Mind Media and Learning

What is a friend? Some one with whom you share your lunch box? Someone who agrees to whatever you say? Someone with whom you go to Guitar Class? Someone who does your homework? Or someone who shares his Physics Practical Lab book results with you?

Well if yes then Gaurav is my best friend even though his mother cooks lunch for only him. My neighbor whom I consider to be a loser agrees to whatever I say. Subhojit and I went to Guitar class and loved same kind of music but never talked apart from class hours. My mother helped with my home work whenever I was stuck but I would copy the class topper’s Physics homework because he was the best but he was not my best buddy. He shares it with me because he feels that he might need my help in Chemistry or Math.

There are different levels of dependencies that you have in life and you know who can provide a solution. There are problems and there are solutions. And these solution providers who are not necessarily related by blood, we choose to call them friends. But the degree of friendship varies and I strongly feel that the virtual (online) world has not been able to depict these degrees of differences in a correct manner.

I have a close group of friends with whom I grew up and they are spread all across the globe in the present day scenario. But they are always by my side, through my thick and thin and would any day quit their job and join my startup if I asked them to do so. I don’t intend to make any more additions to this list.

My online friendship pretends to map my real life friendship but I think it is nowhere close . I have all these people in my list on whom I depend in different degrees but they all come out to be on the same level. My best buddies though present in my list but I end up calling them more than leaving scraps. Walther and co. says, we use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, make new connections, learn about someone new, or glean information about prospective employees. I would agree that I use facebook to stay in touch with friends and family especially when I am geographically distant. Sharing of photographs made possible with this media adds a whole new dimension to the relationship which cannot be done on phone. My family is interested in catching up with all the new places I visit in US. I do make new connections based on my network, but they are people I generally know and are seldom unknown. Sometimes I agree to being friends with people from my Alma Mater whom I don’t know. I have also appreciated mentoring request from my juniors in my college. But when I require to find out about someone, I would rather seek opinions from my friends in my list than looking into the other guy’s profile. If I were to make an employment decision, I would seriously not rely on Facebook but LinkedIn will be my choice. I believe that people have different roles and different personalities and I would not like to merge these boundaries by creating one single impression. There are different tools to do different things. I would surely not use a spoon to fry my eggs.

When I asked my American friend Amy Ampuja who was on a world tour on how she finds Poland different from India, this is what she wrote to me, “The air is a lot cleaner so I can breathe freely and not feel the effects of Indian cities. Been thinking more, people can be more independent in the West because things run smoothly and efficiently, you don’t really need people to help you. Whereas in India, everyone helps each other, or there is someone doing something for someone. The way to survive is very different in each place. I am not saying that one is better than the other, they are what they are. Everyone here is just into doing their own thing, on a path, in their own world. In India, everyone is integrated and thinks about each other and is dependent. Two different worlds and I can appreciate how to adjust and notice how my behavior and thoughts change with the environment.”

Since then I have been thinking. Are the ends same but means different? Well it is true for life but is it true for our Social Networks? If that is true than one platform should not fit all shoes. I had heard of Facebook when I was in India but never ever thought of creating my own account. However as soon as I came to USA, I was introduced to Facebook right at my orientation where I was told to join the OISS group in Facebook. Like before I turned a deaf ear to it till the time my course work needed me to create a Facebook account.

One more Social Network

I had ignored requests from friends to join Facebook. Why one more Social Network(SN)? Now that I don’t have any invitation I had to go to the homepage and sign up. I hate long registration forms. However, l was saved this time and just needed to put in my email address. Once my registration process is complete it fetches all the contacts from my email list and sends them an invitation to connect to my network. So how does this make a difference? My friends from other networking site namely Orkut are replicated in Facebook. Why do I need to replicate them? Is it another way of saving your contact address as a backup? Once someone has seen my photos, he will have to tolerate my photos on his other wall as well? Well, the whole approach that I can look into cultures by joining the SN from their country seems to be misplaced. It seems that my SN is same, only the servers are located at different countries. Does that let me figure out cultural differences? Well we will explore and figure out. At the beginning it was frustrating. There was so much of confusion. I would add contacts that are already in my other list. This was not novel. Nothing new happened for some time, only the repetition of activities in 2 of my networks I followed. But soon I realized that my Facebook had all the friends and contacts I made in the US. There is a huge bunch of Indians and internationals whom I befriended during orientation and my stay of a semester in the US. A pattern different from the other network soon began to evolve. The ABDs (American born Desis ) would upload a lot more photographs and their status updates changed at regular intervals. Soon I got to know what all was happening in the campus. I also added some of my American friends from the courses I was attending. I also happened to be spending a lot of time in the Confucius Institute and made some good Chinese friends there. Soon I was on their Facebook and now it seems that my SN had variety.

Getting to know a new system

Was it only me who had a preference for Orkut? So I did a little study and figured out that most of the social network startup in India are losing out to Orkut. While reasons could vary from one startup to the other, it is really important to understand why Indians use social networks. As per Nielsen’s research,

• 82 % want to keep in touch with people they know
• 58 % join a social networking site to reconnect with old acquaintances they have lost touch with
• 53 % sign up to make friends
• 43 % cite professional networking as a reason

The 53% who want to make friends are part of dating gang members, but the rest of the stat is important to understand. What is it that Indians do not use a social network for? The answer is “Hanging out”. Unlike the US youngsters who spend a good amount of time on Facebook, Myspace, hanging around and “expressing themselves”, Indians aren’t the usual hangout kind, and instead use SN for a defined purpose. Now, this obviously goes against several SN startups mantra (who want Indians to express themselves by uploading cool pics/videos and more) and a clear reason why few of them have folded (like jhoom.in) and others are almost on the verge of failing.

