Social Networking

‘Social networking’ seems to be today’s trendy word as well as today’s trendy thing..
and no matter of whether it is done as a cyber activity or a real life interactivity… the principle is the same.. to gather contacts, constantly enlarge your addressbook because you never know how valueable an aquaintance might turn out…
The following Guarding article about social networking discusses the impacts of this highly fashionable activity and questions to which extent this cyber hobby actually replaces the value of real life friend-ships, which it namely doesn’t…

What it certainly does, however is to directly and indirectly feed corporate’s interests..
The idea of Facebook and MySpace is easily explained; namely to collect as many acquaintances as possible and then to interact... the thing we are not only aware of, is that we are not only enlarging our cyber-friend-circle for ourselves but for countless numbers of corperates, who -thanks to the existence of WebPages- can easily access our profile, ideas, tastes and preferences via mouse click, and find out these information about us, they once would have had to expensive market researches…. So apart from keeping in touch with your loved ones, each new member helps of these social networking sites help to increase the value of the platform which is is owned by media-moguls such as Rupert Murdoch who certainly don’t need any more money…
I’m not on facebook, as I prefer the real life acquaintances to the hyperreal-ones… the only thing, which is left to me, is some jealous glance at my school mates in the computer-rooms who constantly edit their profiles, add information and make new friends through their cyber identity….

reflections

i still didn't manage to reflect properly...

a self-reflective attitude certainly is important, to critically assess oneself, look back, what you achieved, how you approached things, what you could do better next time...to write about it is another thing..

the beauty about it... however (and i am still waiting for the beauty to enter my brain) is when there is self reflection, but still you are one with your thoughts, and stop constantly thinking about the actual process of reflection, which on the other hand can become a big fat monster which is trying to censor you, which is trying to tell you that your thoughts are not good enought, that you have to be more critical, that you have to sound more clever, that you have to be just that tiny step ahead of all those millions of millions of individuals who are just doing the same... typing for the sake of it and filling the blank screen with symbols which then become words and sentences, and which should imply meaning...

what makes you want to read all this my friend, from far away...

what distinguishes me from the rest, and is it actually necessary to be distinguished? is it really always asked to be different to point out your uniqueness expose yourself once more in this web-internet- to tell the secrets you don't even want to admit to yourself....

i don't see you but yet i know you, and yes... we create our identity... simultaneously on the computer screen... for whom?.. for you, for me, for the world.?.. the hyperreal which we certainly don't understand... which doesn't exist anywhere else but our imagination...

only do I know that I constantly get caught up on the internet... yet my online-identity is far less critical and picky than the one i aim to express in real life..

then there is the obvious blurring of real life and cyberlife, and I find it good and bad at the same time, and I know i certainly can't change it, but the least i could do is be conscious about it, aware of this transformation process, the shift in spheres of interaction, which brings me back to my initial challenge to write about self reflection, which has to do with all or nothing, and as a matter of expierence and perception is constantly changing as well, for the good or the bad, or the ugly and evil, unhappy, positive, negative... everything at the same time... or the sublimeness of life and attitude towards things... that was me from my little sailing boat down on the ocean

It’s such a thing with taste I know… If we like something is very subjective, and the actual reason behind as discussed by many theorists such as Bourdieu mainly stays unconscious, is maybe class-based and influenced by our level of education and knowlege…

However, there are guidelines, or general notions of what is good and what is bad, just like in Music (could we maybe say that we don’t like Mozart, but actually can’t we easily deny his genius musical talent) or in Art (of course should we express our subjective taste, but we have to acknowledge the revolutionizing effects which particular art-pieces had on society, in technique and style as well as the notion of art in general) Analyzing the websites is not much different in that respect… Obviously most website’s don’t aim to qualify as an art piece, no, rather do we have to examine them on the level of functionality. A particular content needs be delivered to a specific target group. So this is one aspect which, to my opinion is central. Accordingly a website which is dedicated for children would be designed in a much more playful way than a corperate’s profile. The principle however stays the same… To define my personal taste, I would say that mostly simple is good, and I prefer simplicity to overloaded pages with excessive special effects… Anyway, as I already pointed, the layout has to fit…

The starting page on my Power Book is the Apple website.

