Greetings good readers! I cut this insightful blog post by Nicholas Carr from the latest issue of GoodLinks because I wanted to focus on the theme of the particular appeal of old technology, but it’s a very good read. Although I’ll excerpt some portions for discussion, know that its worth reading in full.
Context collapse is an effect of the independence and permanence of digital media. The link posted without comment, the months old tweet a new follower finds, and the YouTube videos you made in college are robbed of context — the audience, the “public”, only sees the content. Carr recalls what millennials and older generations will remember well: Presenting a different self in different contexts. Perhaps I spoke one way with my family, another with my church leaders, and still another with work colleagues.
On open social networks, “all those different contexts collapsed into a single context.”
As everyone rushed to join Facebook and other social networks, context collapse and the attendant crisis of self-presentation became universal. In a 2010 interview with the journalist David Kirkpatrick, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg put it bluntly: “You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” Zuckerberg praised context collapse as a force for moral cleanliness: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” Facebook forces us to be pure.
Carr points out that Zuckerberg has been happy to profit on the reestablishment of social context in the form of private, selective, and disappearing messaging tools, but was he right? Is adjusting the presentation of your self to social context evidence of a lack of integrity?
The development of finstas and alt accounts are an interesting development around the question of self-presentation.
From context collapse to content collapse:
In discussing the appeal of the News Feed in that same interview with Kirkpatrick, Zuckerberg observed, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” The statement is grotesque not because it’s false — it’s true, actually — but because it’s a category error. It yokes together in an obscene comparison two events of radically different scale and import. And yet, in his tone-deaf way, Zuckerberg managed to express the reality of content collapse. When it comes to information, social media renders category errors obsolete.
Everything on Facebook is a post. Everything on Twitter is a tweet. When an infinitude of messages are squashed into one medium, what happens to the very different messages?
🧵 Threads | GoodLinks No.7
🧵 Threads | GoodLinks No.7
🧵 Threads | GoodLinks No.7
From content collapse to collapse of civilization
Greetings good readers! I cut this insightful blog post by Nicholas Carr from the latest issue of GoodLinks because I wanted to focus on the theme of the particular appeal of old technology, but it’s a very good read. Although I’ll excerpt some portions for discussion, know that its worth reading in full.
From context collapse to content collapse - Nicholas Carr
Context collapse is an effect of the independence and permanence of digital media. The link posted without comment, the months old tweet a new follower finds, and the YouTube videos you made in college are robbed of context — the audience, the “public”, only sees the content. Carr recalls what millennials and older generations will remember well: Presenting a different self in different contexts. Perhaps I spoke one way with my family, another with my church leaders, and still another with work colleagues.
On open social networks, “all those different contexts collapsed into a single context.”
Carr points out that Zuckerberg has been happy to profit on the reestablishment of social context in the form of private, selective, and disappearing messaging tools, but was he right? Is adjusting the presentation of your self to social context evidence of a lack of integrity?
The development of finstas and alt accounts are an interesting development around the question of self-presentation.
From context collapse to content collapse:
Everything on Facebook is a post. Everything on Twitter is a tweet. When an infinitude of messages are squashed into one medium, what happens to the very different messages?