Indians prefer Orkut to Facebook

ComScore Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, released a report on the top social networking sites in India, finding that visit to the site category increased 51% from the previous year to more than 19 million visitors in December 2008. The study also found that global social networking brands continued to gain prominence in India during the year, with Orkut, Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace each witnessing significant increases in visitation.

Orkut tops list of social networking sites in India. Orkut reigned as the most visited social networking site in December 2008 with more than 12.8 million visitors, an increase of 81% from the previous year. Orkut’s audience was three times the size of its nearest competitor in the category. Facebook.com captured the 2nd position with 4 million visitors, up 150% versus year ago, followed by local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with 3.3 million visitors (up 88%) and hi5.com with 2 million visitors (up 182%).

Exploring Cultural Influences on Self Expression

Ever wondered why few networks are a super success while others (packed with better features) struggle to even catch an eye? Joshua of Social Design shares his interesting insights on human behavior. He says most of these behavioral aspects can be applied to building a great community. Because life in not deterministic, we cannot always predict human behavior. Take a look at successful social networks like Orkut and Facebook – at their core lies the basic social structure that empowers people to connect to each other and share their life. But there is still a difference in the way it is used. Culture plays a very important role in the way we socialize.

India has a hierarchical society. I have never questioned my elders or teachers. Even when I know a thing is wrong I never protest. I simply let the matter die. It is ok to express but it is derogatory to shout. Being humble is a virtue and being a rebel is a vice. Simple living and high thinking is what the society wants. Showing off wealth or power is not really appreciated. We have been a closed economy for long because of some of these factors. And though we don’t want all these factors to affect our sociability it plays a part in most of the decision making. Also, the earlier Facebook controversy of news feeds and mini feeds reinforces the fact that humans are not at all rational (and group behavior is very different from individual behavior).

Why I prefer Orkut ?

Google owns Orkut. Is the brand selling it? Well I joined Orkut when Google did not own it. I will go where my friends are and most of my friends are software developers and I trust their word. That is how I joined it. Twice as many software developers in India use Orkut as MySpace or Facebook. It is very important as these developers mainly represent the growing middle class and their recommendation is a very big factor in joining SN in India. Orkut has become so popular with developers in both India and Brazil that they have recently released new domains specific to these countries.

My transition from Orkut to Facebook

There are lots of Social Networks in India. While most of these sites believe in CAP model (i.e. Copy And Paste) from the West, especially Orkut and Faxcebook, none of them has been as popular as Orkut. Even before Google bought it, Orkut was popular in India. Of the little that I know of Social Networks, here is what I think makes Orkut so popular.

Ease of use:

Orkut UI is probably the simplest UI I have ever seen. In fact the UI conforms to the basic mantra of usability, i.e. don’t make me think, at the same time a look at Facebook will leave you a little confused and you need to figure out the feature that you were looking for (too many features). Facebook wants me to blog, share pictures, write on the wall, socialize, add friends, add events and of course win iPods. It is too overwhelming for me. I like simplicity as compared to clutter. Traditionally plane simple interface of Google homepage is more appealing to me than yahoo’s homepage. This need for simplicity or white space became more obvious as time passed by. It might be a factor that I am too used to Orkut and thus it is difficult for me to adapt to Facebook. But as I was trying my level best to figure out Facebook, it came out with a new design change. I hate changes. I think I am growing old and thus getting used to new things becomes difficult. Feeds from 300 friends populate my wall faster than Reuters. I would really not like to have updates from all my friends. I would like to prioritize my friends and seek information about a few. I tried tweaking its privacy settings but it is not of much use. I thought that friends you request are almost the same as getting an invitation to add a friend. This news feed thing made me realize that friends that you seek are closer to you than the ones that others seek. Now I have realized that I value friends I have sought more than the friend requests I have accepted.

Orkut substitutes Writing Emails:

What was missing in the online world? There was email and groups. There was text messaging on the mobile phone. But why do I use Orkut so extensively? I, like many other users, use the scraps feature, the most (in fact that’s the only feature I use). And why do I scrap? Because it substitutes writing an email. Is writing an email so tough? Well if you are lazy like me you would know the answer. But being lazy is not always the case. Most of the time you don’t have much to talk about. Writing an email for that seems inappropriate. What have u had for lunch seems appropriate for a scrap but not for an email. I would write emails when I have substantial things to talk about. There is a whole bunch of communications that comes between formal and informal communications and scraps take care of all. Breaking the ice is so much easier and is just a scrap away. Just because most of the SN don’t differentiate between friend and just an acquaintance, its one size fits all solutions. The bottom line is that the Orkut scrap breaks the communication barrier/ hiccups associated with sending emails to not-so-close-friends (and get away with answering questions like “how should I start this email/conversation?”). Yes I realized that if cost of entering or leaving a platform is insignificant, it becomes acceptable. But the communication is personal and private to a degree. It is a communication between two persons which if others are willing and the owner allows, can see. To a third person it opens up a small window of what is going on in his/her life.