It is created by and for designers, so obviously the website has to come up to high expectations of aestheticism as well as to deliver relevant Apple-related content. Still one can clearly see that the designer’s of the pages aimed to keep the page as simple as possible, leaving the background colour white and keeping the content as compact as possible. The general colour selction of the Webdesign is a variation of grey-tones, again not to distract the viewer with to many colours.

The FrontPage visibly is divided into different frame sections, and the returning customer clearly knows where to recover particular content.
In the center of the page Apple provides the ‘Top Stories’ section, with all the relevant Apple-related news stories which are constantly updated. There is a clear list of links on the front page leading the customer to wherever he or she intends to go.
This site is purely commercial, however a distinction between product-related adverts and external adverbs is not easy for the visitor, who is simply bombarded with products.
Consequently, my conclusion on this website: it works for its purpose (and it would be quite sad if it didn’t, because I am sure Apple invests heavily in the design)

Our university website
Another example, which I actually quite like, and obviously regularly visit is our University website, www.arts.ac.uk.

I do like the design, because, again it is very simple and generally pretty clear, however do I know that I sometimes struggle in finding the content I am looking for.
The starting page of the site explicitly indicates the different college of the the University, in a table-like design, which by clicking on the them will bring the visitor to the individual colleges... the background colour of the front page is white, the only images provided are to distinguish the different colleges from each other… The page clearly emphasizes on its artistic mission, so… yes, I guess it works…

Another example, which I personally find quite horrible, is the celebrity gossip site people.com.

The page is overloaded with information, the design is not very appealing, but I guess it does work for the target group this way… The excessive advertising is very disturbing. The site seems very aggressive, with its blue background colour and suggests to sell the the hottest stories of the minute to its audience… I am sure they invested heavily in the design of the site, and the structure is quite clear….

my favourite things

So there we go. After travelling the endless and chaotic spheres of the world of blogging for millions of lightyears I completed a tiny selection of interesting blogs (to be continued)
With the overall conclusion (to be continued) that language barriers are definitely something, which need to be overcome …
Secondly. Yes I like blogging

A taste of Minsk…
Foto-Griffoneurei is an amazing blog by the 23-year old Xenia Awimova from White Russia… insights of everyday life- congratulating every attempt of self-reflection and critical thinking...yet truly visual…
http://ak-bara.livejournal.com/

Raising awareness…
Winner in the French category of Best of Blog-Award ... Cédric Kalonji’s blog is an indicative example of blogging’s position in a public arena of discourse... He bloggs about recent developments and day-to-day experiences in the Democratic Republic of Kogo. Offering an insight description of the countries horrific struggles and misrepresentation through international news coverage....Kalonji’s blog can be seen as representative of how local individuals become a counter voice for internationally neglected and underrepresented groups...
http://www.congoblog.net/

weird and incredibly fascinating are the images of this blog about Russian wood architecture
http://community.livejournal.com/ru_woodarch/


save the lunch!
For some lighter entertainment… I found the german blog with reflections on food..  
http://www.rettet-das-mittagessen.de

music blog... funny... inspiring.. Author Dr. Benedikt Köhler’s selection of popmusic and fun comments.. in german again...
http://www.eigenarbeit.org/pop

Yes i like blogging… to discover the far away beauty on my computer screen… makes me wanna swallow all the bits and bites of visual sublimeness..

into the wild

first steps into

the wild and unknown spheres of the world of blogging....

‘I thought it was yesterday,’ remarked

the clumsy butterfly
on its first attempt
to fly.
The gold teeth culture
seems so far away and yet
do I feel so blessed with
the smile of yesterday’s
memories.
yes it's me Alice the Camel