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Alumni Review
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Hamilton Alumni Review
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Excuse me, have you got the time?The one social aspect of web 2.0 that students are widely using to its fullest potential is Facebook. Similar in concept to the traditional first-year college "facebook" but light years beyond it in capability, Facebook hosts personal information in multiple media formats to allow students to digitally build relationships in a way that the old-school paper picturebook could only dream of. … It's 9:30 on a Thursday night. I'm writing the Facebook section of this feature, but I'm not really writing. I'm "researching" it by very leisurely perusing the capabilities of Facebook. I see that a close friend has updated her user status. It reads: "Amy is updating her Facebook profile because she has a paper due tomorrow morning." LOL! We've both succumbed to one of Facebook's most alluring qualities --- its natural proclivity to induce procrastination. Despite being an extremely useful tool with copious personal information (everything from where people live, have lived or with whom they have lived, to intensive details about their favorite bands, movies and activities), Facebook requires its users to invest substantial time in order to make it worthwhile. Some people only get involved when they receive an e-mail from Facebook informing them of an action involving their profile; others explore the options of Facebook many times a day, logging hours of use even when nothing much is happening in their lives. (Perhaps nothing much is happening in their lives because they're spending hours a day on Facebook.) Nonetheless, with nearly 4,000 people on the Hamilton College network since Facebook opened to Hamilton students in the summer of 2004, most students have at least a nominal presence on Facebook. Are you looking at me?Whether or not users invest the time to learn all the features, absorb the massive amounts of data, and upload their own personal profile information, Facebook allows people to connect to the people who make a difference in their lives. Facebook, however, does so in a way that is distinct from any other resource. Each profile page, if regularly updated, provides a condensed version of a person's life, complete with pictures, status updates, events, activities and jobs they hold. With this information so easily available, friends or relatives living far away are easier to keep in touch with, and busy friends or classmates who are close by are easier to schedule time with. The possibilities of Facebook, in fact, are constantly expanding. With each new user-developed internal application (more than 4,000 and counting), users can join another humanitarian cause, plan another weekend event, juggle personal data in yet another way to create yet another network of supposedly kindred souls. But despite the most popular or peculiar capabilities of Facebook, the ultimate reason to have Facebook is generally to Facebook stalk. Students don't, as a rule, go around "friending" everyone they know or meet. Instead, they use Facebook as a resource to learn more about people they already know or would like to know better. They use its ease of writing a "wall post" or sending a message to communicate with classmates. |
Being Digital is Being AvailableIf I want to get in touch with friends across the hall and they happen to be on AIM, I'm just as likely to message them as I am to get up and go knock on their door. More ...At Last, a Path to Absolute TruthA co-worker recently told me a story in which a friend of his broke up with his girlfriend of five years. More ...The New Age of PiracyAlmost everyone I talk to has a slightly different idea of where to draw the line on appropriation of media on the Internet More ... |
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