On the other hand Facebook has a wall. It feels like I am doing graffiti on a wall, which I consider as expression, or rebelling. Yes I want to express but to a certain person and not to the whole world. There is a difference in communicating to a group and to an individual. The need for this difference has been completely ignored and a community communication has taken a predominance only for profit motives. I am sure it provides more information for others to catch up, but I really don’t need it. This is a reason why I never write on a wall. I am a passive onlooker on Facebook. I am an introvert and would like to remain so. I learnt that the design of the system greatly influences my actions. On the one hand the affordability of the system helps me reach out to friends and on the other hand, too much of self-expression capability pushes me to my shell. I think I need something in between these options.

Gossips:

Gossips are something that we all love. I would like to catch up on the latest movies and gossip with friends who share the same passion. Orkut is a place, which allows you to quench your thirst. I have explored my friend’s scrapbooks to see who’s writing what. Haven’t you explored your friend’s friends list? Orkut provides a great platform to get a glimpse of a friend’s life. And that’s why it’s so sticky (one keeps checking who visited their profile, what’s happening with their friends/crushes etc.) you can bitch about a friend that he or she cannot know about until and unless s/he takes an effort to check the scrapbook of the concerned friend. So the whole class can be a part of a mischief, still the concerned party can be unaware of what is going on. These little things spice up your online presence. On the other hand in Facebook it is either public or private. There are no shades of grey in between black and white. India being such a diverse country filled with all sorts of people cannot simply do without these shades. At least I can’t do without them. I realized that I am not like the Italian designer who is content with his black and white designs. I love colors, sometimes bright reds and at other times shooting blue. I want a rainbow and not an overcast sky. So I am still waiting for Facebook to provide me with the rainbow, till then I will play with Orkut.

Blocked Access:

Many IT companies in India have blocked the access to internet email sites/Yahoo/GMail/ Hotmail etc. and that’s one of the reasons why Orkut is heavily used. Most of the SN sites are also blocked. But the Google search engine cannot be blocked, as it is very useful in searching codes and stuff that is required for work. This window does not allow for effective closure of Google services as there are loop holes that can be explored. In fact this is one of the most important reasons for Orkut to be so popular in India as it is a Google product. Again as explained earlier, if you want to send an email to your friend, the only available alternative is to scrap your friends. Facebook is unfortunate to be blocked. So am I talking about culture? Well though this has nothing to do with culture per say but it surely has to do with work culture. I realized that it is not just choice that determines a market. Sometimes just availability can be a force that addicts you and you keep using it. I have become addicted with this phenomenon and I will take time to become loyal to another brand.

Who visited my site?:

Difference between you approaching someone and vice versa, Orkut has a feature, which lists the recent visitors to your profile. This generates a viral effect for your site. Though you might not be interested in dating, but the fact that the other person has visited your site gives you an indication that s/he is interested in you for what ever may be the reason. This is a kind of an icebreaker and gives you something to talk about. This has the seed of social networking; you reach out to strangers and get to know them. The platform is a great tool for introverts to practice a little bit of socialising. Facebook on the other hand does not allow you to visit profiles that are not on your list. You can see your friend’s friends but the profile information is not visible. Neither does it have an icebreaker. I think it is meant for extroverts only. My usage of Facebook proved to me that I am an introvert and find it easier to mingle with fewer people who first show interest in me . I have been unsuccessful in being outwardly and have hardly requested friends throughout the time. I have only accepted friend requests. Facebook does a remarkable job of showing you people you might know. But it is not a good reason for me to add them to my list. I need to know if they are interested in knowing me better but there is no clue in this direction.

Scraps as assets:

As a child I used to collect WWE cards. Nowadays children collect Pokemon cards. They exchange these cards for benefits and flaunt them in front of their friends. The more the cards the more popular you are with your friends. Something similar to stamp collecting. Girls in the dorms make arrangements to receive calls as a proof of their popularity. Similar things happen with Scraps too. These are assets. It shows how popular you are with friends. People like to flaunt them and is far more cost effective than making calls. I don’t delete my scraps. Sometimes my friends would come and write “Here goes your 3000th Scrap”. The whole activity is like contributing to popularity. If Orkut were economics, Scraps would have become money. It is amazing how human mind attaches importance to things and makes it valuable. Philanthropy is so much easy with stuff that is free. Yet in the real world we stock pile natural resources and create a scarcity so that there is a market for our goods. Can Social Networking teach us something in this direction?

Profile Information:

Orkut by default allows all the profile information to a person visible to general public. Of late it has been influenced by Facebook and implemented stricter privacy settings. However there is a major difference in the way profile information is laid out to the public. When I visit a profile page on Orkut, I get to see a profile picture of the person along with his personal, professional and social information that he has filled. This gives me some sort of an idea if I would like to be friends with the person or not. While going through the personal information, you may find common connections and send him/her a friend request. This is good for the platform and also for the users. On the other hand, Facebook allows me to see only a tiny thumbnail image of a person with his/her name and mutual connection. This is too less of an information to extend friendship. There may be more than one Saikat Mandal and he might be using an avatar as a profile picture. This gives me very less clue, if I want to find out if he is my long lost high school friend. My surveys with friends revealed that Indians want to get complete information prior to becoming friends. On the other hand, my survey involving Chinese students revealed that it was normal for them to befriend someone and then if s/he is not the concerned person, you can delete him/her. This behavior of deleting is not taken in good spirit in India.

