13 posts tagged “social issues”

I have spoken about The Cat, The Dog and Web 2.0, blogged about the disconnect of social behavior online and offline and very recently, Jennifer Aniston experienced it first-hand recently.

These 4 minutes explain your social graph

Last year, I had a blogged about a belief with an inspirational video - We Are All the Same and We Are all Different.
So you can imagine my excitement to hear from a geneticist that "...despite differences in size, shape and color, all humans are 99.9 percent biologically identical"

I found other parallels since I am originally from India, my wife is "white' and we have a daughter

Here her speak about her experience on NPR's "This I Believe"

Npr_101423588

Imagine: Believing is NOT Seeing [differences] 

The core theme of this blog is social behavior offline, online. I have written a few posts in the past comparing the online and offline social behavior with The Cat, The Dog and Web2.0, The Online and Offline Social Disconnect, Gordon Gekko's Social Graph.

So when I saw an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by Peter Lovenheim titled "Will you Be My Neighbor" in the New York Times here,  I was glad that it was not just me who saw what I saw. It underlines some of my observations as an immigrant coming from a culture where all the neighbors (apart from family) knew each other and shared a lot of their lives - offline, synchronous and involved.

You can read the details but here are a few lines from his article that are captivating and at the same time, concerning for our society:

"According to social scientists, from 1974 to 1998, the frequency with which Americans spent a social evening with neighbors fell by about one-third. Robert Putnam, the author of “Bowling Alone,” a groundbreaking study of the disintegration of the American social fabric, suggests that the decline actually began 20 years earlier, so that neighborhood ties today are less than half as strong as they were in the 1950s.

Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?"

My response to his Why based on observations and great conversations from my 8 years in America:

• America emphasizes the individual
• America emphasizes independence
• America teaches that destiny is in one's control
• American emphasizes Doing versus Being
• America, generally, measures success financially
• We, globally, still discriminate - color, religion, politics, sex, sexuality, race, country, attire, appearance, net worth, profession
  

I know a few of my neighbors but I know can do better.

Your responses, thoughts?

Imagine: [At least] love thy neighbor

Since I am always driven by learning and unlearning from others and whenever I see, read or hear something that I feel really inspired about, I make it a point to share it here. Here is one that got my mindshare on the treadmill today - the tag line of Marines.com

"We don't accept applications. Only Commitments!

The only currency for startups is commitment:

• Its a small army of 300 wishing to disrupt the might Persian army
• It can not, should not accept mediocrity
  
• Its a passion to make a difference in people's lives
• Its against conventional wisdom
• Its not comfortable - ones works everywhere, wherever and is on duty all the time
  

Imagine: The Few, The Proud!

Do you prefer to have a cat or dog as a friend? Do you like to add friends or make friends? Do you have a lot of friends online?

Here are two articles and one definition that speak to that:

1. My Midlife Facebook Crisis by Matthew Rose of The Wall Street Journal this last weekend
2. You Are Not My Friend by Joel Stein of Time
   
3. Plaxo's Pulse's defines Friend as - "Your real life friends. (Not your "social network friends")"

So if you need to make sure you have your rocks in first into your bucket, the above might help to figure that out.

Imagine: Calling, meeting, helping or maybe hanging out with a friend.

It is one of those lectures, given by Randy Pausch - a Carnegie Mellon professor, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, that he gave at the university on Sept. 18, 2007, that you do not want to miss.

Braveheart, the movie's tagline was "All men die. Not all men really live". Out of all those who die, a few know how to do it with grace and remind others - life is short and anything can happen. Once you are done with this, it should help you to identify your rocks and put them in first.

Imagine: like a child again

I had a post on The Dog, The Cat and Web 2.0 a while ago and a few on friendship, its disconnect online and offline so I think it would be appropriate to celebrate Wall Street's anniversary and the change in how we can 'get' a friend after 20 years, with Gordon Gekko's quote in the movie:

I had a recent post on friendship, then a few casting a cat with a dog [Also read: Gordon Gekko's Social Graph] and a grocery store clerk in social networks, with my personal thoughts on making friends and comparing Web 2.0 with offline and online behavior.

Here are a couple of studies I found through Valleywag that are very relevant and bring out the paradox in the two worlds or maybe more appropriately, first and second life:

• England's Sheffield Hallam University's Dr. Will Reader studies whether social networks, with the aid of "add friend", helps in making friends.
  

The article states "The advent of online social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook is changing the average number of friends people have, with some users befriending literally thousands of others, Dr Will Reader of Sheffield Hallam University told the BA Festival of Science on Monday."

Then he goes on to find out that, not surprisingly:"Some 90 per cent of the online friends rated as ‘close’ have been met face-to-face". But wait, there is more - more disconnect with the online and offline friends:
The article refers to Dunbar's Number, also referred to by Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, The Tipping Point "that the average person has a social network of around 150 friends, ranging from very close friends to casual acquaintances.

The irony of all this is to consider a study as recent as in 2006, that brings out the decline in friendship.

"The study states that 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and that the average total number of confidants per person has dropped to 2."

• The second reference was to a Times of London article about the "Facebook Suicide". More importantly though, is this quote, which is very relevant:

"Patricia Rogers, a counsellor and fellow of the BACP, even worries that the feelings that lead to Facebook suicide could trigger the loneliness [ref: slippery slope of loneliness in prior post here] and lack of self-esteem felt by people who really do take their own lives.
"It could be incredibly damaging for the ego to realise that you haven't got as many friends as you thought you had, or that those friends aren't particularly meaningful," she says"
 
Imagine: Social is Social Does [not social "adds"]

Since there have been quite some coverage lately on parents working to establish online identities through searchable names and domain addresses for their babies, I thought this article on naming businesses would be relevant - since the goal seems to be the same:

• Get an available domain name
• Stand out
• Be search-friendly (think SEO)
  
• Be Phonetic and easy to remember
• Speling dus not mattr as its in their f8 to Leetspeak - TEh INTeRn3T i5 THr3@+EN1N9 t0 Ch@n93 thE W4Y wE $p34k (Translation: The Internet is threatening to change the way we speak.)

Furthermore, there is a quote that some parents might find applicable: "I am not a business man, I am a business, Man!

Imagine: Born; Joost Born
 

I had a post on being a GOOG parent (and some others on Names) but it seems that was not GOOD enough - now you probably want to get a domain name for your unborn child when you decide on a name. The San Jose Mercury News has an article here on how parents are capturing domain names for their new borns to establish on online identity.

I am curious what parents buy or make to establish an identity off line for their children.

Imagine: Having "conversations" with your child through blogs