doing homework on the computer

I sometimes wonder why I respond a certain way to different forms of social software and technology, and was wondering whether other people felt the same way.

Lots of posts have been floating around that talk about creating identities for oneself online. IM-ing, facebook-ing, and blogging are second nature to me; when I'm doing work on the computer, I'm always signed onto AIM because to not be signed on just seems unnatural to me. It feels normal and natural to have the buddy list open on the right side of my screen.

I read an article a few weeks ago on the New York Times website (which I can't accesss anymore because it's been archived and I don't want to spend $5.00 getting a copy) about the "overconnecteds." It refers to "Generation M" aka the generation of kids born between 1980 and 2000 who grow up accustomed to technology and the computer/internet world. Whether this is a good or bad thing is a relative judgment, and depends on what the internet is being used for. I definitely agree with marmalade about the sink of time and effort that one puts into developing, oftentimes, "fake" relationships, and for me, the amount of time I spend randomly browsing blogs or facebook or IMing is atrocious, and I should really learn to cut down this habit. On the other hand, we all realize how cheap, useful, and efficient software like AIM is if we have friends on the other side of the country or in other countries whom we otherwise wouldn't get a chance to talk to. For that, I'm grateful to social software.

So, anyway, continuing with my point about different responses to social software. Although I respond favorably to AIM, facebook, certain blogs of friends, I experience major headaches when social software becomes a reading assignment. For example, when I started browsing over next week's reading on GAM3R 7H30RY, I practically had a seizure while looking through the layout and all the bright colorful pages. I've had similar responses when looking at other software and collective blogs/distributed narratives online. I really love knowing exactly what tangible pages to read and sitting down and going from start to finish. I think it's people like me who often contribute to the part of the population which feels ambivalent towards publishing online. I do, however, see this pool of people gradually diminishing as more people grow up being used to this medium.

Anyway, this entry isn't too coherent but I think it's really curious that I only really enjoy social software when it's part of my daily procrastination. When social software and websites become part of my workload, I think there's this period of needing to learn to adjust to the process of reading and staring at the screen. I think somebody posted several months ago that when blogging becomes assigned rather than a personal habit, there's a period of adjustment and awkwardness. Similarly, transferring academic work from book to screen also, to me, changes the process of reading something to looking at something. Skin and Implementation, for example, were both visual projects and understanding other social software also involves getting used to the layout and the new environments, so the focus is sometimes shifted from content to form. I guess that's what it boils down to: my awkward reception of form and how social software totally forces me to rethink how academic form should be constituted.