Profile Information, Trust in the Social Networks:

It is very important to establish a kind of trust before you can start with some sort o business in SN. I need to know the person before I can add him or her to my list. Facebook scores very low in this case for me. It allows me very less information to decide if I want to add him/her to my list. I can at the max. see other friends who are in his list but that is not good a reason to add someone to my list. However if someone sends me a request, I can see a little more information than the previous case. I am able to see his friends and a little bit of information that he might want to share with me like email id and groups sometimes. As explained earlier, the information is inadequate for me to decide. Yes most of the time I get invitations from known people and it is not difficult to identify them. But then the media is not playing any significant role here. Whereas on Orkut , I can see the profile information that the user has filled up. I get an idea of the person, I get to see his circle of friends, I get to know about his personal, professional and social life. Even the physical characteristics like hair color and eye color is visible. I get to see the schools and colleges he has attended. At the same time I can confirm whether the information he has filled in is true or not. I first go and check if he has friends in the list from the institutes he has attended. Pretty simple tests to figure out the truth or lets put it like a litmus test. Again most of the time he or she will join the communities of the institutes. Once all information is verified, I would then reflect on the character traits of the person and if I like it I will accept the friendship request. On the other hand, Facebook allows too less of information to make a proper judgment. Well one may argue that you can add and then if you don’t like the person then you can delete the person. There are two aspects to this; one being that once I add someone to my profile, s/he gains access to my friend’s profiles. I am not just putting myself to risk but also my friends. Secondly, there is a difference in the degree of insult. One insult is that you don’t allow your guest to enter your house. Second insult is, you allow the guest to enter the house and then throw him out of the house. In my culture guest is a God. Such treatment to a guest is totally unacceptable. I know I am taking the matter to a different level but these cues work at the back of the mind for people being brought up in such atmospheres. Though on the top it seems like a small difference in the feature but in a cultural context it is a huge issue. My learning from this is that features needs to be rooted in the culture and should not be simply left at the whims of technology experts.

Gender differences in profile pictures:

Most Indian males on Orkut have profile pictures. Some of them have avatars but the use of an avatar is not that extensive. Avatars generally have religious connotations in Hindu culture and thus people avoid it to be on the safer side. People put their own pictures and try to depict themselves in a true spirit. On the contrary Chinese males (as the survey depicts) use a lot of Manga characters as avatars. These differences are rooted in the culture. Manga comics is popular in Japan, China and Korea. A careful study of the comics reveal that the characters have large expressive eyes. This population that has relatively less expressive eyes try to make up for this deficit and thus this popularity. They rarely use their real names. Indian women on Orkut hardly have their own pictures to begin with. They will start with an avatar or an abstract picture when they begin using it. This is because they fear misuse of their pictures online. Gradually as their confidence grows, they will start putting real pictures of themselves. But this phase of putting a real picture may take a time span of 1-3 years and one unforeseen event would send them to hiding again. They also use cartoons or faces of children to represent themselves. Another popular culture is to display pictures of Bollywood heroines, which they identify with. They also use group photographs where they cannot be identified easily. The purdah system that was and is practiced in many parts of India has carried itself to the SN as well.

On the other hand more girls are switching to facebook because of its security features. Girls feel more protected against unruly behaviors on facebook as compared to Orkut. A large female base is switching to facebook and thus in turn bringing in more boys, naturally. If a market research firm was to do a research, it would say that cultural differences create a niche and sometimes huge markets. But SN sites, to be successful, should truly let people express by considering all these factors. Cultural differences should be taken into considered if anything has to be popular in Asia.

Serendipity Moments:

I had numerous serendipity moments with Orkut. I was able to connect to many of my classmates whom I had lost track of. I had no idea of their whereabouts, but thanks to Orkut, I am now well connected with these folks. And these serendipitous moments take Orkut to the next level in user satisfaction. A great product, apart from fulfilling the basic needs should also throws up “Aha” moments. And that’s what I feel when I see a scrap/add request from my school friends. Facebook on the other hand will search its database and throw relative matches of friends. Not always these matches are correct. I would like to search for friends myself rather than be at the mercy of the software to give a desired matche. It is not that I cannot find friends on Facebook, but it is far more tedious than finding someone on Orkut.

Communities:

As Amy explained and I realized that Indians like to live as a group. Individual identities are either not there or very subdued. Orkut is a great place to create communities and interact. The importance is cleverly depicted right in the top header. Everything that a community needs has been integrated into it. It has different topics and polls that the members can contribute to. Huge number of teenagers and school students use this platform to express themselves. One similar act happened in a school called Bombay Scottish in Mumbai. This is one of the most influential schools of the city whose pupils are sons and daughters of politicians, film stars and business tycoons. I am really intrigued at how media changes behaviors. Give a person a gun and he will shoot. That is what happened with SN at Bombay Scottish. With the availability of this platform, people who were so not used to expressing themselves began so in a never before imagined way. The school students from 8th grade started slandering the name of the principal and put up pictures of him. The principal somehow figured out what was going on and complained to the police. Google was urged to remove the community but with no success. India does not have proper cyber security laws. So many students were suspended. Google’s servers are not located in India, which keeps it out of the jurisdiction of Indian laws. This gives rise to a very pressing problem of cyber insecurity. After the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, Indian laws are pushing for servers to be located in India and also Indian mail ids needs to have “.in” added to the email ids. So what do we call this globalization or localization? On the one hand we are talking about a global identity whereas for some or the other cause, there is a need to be identified. Where do we seek a balance?

