrenmatt beside Neuchâtel in Switzerland too, Proust with Illiers-Combray, Voltaire with Ferney, Balzac in Paris - France, Rabelais in Touraine [...] the list is long and exciting. For my part, the visits to Hemingway's splendid residences in colonial style in Key West or Havana represent an unforgettable memory: the silhouette of "Papa" with a glass of whisky in his hand, a dog at his feet, installed on an old leather sofa is almost palpable.

Even more memorable is the visit in Moscow to the houses of Pouchkine, Tolstoï, and Gorki [...] all superbly restored, allowing open windows on the nineteenth century. This fascination is due to the idea of literary creation: in people's minds, every writer's house appears to be THE place for creation and this is an enormous factor of attraction. Then, do not forget, the time of the holidays can also be the time to discover the house of your favourite writer.

Brain Pickings defines itself as:

[...]a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn't know you were interested in until you are.

Brain Pickings is your LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces across art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, you-name-itology. The site includes pieces that enrich your mental pool of resources and empower you to combine them into original concepts that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful - a modest, curiosity-driven exercise in vision- and mind-expansion. Brain Pickings publishes a weekly newsletter.

For further information, please visit the web site:  www.brainpickings.org/

I met my son on Facebook[...]

In December 2011, a French weekly magazine (so called Telerama) published a very funny article - but so true - about social media, Facebook and families.

This is the story of Emmanuelle Hemon, a Parisian woman working in an advertising agency, with two children, Penelope and Oscar, and her husband, Jacques. Emmanuelle is very proud to have had her Facebook page well before her own children, and she has now 600 friends[...] Penelope, 18 years old, counts 400 friends and Oscar, 16 years old, has 240 friends. The three of them are feeling "a little sorrow" for their father, Jacques: he has « only » 104 friends. Obviously, Emmanuelle's whole family is on Facebook, with nephews, cousins [...] sharing information, photos and news of all kinds. Even the grandparents, Jacques and Christiane, 85 and 83 years old, have:, respectively, 14 and six contacts on Facebook.

This is a very open minded family, living in harmony. Penelope finds that:

[...]it is cool to be all together on Facebook. But honestly, besides my brother and my cousins with whom I chat quite often, I interact little with the oldest, they do not have the same use of Facebook as us.

Emmanuelle has never sent a "request to be friend with her own children. It was up to them if they wanted their mother to be a friend". A "chart of good behavior" has been decided: she never (the mother) says a word about the Facebook pages of her children, but she very discreetly sometimes has a look on what they put on their wall or their photos (and sometimes suggests them to take out a photo in swimsuit or a shoot with a strange cigarette[...]). She lets them manage their page like the adults they claim to be. In short she juggles, like all modern parents. It is a fragile balance, where each one tests the limits of the other. And when the cohabitation weighs too much? It is always possible to modify the complicated parameters of confidentiality, to close his profile, to draw up "lists" of privileged friends, or to create an additional account. Nathanaël, 25 years, for example, created a parallel group - "My mother is on Facebook!" - to share funny experiments with other people on intergenerational matters. The ultimate solution?: to escape from Facebook. According to Dominique Cardon, sociologist and researcher at Orange Lab, "increasingly numerous teenagers turn towards blogs or other social networks to find a space without adults, a space they need".

For further information, please visit the web site:  www.telerama.fr/medias/j-ai-rencontre-mon-fils-sur-facebook,76360.php

"Naked on the Web" according to Jeff Jarvis

Do you know Jeff Jarvis? He is an American journalist and in 2011 he published, "Public parts: how sharing in the digital age improves the way we work and live," in which he defends the openness of the internet, discusses ways in which the internet has made modern life public, and argues against regulations to protect privacy. His book was translated to French at the end of 2011, and he gave an interview to Le Temps, a Swiss journal. Jeff Jarvis is an American internet activist. At 57 years of age, this New York journalist became professor of "entrepreneurial journalism" at New York University, and he is now a reference in the blogosphere with his Buzzmachine blog ( www.buzzmachine.com/). He dissects there the latest tendencies of the new economy and the media in the digital age. Liberal as one would say in Europe, this "always connected" who adds up 29,000 tweets and counts 87,000 followers on Twitter has his table at the Cantine in Paris when travelling in Europe.

According to Jarvis, with the internet, we also acquired the possibility of sharing our lives while making them public. He had cancer of the prostate and decided to announce it publicly because he thought that could help him: and indeed, a lot of people share their stories with him. We focus too much on private life today, without seeing all the benefit of sharing it with other people. Is the respect of the private life the real supreme value of the "homo connecticus"? Mark Zuckerberg says that social networks do not change the human nature but increase its possibilities.

What are the limits? It is up to each one of us to define them. For example, Jarvis refuses to speak about his family, his colleagues or his friends on the internet without their agreement. One of his friends always raises this question before sending a post: "What would my grandmother think?".

A discussion about an open internet is essential and Jarvis does not want a government of the internet: "if we believe that to be connected to Internet is a man's right, then let us say it clearly !".

For further information, please visit the web site:  www.letemps.ch/Page/Uuid/c5bb969a-2752-11e1-bf52-5aa616011094/La_vie_claire_et_net

Jean-Philippe Accart
(Director of Studies, Master of Advanced Studies in Archives, Librarianship and Information Sciences, Universities of Berne and Lausanne - Switzerland, Berne, Geneva, Switzerland.

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