I’m glad to announce that I’ve joined a new group blog focused on tracking the tools, processes and ideas being used to decentralize media production and distribution. My fellow bloggers are a brilliant and visionary bunch, and I’m honored to be the West Coast correspondent (I think they’re all in NYC).

Please go check it out! Or better yet, just add the feed to your aggregator.

Reading “Tinysex and Gender Trouble” from Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen reminded me of a friend of a friend who likes to make what he calls “Friendster honeypots.” A honeypot is a something engineered to attract; it usually refers to servers set up to attract hackers, but in this case it is Friendster profiles (usually female) set up to attract pathetic losers. Like “virtual cross-dressing” in MUDs, changing your gender on Friendster is technically simple. Take a few Google image searches, several fake email addresses, a flair for composing flirty profiles, and bang, you’ve got a steady flow of friend requests and gut-busting emails. No word yet on the psychological repercussions of this sort of behavior…

In Behavior in Public Places Erving Goffman notes that individuals in society are expected to exhibit “presence” in social situations, which he defines as a “controlled alertness” and awareness of one’s facial expression and appearance to others. Yet, as he points out, there are certain contexts (the train platform at rush hour) in which these expectations are dropped, and it is OK to appear alienated from those around you.

I wonder if technologies like personal stereos, cell phones, PDAs and laptops are widening the contexts in which it is OK not to exhibit presence. This would seem to be part of the appeal of the iPod (or Walkman for that matter): liberation from the duty of acknowledging those around you…

BoingBoing reports an interesting case of a network of weak ties which was maintained through occasional face-to-face meetings, and which seems to have dissolved now that the occasions for those meetings have disappeared: the nationwide network of acidheads and dealers:

For 30 years, Dead tours were essential in keeping many LSD users and dealers connected, a correlation confirmed by the DEA in a divisional field assessment from the mid-’90s.