However due to the whole incident the students of this school were forced to find another platform to express themselves. Thanks to Facebook there was a readymade platform waiting for them. The whole school shifted to this platform. These students being very influential also bring in a viral effect and others schools that see them as role models soon followed them to Facebook. Whatever may be the cause, at least for this incident I have my niece and nephew on Facebook, some family on the network.

Difference between friends and family:

Well the other day I was having a discussion with one of my friends about private entrepreneurship. Lots of business ideas were discussed and somehow we shifted to the topic: When do you know that your product or industry is successful? We came to a conclusion when the word begins to be used as a verb; you know that it is successful. When you say “Google out” something, Facebook me or tweet me, you know that your product is successful. Similarly you will have friends in social network sites, however when there is family on SN, you know that the product is being used as a verb. You stay in touch with family by coming home every night, or ringing up frequently in case of a dispersed family. However if your family is communicating with you within the time from office to home, you know that your social relationship has taken a different dimension. You are never short of words when you are with your own people. So if the internet companies want their stickiness to increase, they should stop trying to get friends chatting on a topic. Instead look into how you can make people interact within a family. Rest of it will automatically fall in place.

Recommendation System:

Everything in India works on recommendation. Google search engine is replaced by word of mouth. Like Google there are thousands of people you can turn to get an advice in case of a need may it be the best place to buy medicine to the best Doctor to consult. Here the results are not dependent on how popular the link/result is in terms of page views. Here what matters is who is the closest to you. Even if the suggestion by your closest friend might not be very credible still you would go ahead with his/her suggestion, as you trust them more than anybody else. Here SN plays a very big role. Facebook in particular scores way higher than Orkut in getting suggestion from people. One Status update asking a question will have 200 of your friends suggesting you on a topic. It is now for you to do an analysis and take the best decision. In this case the best answer matters and not the best friend. Orkut on the other hand is for personal communication and does not have a wall where you can shout. However you can send multiple scraps to all your friends by using applications, but still it is not as effective as putting up an information on a pin up board. The pin up board is missing in Orkut.

What Did I learn: One site fits all doesn’t fit

The Web has absolutely improved the world. With a few minutes effort, you can get almost anything… from almost anywhere. The opportunities are endless. But is it the case with Social Networks? Companies can now attract customers from almost anywhere at any time. With a solid, usable site, the world is their customer base, right? Maybe. Organizations struggle with globalization-localization issues. Can one site fit all? Can parts of the design be standardized? Which parts need to be localized?

In India Orkut and Facebook are doing very good. While companies like Facebook struggle to conquer market share in China and to create viable business models everywhere. However Chinese clones of Facebook have built lucrative cash machines literally earning billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, adopting Chinese methods have not helped American social networks due to both cultural differences in user behavior and industry practices. So the need of the hour is to learn about the User in a better manner. The designs needs to be human-centered and not just technology driven. It would help to know what the user eats, drinks and sleeps. What are his idiosyncrasies? What are the cultural differences? Especially for sites like Facebook needs do do better ethnographic studies to find out the shuttle differences in the cultures of the markets they are trying to target. Instead of following twitter , Mark Zuckerberg should follow the Culture Trends to do better in these markets.

On the personal front I have realized that I have not changed much. I am still an introvert and have never posted any status message. I have not even posted on anybody’s wall. I am a passive onlooker. I am a kind of a parasite who entertains himself by looking through activities of others. I absorb all information that comes my way and form my own personal impressions, which I share with no one. What a waste of resources. But I have realized that I hate people who very frequently update status messages. I feel that they are shouting for attention. I don’t want to be friends with them and have switched off their feeds. The platform allowed me to get in touch with a lot of friends by giving friend suggestions. A lot of lost school friends got back in touch. I really don’t know if these connections helped me know the opposite person in a better fashion. Or do I want to know him/her better? Is it a liability or burden? Am I sharing my intimate moments with them? No not at all. They are not a source of emotional support, nor do I connect with them much. I am just weaving a mesh of weak connections.

I realized that the differences observed in my study were not always cultural differences but also feature and technology differences. Cultural difference is a very loose word and what I perceive of it, as culture might not be the same for another person from the region. These are loosely connected terms but of course they have an effect on the way we approach our problems.

I realized that I am traveling on two boats at the same time. Technology is allowing me to virtually live or stay in touch with my life in India whereas my daily activities take place in America. Does that make my world a better place to live? No not exactly. I am happy to know that I know about my folks but at the same time the sense of loss is constantly there. “Out of Sight is Out of Mind”. Now that is not possible. I am intrigued by the power that technology brings along. I am like some sort of God sitting up above in the heaven and still can peep into the world of concerned people all across the globe. But the same technology does not allow me to socialize with my neighbor. I am here in a foreign land and foreign culture, which is an opportunity for me to learn the other side of the world. Instead I am spending time being in touch with my part of the world. I am living in my own Ghetto in a globalized world. I am not making any real friends but running after virtual friends and trying to catch up with my past. I really don’t know if Social Networks are adding to my progress but I surely know that it helps me procrastinate.

