The Wilderness Downtown

I am amazed by this project. I post it because it is interactive sort of and individual although not created for one individual. I think it is worth checking it out.
The Wilderndess Downtown

Kjell 5000

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So, I've been recommended to have a look at "Kjell 5000" at least twice. It's a Swedish humor program about Kjell who has 5000 friends on Facebook and who travels around to Sweden to meet them all.

That includes showing up at the wedding of a "friend" etc. Most of all it's an exploration of what friendship means in the age of social media. Many of the questions Kjell asks explore whether they really are friends, what you can expect of friends etc.

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I will continue to use the blog in this way...

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I realize that when I find "random stuff" about social media, this is a good place to post things just to keep track of them so it might happen that I myself post stuff here once or a few times per month.

You can do that too, but please only post things that you might think is of interest to others and please also explain why you post it!

/Daniel

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More on digital natives...

As already mentioned before, kids are being exposed to technologies earlier and earlier in the their lives. Now Fisher Price is taking care of the problems, which parents encounter with when giving their electronic devices to their babies - drooling, dribbles and unwanted calls that is.

More information here: http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2341&e=detail&pid=64176&pcat=bulnl


No wonder they will grow up like this:




And this is how you can tell that we are getting old:

iPad apps for children?

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I don't know if this is really appropriate and I don't even know if people still read stuff that is posted to the blog, but, anyway, I have a question for y'all.

Does anyone happen to have recommendations for great iPad apps for children?

Yours gratefully,

/Daniel

PS. I hope you all will have a nice Christmas (and that you will come back well rested and with new energy for the spring term).

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150, the magic number

It is not uncommon that people today, have several hundreds of "friends" on social media tools like Facebook. And it almost feels like, that the number of friends has become a symbol of status.

Therefore I think that this interview with the evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar is very interesting. He claims that you cannot keep in contact with more than an average of 150 friends due to the limits of social skills in our brain. This also includes social media tools like Facebook.

These 150 friends involves relationships with trust and obligations not just names and faces. So how many of your "friends" on Facebook are real, actual friends?

You can find the interview here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/14/my-bright-idea-robin-dunbar

/Simon Enström

Democratizing Effects

Last week, we had a guest lecture about the allegedly democratizing effects of social media. I found an article that I think is relevant for this subject. It is about the use of social media and its influence on the recent uprising in Egypt.

The article claims that social media tools like Facebook and Twitter made an opportunity for activists and viewers to communicate, coordinate and document the protests against the Murbarak regime.

I like the conclusion in the article, that social media did not make all of this happen but that it brought everything to a head much sooner.

Here is the article:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1722492/how-social-media-accelerated-the-uprising-in-egypt

/Simon Enström