It is the year 2010, and did any experts foresee the future of the internet with the design of communication applied? In the year 2000, the new frontier of the internet experienced what seemed at the time as the meteor of the dinosaurs: the DotCom Crash. People were hazy and weary about using the internet again, feeling a sensation akin to betrayal, as all of their hopes of the new frontier were shattered and their sense of reality had to be readjusted. And yet, just like the conquering of any frontier, freshly wireless entrepreneurs and self-starting online pilgrims set out to reclaim the desert and rebuild it with information. The article titled "Ten years after the crash, the dotcom boom can finally come of age" from The Guardian.co.uk sums it up best:
"But out of the mess emerged a new way of doing business. The internet did have a profound effect on both society and commerce, just not as quickly as the "digerati" from the dotcom boom, with their inflatable boardrooms and dress-down style, had hoped. Some of the technology trends that everyone now takes for granted were born in the boom, from instant unmetered internet access, web TV and "cloud computing" to social networking and the mobile web. They may have been born in the boom but only in the past few years have they come of age."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/14/technology-dotcom-crash-2000)
The Social Network is one of the most interesting entities to have emerged since the dotcom crash. Now, social networking encompasses almost all parts of our life. Organizations announce news on the radio, and then state that you can also follow their news on Twitter. Facebook has become a social phenomena, devouring the previously "cool" MySpace, where everyone is online sharing everything from status updates and photos, to planning events, creating social groups, and now even allowing subscribers to post questions for other people in their network to answer. People at the turn of the century looked at the wireless phone as a true benchmark of technological achievement. Now, not only is cellphones so widely popular, the cellphones have internet access, are equipped with Instant Messaging, Texting, Photo, Video, and Audio messaging, and now the Apple iPhone has brought to the US "FaceTime," the ability to literally call someone anywhere in the world, and can not only hear, but see the person you are talking to, and the situation they are in. The evolution of our social world has spawned the major Hollywood movie, "The Social Network," which depicts (in a Hollywood dramatized fashion) the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook.
What are the elements of these forms of communication in the new social network. In the first class of Design 1 at the University of California, Davis, Professor Housefield prompted us students to ask "what characterizes a good conversation?" One of the central elements that distances a good conversation from the rest is that a good conversation engages more than just the basic mental abilities. It is engages the emotions, and possibly even the body. Now, in person, it is fairly easier to engage into a good conversation rather than simply through telecommunications, and it is even harder to engage in a good conversation through text. Why is that? Well approximately 7% of our communication comes from the actual words we say, whereas about 35% is tone and rhythm of voice, and the leftover 58% is body language.
This creates the necessity for the online social network's text and the formatting of the text to truly engage the mind and hopefully some of the emotions as well. Seeing tons of Facebook statuses, people scroll through looking for someone's status to pop out and stimulate them. And yet Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites have become giants in our modern day simply because we are a social species and they have designed themselves along a few key design factors: the site or application must be easy to use (because in our modern day in age, if setting up an account takes longer than 5 minutes, we are onto something else), must be simple and attractive (the login pages on the Facebook, Twitter, or Blogger sites all have only two main directions: log-in or sign-up), and must allow the user quick and widespread connectivity and exposure.
All three of these sights, and many of the other social phenomena applications succeed at these goals very well. Our communication has been unintentionally designed these days where between someone's in-person conversations, the individual will open their internet-connected cellphone and update their status on Twitter, Facebook, and now it has become an accepted standard. The design of our new social systems has allowed quick and instant updates of news and weather, instantaneous communication with friends and family in other cities and other countries, and an outlet for sharing everything from meandering thoughts to truly thought-provoking discussions, and has allowed a communal knowledge base to form through our online use. Is the design of our modern internet-connected communication a cause of our current addiction to stimulation, or has our well-fed obsession with instant gratification encouraged the growth of these newly designed forms of social contact and communication.
Works Cited
Georgetwopointoh, By. "2010 January 06 « 2.0." 2.0. Web. 04 Oct. 2010. <http://georgetwopointoh.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/>.
Percival, Liz. "2-in-2-1 - Tips - How We Communicate." Marriage Breakdown and Divorce at 2-in-2-1! Web. 04 Oct. 2010. <http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/tips/howcom.html>.
"PRX » Twitter And Rss." Public Radio Exchange. Web. 04 Oct. 2010. <http://www.prx.org/feeds>.
Wray, Richard. "Ten Years after the Crash, the Dotcom Boom Can Finally Come of Age | Business | The Observer." Latest News, Comment and Reviews from the Guardian | Guardian.co.uk. Web. 04 Oct. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/14/technology-dotcom-crash-2000>.
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