Generations Online in 2009:

It was a surprise for me to see so many from the X Generation online. There is a sharp rise of 76+ year old that are using the internet as a tool. Is it because the X Generation needs it more than the others? As more old people are living alone and have very few people to take care of them, they are falling for this tool which does not require them to physically move out for work. However, my part of the story is different. In this globalized world it is cheaper to stay in touch with my parents if they were internet savvy. I have been trying to get them to use the internet more often but in vain. Though my father has retired as a chemical engineer and has handled machines, he is very uncomfortable with the computers. Every time he clicks the mouse button he simultaneously does a head banging. There are a lot of problems and I have finally given up trying. Maybe if my father was educated in English medium, he would have found it easier to adapt to computers. I feel that the X generation from non-English countries would have a language barrier. I would be very happy if my parents could be in this bandwagon that the report talks about. There was no increase in percentage of people in age bracket 25-29 and 35- 39. Did the internet have nothing to offer extra to this age group in the three years? What might be the reason for this age group to have a steady usage? I really want to know why this age group with a handsome buying power did not grow substantially.

Adults and Video Games:

Older population playing games was again a surprise for me. How can a generation who did not grow up with video games be addicted to games? What happens to all the conditioning theories? Maybe because of the loneliness and spare time that this generation now is making themselves search new modes to spend their time. Again a dispersed family might be a factor contributing to the rise in this population. Or is it the media that is targeting this age group? Educated people play more games than high school students. I was of the view that educated people would be more busy with jobs and professional goals and high school students have all the time in the world. This Myth of mine was shattered. Students play more games than non students. What might be the reason? Is it peer pressure? Or is gaming an alternative to Social Networking? If the time spent on Social Network increases, will the time spent on games by this population decrease? Income and affordability was not a factor as all income groups participate equally. But I surely expected rural population to be more active than urban population. I believed that urban centers have more outlets for entertainment like pubs and shopping centers and thus urban population will rely less on games as compared to rural centers. This myth too of mine was shattered by this report and I now feel that I come from another part of the world.

Writing, technology, and teens:

This report shows that students and parents view writing with technology differently. Students do not think e-writing is real writing, and it does not substantially improve their writing in the coursework. They feel that additional writings should be given to them to increase their creative writing abilities. Parents on the other hand feel that with technology, students can better reflect on their writing and thus will improve their writing as a whole. Is the help with spelling and grammar in a Word pad spoiling our spelling skills? Are we becoming better writers? Or is the SMS culture getting into creative writing? Can FYI be a part of a technical paper? I really don’t know if technology is helping creative writing and would like the class to discuss on this.

The word “Avatar” comes from Sanskrit. My take on avatar is a bit different and I will try to explain myself here but it might be a case where I may sound very ambiguous as it is beyond the scope of 400 words to explain everything. I grew up listening to stories of “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”, two epics that are integral parts of life in India.

In fact according to the “Jataka Tales”, Buddha was born as a human in his approximately 43rd birth. He began as a monkey king and every life he would do good deeds to be born as a better creature. Every birth was a different avatar and you go from strength to strength. I was given to learn that an avatar is God incarnated as a human being. Lord “Rama” is an avatar of the best man ever born. “Goddess Durga” has 10 hands and symbolizes supreme power that is needed to overcome evil. Two hands are just not enough to kill the demon and thus she has different weapons in different hands. Similarly there are hundreds of Gods in Hinduism and each symbolizes a different trait and is worshiped for their respective qualities. So when I sit for an exam, I pray a different god and at other time I may worship a different god depending on what quality I am looking forward to. Sounds funny? Yes it is but the whole thing is very complex and I have not been able to completely understand everything myself.

But what I understand is that we do the same things in real life. We take different roles in different places and different times. As a child I had wanted to become a tennis player whenever the Wimbledon Season came and would want to be a pilot every time a plane flew by. But as I have grown, the scope of those roles closed down and now I know that I am a graduate student and might stick to academics for the rest of my life. My Avatar will never be a pilot or doctor again. However whenever I see a tennis player I become nostalgic and might be that my behavior with him will be completely different as compared to a football player. People change, philosophies change, so do the Avatars. Or should they? Can I not be a tennis player in my Fantasy? While reading the papers of this week I was reminded of a German Movie I had seen called “Das Experiment”. In the movie a bunch of common citizens were broken into 2 groups and were assigned roles of prisoners and police officers. Strangely enough the common citizens had behavioral changes and the acting police was much harsher than actual police and the situation spirals out of control. I have not played MMORPs but was once given the role of a Class Representative in school. The very first day I had hit my best friend, trying to maintain the decorum of the class and my newly found post. It had a very bad effect on my friendship. My personal experience is that give people responsibility and they will change accordingly. So do Avatars too have such influence?

But surely our experiences have an effect on us whether real or virtual. “By default” has become integral part of our common day language and is not just limited to computers. Its not far when we would start to act our Avatars in our real lives. I just wish we go from strength to strength and improve our lives and not tread the opposite way.

