*I've got a soft spot for these pieces that "violate everything we normally think about"
X or Y. I like the ones that are just frankly oxymoronic, impossible on their face.
Like "geeks in social media." Geeks are the least social people in the world.
That's why they're isolated in front of computer screens, right? Except –
the geeks who are working alone, on isolated computers? They no longer
exist as a news story. They're being ignored again.
*Here's noospheric cyberspace getting hyperlocalized by some 24-year-old.
Have at it, dude. Maybe some day you'll stumble over the ancient word "enantiodromia."
https://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/06/dp_web_wired0630
When Sam Altman visits New York, he's never alone for very long. Altman is the 24-year-old CEO of Loopt, a company that makes a "location-aware" app for mobile phones that tracks where all of your friends are and what they're doing.
"I'll pull it out on the ride in from the airport, and before I've even gotten to the city I'll have figured out who's nearby me, and we'll be making plans to get together that night," Altman told me. If he looks on his phone's map on a Saturday night, he can literally see groups forming in real time. "It's getting to the point now where if you want do something social, you have all this information about the world around you," he says. (((That oughta be pretty handy for heavily-armed Basiji set to round up the dewy-eyed geeks.)))
"Location-based applications are quickly becoming the hot new thing on phones. Since many mobiles today — most particularly the iPhone — can determine their location via GPS chips (or pinging local cell towers and WiFi signals), they're spawning a whole new ecosystem of apps. There are social ones like Loopt or foursquare, which track the movement of friends (((or enemies))) as well as find-stuff tools like Yelp that locate top-rated bars and restaurants near you.
"According to web-research firm Compete, one in three mobile-phone owners uses location-based tools, and the number of apps has exploded from 500 to 2,500 since last October. (((I've seen this kinda thing happen a hundred times, but I still find it exhilarating. I wonder why. Maybe because I'm not 80 freakin' years old yet.)))
"Yet this new class of information tool violates everything we normally think about the internet." (((I wonder, just a basic principle, how many massive paradigmatic violations one can have and still make any sense of them. One a week, maybe? Two a week? Tops?)))
"The whole reason the web revolutionized the world was that it rendered geography irrelevant. People connected worldwide based not on location but on their common interests: Model-train collectors and free-speech activists and Britney Spears fans could swarm onto the discussion boards and blogs, from Chicago to Tehran. By severing the link between location and geography, the internet turned everything upside down.
"Now mobile phones are inverting everything again, in the other direction — because your location becomes most important thing about you. So how is the return of geography going to change our lives?" (((This is so WIRED 1994. Really. They used to do this kind of rhetorical inversion in practically every piece they published. "You used to brush your teeth with a dark little toothbrush, but in future, the inside of your mouth will be spotlit and public domain!")))
"The near-term effects are obvious: We're using it as a sort of radar for our social lives and Yellow-Pages needs. The first round of geo-aware phone apps has consisted mostly of "listings" services and tools for tracking your posse.
"Altman thinks these apps are already tweaking people's everyday behavior. Early adopters often allowed only approved friends to track them; but now a larger chunk of Loopt users publish their location openly, for anyone to see. Why? Being open allows for more happy encounters — hook-ups with friendly strangers who are useful, or at least interesting, to know. (((I have to think this is a positive development for social health. The public-spaces in major cities have been so violently shrunken and video-policed that this is the only way to scare up some serendipity. Naturally one thinks "a mugger/stalker/maniac is gonna do this," and yes he is, but he's also gonna get tracked as he does it. Yike.)))
"What's the next? It's probably ''tagging:'' Writing up notes, implanted in space, that describe something interesting about a particular location." (...)
