Online Identity + Friends + Snow Leopard

The emerging technology that I have been looking at this week is Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is the new Operating System from Apple and it has revolutionized the mac perspective. Windows has had the given the upper hand with their 64-bit Operating System, but now Apple is fighting back. Snow Leopard brings 64-bit speed to the simplicity of Macintosh. Another good feature of Snow Leopard is space. As opposed to Leopard 10.5, Snow Leopard takes up half of the memory space of its predecessor. This emerging technology is sure to make big waves in the industry.

I also have some personal technology related stories for you.

Not long ago when I observed a person looking through my Facebook pictures who I had not approved as my friend. I was under the impression my photographs were only for my friends and was quite distressed to know that they were accessible by anyone. I was worried about this issue because I had recently been informed by public relations professional Isaac Holyoak that future employers will look at my Facebook to decide if I am hireable. This shows the importance of online identity as in this era your online identity can greatly affect your life.The reason that many people put so much time and effort into their online identity is because it helps or hinders your social life and your career. An example of a site for the businessperson to maintain and develop contacts while building trust is LinkedIn, while the social butterfly will create their profile on Myspace to show off their identity and attitude.

Before I left Australia to come to the U.S.A a girl added me on. Her screen name read Kim Eko, and being the curious person that I am I accepted the friend request. This girl had no explicit pictures on her Facebook but we had a few mutual friends so we started to write to each other. This then moved to Facebook chat, where we had some fun conversations. This also exemplifies the dual synchronous and asynchronous nature of Facebook. We moved our chats to the faster and more personalized chat system MSN Messenger. I was then going to be in Sydney for a day where we arranged to meet. When I finally met this girl I thought her name was Kim Eko but it is actually Kim Grey a girl I have met and liked a few times. I was unaware but pleasantly surprised. My recent addition of Skype now allows me to contact Kim from America, this is an example of how our spatiotemporal positioning has been made redundant by the Internet.

I have observed a student named Matthew using Facebook to search through and single out groups of people he wants to be affiliated with then asking them if they want to be his friend. It is a way of testing the waters through mediated communication without having to take the actual investment and risk of person-to-person communication.

In high school many of my friends would refer to the Microsoft instant message chat system as ‘the devil.’ They were referring to the ominous tendency for the intent and connotations of words to be ‘lost in translation’ and taken badly by the recipient. I witnessed many fights and broken relationships due to this aspect of instant text messaging. This is due to the fact that text is lacking in the naturally implied meaning and context of person-to-person communication.

MSN messenger does not show you the way a phrase is said only the text. Abbreviations and acronyms within the text also make MSN less personal and take it further away from person-to-person communication; messenger has developed its own type of slang that is not applicable in face-to-face conversation. This has provided a different way to communicate that it is similar to a different language. It incorporates technology to create easily accessible and quick information while sacrificing contextual content for accessibility and convenience. The communication therefore loses integral aspects that are implied through physical and verbal cues.

I hope you enjoyed my blogging.
Chatcha next time
Jack

Australia