This time when I traveled to US, it took me 40 hours. In my span of almost 2 days of travelling with 2 other passengers, I hardly talked to them. Looking back I feel that the small screen provided in front of my seat along with the remote was the culprit. But was it? The other 2 persons travelling with me were Indians and I had felt that I knew enough about my own country. I was travelling by Emirates and so had access to Arabic music and movies which I had not had much access to before. I found it more interesting to learn and experience something new.

Hollywood movies have played a great role in my life. Back at home, my family might have thought that I was wasting time, but it has taught me to some extent about the American culture. Now when I am in US, the online experience that I carried along with me has tremendously helped my face to face communication. So was that time really a waste?

When we do research, we do literature study and begin our research from where others have left and carry it forward. There is no point reinventing the wheel. You cannot afford to spend your whole life and experiment all the facts that have been stated already. You take the results to be true. Similarly we can learn through other’s experiences and need not experience it all ourselves. I am sure that this learning might not be as effective as learning by creating mistakes . The choice is yours. It is for you to choose if you want to go in depth or explore laterally. Games can help you socialize or you can choose to go to a football field yourself. After all there is only 24 hours at your disposal.

Securing 3rd rank in a class puts you in high esteem in front of others. But when they learn that there were only 3 members in the class, the scenario changes completely. It isn’t fun, winning a race where you run alone. The win really makes no sense even though the records might speak highly of you.

I have been a 100 meter sprinter in school and college. I used to practice against the clock. But on “Sports Day”, I would have better timing than ever. Personally I perform better when I compete against others. I have never figured out till date,”Where from that extra energy came????”

Private tuitions can teach you a lot but we still prefer sending our children to schools and classrooms. Presence surely allows for better learning. Presence also brings in a scale of competitiveness which allows for better calibration of talent.

Michigan State University is the first place where I have taken online classes. I think the presence of others and their comments motivates me but I am not sure if it resulted in cognitive learning. The subjects I have taken online are mainly arts subjects and thus am in no position to quantify the learning. If I would have taken differential Calculus or Algebra online, I would be in a better position to quantify my cognitive learning.

I am also not sure if presence in FTF communication is always helpful if the syllabus is not designed properly. You may be discussing in small groups consisting of your near friends. However the syllabuses in India don’t require you to discuss much and thus Social Constructiveness was a word that I heard only after coming to US. Books and teachers were the one I would look for help in case of a confusion. It is here, that I am truly exploring the potential of presence.

Will we be able to get that world where we will never have to grow up? A world where whatever we imagine can become true? While going through the readings I am reminded of the movie “Finding Neverland”. A deep dive in the world of imagination,where you can imagine anything and it is possible. It is a story of four boys who never want to grow up. As you grow up your imagination dwindles. Things that were real to you become virtual. In Physics I read the difference between the real image and virtual one. A mirror image looses its energy and is fainter than the original due to the reflection. In this world of digital technology, where there is no loss of pixels, we can go on endlessly recreating.

This Week I read Searle (1998); Berger & Luckman (1967), Smullyan (1977), Prisig (1974):

Searle (1998) : He begins his chapter by explaining Enlightenment Vision. The world was intelligible and we understood reality. But then in the beginning of the twentieth century a number of events happened and challenged the traditional optimism of both nature and our ability to comprehend it. He moves on from the postmodernist challenges to the concept of Reality. He does a very good job of explaining our cognitive limits of understanding the same. He then explains different theories of realism existing, explaining and pointing out their limitations. Perspectivism looks at reality from a point of view, whereas idealism isolates it in a different context.

Again you can choose to be a skeptic . At the end he talks about religion and how it is unfashionable to talk about it in the current light of things. Religion is a choice, a preference. Knowledge of a lot of things have demystified religion. He ends the article by summarizing that all these arguments are flawed, as they make sense only in particular contexts. They look good when looked through individual lenses. He goes in to say, maybe that reality is not a theory at all but instead it is a framework.

My Stand : I have a stand close to the author. I completely agree to the facts that the theories look credible in isolation, but contradict each other when put together. I agree to his stand that all these can be true, without confronting each other. I can be 72 kgs and still be 160 pounds. It depends on the context you choose and the vocabulary adopted to explain the same. I connect with his thoughts more so because I hail from a country which is multicultural, multilingual and multi religious. I have grown up to accept point of views without necessarily contesting or challenging them. I believe in existence of God in multiple formats (being a Hindu), yet I am a student of science and understand that God is one. So I will say that I am something else.

My Questions: 1. Just because the advancement of science allows us to experiment with a lot more things now than when these theories were formulated, should we look at it in the new light? Should we use scientific methods to judge reality? 2. Can we send these authors to the moon and then ask them to comment on perspectivism? Will they say that there is no gravity any more? 3. What is the difference between reality and dreams?

Berger & Luckmann (1967): They at the very beginning differentiate their methodology from that of a philosophical task. They had adopted a phenomenological method analysis of everyday life to throw light on social construction of reality. The language of everyday life continuously provides them with necessary objectifications and posits the order within which these make sense within which everyday life has meaning. They go to great lengths explaining about the reality of everyday life and how it is organized around the “here and now” of the present. They also explain other realities that they are conscious of and its inter-subjectivity (namely dreams). They explain very clearly as to why face to face communication in reality is so massive and compelling. In the last part of the article they explain the importance of language in everyday life. They further probe into signs and how they make sense in terms of pragmatical and symantical context.

