Culture

This has felt like a heavy week all around, so I wanted to wrap it up with a little levity. My favorite article this week was Michelle Slatalla's New York Times piece, "These Naughty Gifts Don't Clutter a Closet." She put the utter absurdity of Facebook applications into perspective, as she described the various virtual Naughty Gifts that one can send to friends, "thigh-high black platform boots...foil-wrapped condoms, black thongs and cans of something called Mr. Whipped Cream."

You see, in real life I've been talking to mom-friends quite a bit about … Read more

As I have spent the past few years analyzing the differences between the Boomers and Gen X, a yawning chasm has developed between Gen X and the teens and twentysomethings behind us. Years from now I still think we'll be mulling over the cultural divide between people who came of age using MySpace and Facebook, and those who didn't.

While we geezers (aka parents in their thirties and forties) mull over the technological and privacy implications of social networking, the generation behind us is adopting it as a given, and pushing the frontiers of sharing.

Case in point: a start-up called Shoeboxed was launched last July by a group of Duke University undergrads and recent grads. At first glance, I could wrap my mind around Shoeboxed's main concept. The service allows you to input all your receipts in order to keep track of them in one place. Got it.

But then they added a strange social-networking spin. Users are encouraged to "flaunt" their purchases by sharing them publicly. And then other users are encouraged to "let out your inner Mean Girl and go nuts with our stereotyping feature. Using the mouse is almost as easy as real-life stereotyping!"

Because we all know that what the world needs is more stereotyping! The Shoeboxed labels include "ghetto fabulous, attention whore, trust fund baby, teenage mother, playa, playa-hater, white trash, techy geek dork"....you get the idea. The prominent butt shot of the "ghetto fabulous" icon stands out as being particularly gratuitous.… Read more

How much information can one person absorb? I have reached the point where I feel like the kid in the classic Far Side cartoon who asks, "Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full."… Read more

Teens may be reacting with horror to the idea that Facebook is now open to everybody, so their parents may be showing up to butt into their social network.

I find myself on the other side of that equation, wondering "Why would I bother joining Facebook?" Fast Company recently discussed Facebook's growth, noting that "60 percent of the site's users are not in college networks, and the fastest-growing demographic is 25 and over." I had to laugh a bit at the broad swath covered by this statistic. Age 25 is a relatively recent college grad who is probably experiencing social networking as part of their peer experience.

As for those of use who are over age 30...well, let's say that no matter how wired we are, we did not exactly make a seamless transition from a yearbook to Facebook. … Read more

A recent Read/WriteWeb post pointed me to a new Pew/Internet Survey that suggests that "teens" (defined in this study as 12- to 17-year-olds) may view contact by people they don't know as a "cost of doing business" in the online social network environment.

The Pew survey found that about a third of online teens had been contacted online by someone with no connection to them or their friends. Overall, studying all online teens, 7 percent of them had experienced stranger contact that made them feel scared or uncomfortable.

It is important to note that when you look at group of teens who had been contacted by a stranger, nearly of a quarter of them say they felt scared or uncomfortable. Girls were more likely to feel this way, 27 percent compared with 15 percent of boys.

What do these results mean for parents? Social networks are becoming the norm for kids and teens, and "networking" means meeting new people. The question is always how to help kids learn to safely negotiate the public contact that comes into our home through online exposure.… Read more

Traveling in Japan, I have come across a Tokyo relocation guide so good it almost makes me want to move here. Tokyo: Here and How was produced by the Tokyo American Club Women's Group. This brand-new guide solves many of the mysteries confronting a Western family who is moving to Japan. From culture, to schools, to obtaining medical care, the guide leads families through each step of the process. As a visitor I found it an intriguing read. As a transplant it would be an indispensable 350-page resource.… Read more

If you ever wondered why parents can come across as worried and cranky members of the digital world, check out Noam Cohen's Link by Link blog post, Use My Photo? Not Without Permission. Cohen tells the story of a 15-year old high school girl, Alison Chang, from Dallas who was goofing off at a local church-sponsored car wash. Her church youth counselor snapped a photo and uploaded it to the photo-sharing site Flickr, where it caught the eye of an Australian advertising agency. Next thing you know, Alison's likeness appeared on a billboard in Australia.… Read more

This news may hit CNET tomorrow as a New York Times cross-post, but I haven't seen anything about it yet so I wanted to be sure it was reported here.

According to the Times, Verizon, one of the nation's two largest wireless carriers, told NARAL that it would not allow the reproductive rights organization to send text messages through a program using Verizon's mobile network, on the grounds that Verizon has the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages.… Read more

Last week The New York Times ended its TimesSelect subscription program in favor of providing free access to all its current issues and archives back to 1987. This is a positive development for readers and the Times alike. Now bloggers and other journalists can link to this key new source without sending their readers to a page that can only be read with a paid subscription.

If this development had happened two weeks ago, I might not have thought much more about it than that. But since then I have had the opportunity to meet Shireen Mitchell, executive director of Digital Sisters, a non-profit that seeks to close the digital divide. In addition to a legislative and media advocacy role, Digital Sisters provides hands-on tech education and support to underserved women, crossing race, class and gender lines.

People who read CNET are by definition digitally connected, and for us, the privilege of our wired existence is naturally accompanied by a kind of blindness to the barriers of living without computer access. The problem is, if we develop social systems that assume online access, we may be unintentionally leaving other people behind. Filing a government form, applying for a driver's license, or sending in a resume electronically are only expedient conveniences if you have computer access, equipment and skills.… Read more