My Stand: I agree with the authors that Everyday Life has an inbuilt, organized objective order. It can be stated more like : intuition has an inbuilt logic. You can be very spontaneous but your spontaneity has a fuzzy logic. However on page 26, para 1, the author speaks of how he distorts reality of dreams as soon as he begins to translate his experience into paramount reality of everyday life. Salvador Dali would use his surrealistic techniques and came up with art pieces which cannot be said something that distorts reality. I would say that this distortion that the author speaks of is an act of creativity. I also believe that face to face situation is massive and compelling. However I would want to refute his stance that misrepresentation and hypocrisy is more difficult to sustain in face to face situations.

Questions: 1. I wonder as to what happens in a big group which involves face to face communication. Will it still be very massive and compelling? Or is there an optimum number in a group which will sustain a compelling experience? 2. Does typification bring in a sense of purpose in an act? Can it motivate a person to go out of his way and achieve something? 3. Language allows me to typify experiences in turn allowing me to subsume them under broad categories in terms of which they have meaning not only to myself but also to my fellowmen. So is Facebook a type of language? 4. Can we say “tutoiement” and “bruderschaft” serves as gestures to a given language? 5. Why are we interested in news of other countries even though they don’t concern me in my everyday life? According to the author we should not be interested, so how would I typify my this everyday act?

Smullyan (1977): I Loved both the stories. It was funny and cheeky to the core. The dream talks about nothingness. You can understand nothingness but when it comes to explaining it, there is a problem. There is no reference point relative to which you can explain it. The so called scientific ways of probing fails. A wonderful pun about the emptiness of the universe leaves you asking for more. So if I were to explain it in Indian terminology, I would say “Sab maya hai”. The same concept was taken forward to the next chapter. Zen master, asks a novice to answer how he could have a stick in his hand but at the same time not. The novice gives up and returns after 12 years to find out the truth, reality only to find that the master now does not believe that he could have asked such a question. Does reality change due to change in perspective? Or does perspective change as a result of reality?

Prisig (1974): In Smullyan, it was difficult to define nothingness. In this story of the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , a father does a very good work of explaining an abstract concept of ghost to his son. Does it mean that if something cannot be proved by scientific means, it does not exist? Was there no gravity before 17th century, when Newton discovered it? And if something does not have matter or energy, does it mean it is non existent? An interesting comparison of ghosts with scientific laws leaves you with a lot of unanswered probes. An amazing perspective / angle of looking at things. My Question: Do you believe in ghost?

There cannot be no impression. In absence of anything we tend to take up information given to us by the media. I have an impression of George Bush junior created by media.

Sometimes we say something and mean completely different. To understand what that person is trying to mean needs a knowledge about the person and background. Shakespeare uses this technique of “PUN” in most of his dramas to critique certain topics, occasions. I agree with Goffman’s argument that we map both the verbal and non verbal expressions given off by an individual to judge his impression. This sometimes can be a measure to check false hood. But I don’t think that mapping of these two expressions are that black and white. Sometimes the person might be talking something and with his expressions meaning completely different and still be giving ques to you, as to which one of the expression you should choose. Sometimes he may leave it to the viewer to use his imagination and come to a conclusion. There is a difference in degree of expression, and this gamut of grayscale defines which expression should be accepted. Whether he is ridiculing an occasion, or if he is in sync with the argument. This information is not only dependent on what the subject gives off but also on how the viewer perceives it. I have tried to joke in online chats and forums. In situations like this the joke falls flat because the beauty of the joke is in understanding what is not said. People don’t get this concept online that easily, and more often you will have to explain your joke, which completely kills its charm.

If mapping of verbal and non verbal expressions were the correct measure of judging false hood, then I would say that our politicians have absolutely mastered this art and are using it to their benefit. They have mastered both defensive and protective impressions that the author talks about. I strongly believe that these factors are not enough to judge an impression.

Should this concept of Pun be considered in forming impression? How can the complexity of decoding a pun affect impressions? It is said that to build an impression it takes a whole life but to ruin it, it takes seconds. Why does the bad impression outweigh all the good impression? Is there a scale? Why does impression formation not follow any scientific or economic law?

I am thousands of miles away from my home and even though I call up everyday there is a need to better connect to my family and friends as if I was living with them. It allows you to be omnipresent to some extent. You feel connected and a part of them. The time that you waste is a conscious decision on your end. It is a great source to find information.

This reminds me of my summer of 2008 when I was preparing to come to USA for higher studies. First thing when you type in class of 2008 MSU in google, will return results from social networking sites. I joined MSU 2008 group on a social networking site called Orkut which is very popular in India. Though a similar group existed on Facebook, the number of users there were insignificant as compared to the one in Orkut. So obviously my choice was Orkut. It was an immense source of information, which gave me all the details from Visa information to how many socks I need to carry. It allowed me to connect to other Indians with whom I am going to spend time in campus.

However Manjoo says that it has reached to a point where it can be compared to having a cell phone. This raises interesting questions. Cell phone allows me to synchronously communicate with somebody. If I don’t pick up the cell phone, it is considered as offensive. Facebook on the other hand allows for asynchronous communication, without being intrusive. Though I completely agree to the benefits of having an account, I will surely not want it to be intruding into my personal space.