Selected Mass Observation Responses
Mass Observation has kindly allowed us to reproduce here five complete responses from the 169 we received. We felt this was important to do, not least because it makes clear the nature of these texts as forms of life writing (in ways that the quotation of occasional sentences out of context does not).
The responses we have selected are not necessarily typical – representative in terms of length or articulacy – they’re mostly longer, richer, more thoughtful, complex, nuanced, and detailed than many. But they nonetheless touch on themes and issues that came through as important in a large number of responses, though they often had more insight into them than many. The aim is to let their greater detail and clarity bear on these topics.
Transcriptions have been made of the five responses published here in full, to enable them to be annotated and linked to the series of brief discussions called “Observations” on the issues arising from several of them. The Observations are not intended to be exhaustive. Many more quotations could have been included under each; many of them could have been linked to multiple essays; and many more essay topics could have been devised. Scans of the original responses are also provided for anyone wishing to check the transcriptions, or who prefers to read them without being distracted by the notes and links.
Mass Observation responses are normally headed with the writer’s MO number, followed by their sex, age, and occupation. This information is normally included in scholarly citations. But we have redacted other details in the published or quoted responses that would enable identification. Any redactions are indicated in square brackets thus:
[material redacted here to preserve anonymity]
Close reading needs to attend to the whole: to see the context of a particular utterance (Is something a joke? Sometimes you need to see the rest of the document to be sure); to see what its structure is, how it’s patterned; whether it repeats itself, digresses, and so on.
Though we have been able to quote extracts from responses other than the five reproduced in full here, the extracting of the quotations sets a limit to what can be done in terms of close reading. At least, though the comments made on them here take account of the larger context, readers who are unconvinced by the claims may need to inspect the original documents. As we have given the anonymous IDs in each case, this can easily be done.
Readers wishing to quote from any of this material will need to obtain permission from the Mass Observation Project and follow their guidelines on referencing. See: http://www.massobs.org.uk/images/Referencing_Mass_Observation_material_2015.pdf.
MO’s Observers indicate whether they give permission for their work to be quoted in this way. All the quotations here are from respondents whose permission has been given. Unfortunately several of the most articulate and illuminating responses came from Observers withholding permission. These are mentioned or described in the essays here as appropriate. But researchers are encouraged to read the full range of responses to get a more complete sense of their detail and complexity.
You Online, First Task
Internet to me is a door to the whole world, its shopping whenever I need to, its “Mr Google” (if he were a man I would marry him) and all information at my fingertips.
It’s my shop being seen by people in USA, NZ, and Australia. Anywhere in the world.
I do use the internet, for my business [material redacted here to preserve anonymity] and to keep in touch with my family as we live so far apart.
Yes I do want to know my granddaughter has eggs for breakfast.
My first on line thing was my email address. I still have the same one. I had dial-up internet, I can still remember the sound of it dialling ha ha.1
I bought my son a computer for his school studies. He is very clever and I thought it money well spent. It cost me £2,000. And the programmes were £80. They were maths programmes, not games, I couldn’t afford games too. The computer filled my estate car, now you would get the same in my hand bag for £400.
Mr Google was still a spark in someone brain then.
Emailing was really all I did then. I didn’t buy online, or search the web. I use it every day at work, mostly for business. at Home I play scrabble etc. with my family in Norfolk, shop, and log onto face book.
In work I use the Desk top computer, at home my iPad.
When a computer was delivered to my last place of work I was the only person there.
Well after a lot of hard work I got it up and running.
I had to contact HQ for load up instructions.
“are you at the desk top” the guy asked.. “yes” says!
“What Icons can you see”
“I know what Icons are, cant see any”
“are you sure you are at the desk top”
“yes, I have the computer on the desk top and I am sitting at it”
No-one was born knowing the first screen is called the desk top, someone somewhere sometime told them... now I know ha ha.
My sons and my grandsons are my tutors.
I did go on a floristry course where they were teaching a little bit about computers.
I knew nothing, I couldn't even type.
The instructor said put up your hand if you need help.
Now type in your name and push the return key.
None of the keys were labelled “return.”
So I put up my hand and asked which the return key is. There was a loud groan from the class. The teaching assistant spent the evening doing my work, I learnt nothing, well except where the return key is.
Daily routines and practices
I like Face book.
I know a lot of people don’t, but as long as you are careful, and sensible, then you should be ok.
If I won the lottery the last place I would put it is on face book, can you imagine.
I can see them open the gifts I posted for Christmas and their birthdays.
And advice when I need it from my big sister.
How my Mum would have loved it, sadly she died in 2003, but she would have embraced it all.
My mobile phone has the internet, but I use that for texting and taking pictures.
So I forced myself to learn how to use it, now its with me wherever I go.
Communities and social networking sites
I do have a “my fitness pal” app, you can scan bar codes on food and it will calculate the calories. You can say if you have run or worked out, it will calculate how many calories you have used. It is very clever, and I did lose a stone in weight. But I have become lazy again.
I have scrabble, I can play my family, and other word games. I don’t like computer games.
I have downloaded Audio Books which I can listen to.
I have pay pal, an excellent tool.
I am not a member of any online forums, I know nothing about them, are they any good?
I use “pinterest,” that’s excellent.
linkdin
That's about it.
But I use them for my business.
I need my shop to stay at the top of Google, without me paying for it.
So I have my shop face book page where every day I post a new picture. [material redacted here to preserve anonymity] I have 378 page likes, not bad for little ole me.
And yes I do come up at the top of Google.
I post picture on Pinterest, that’s very good.
And I accept anyone and everyone on linkdin. Not really sure what linkdin is all about, but hey I am there.
I don’t get twitter, nor whatsapp, nor instergramme.
But face book and I are firm friends.
I don’t know who I think is typical internet user.
But if I were bedridden, and alone and sad I would use the internet, I would have a “virtual” life if I couldn’t have an actual life.
But to waste your life at a desk top if you have no need, virtual friends instead of real ones is sad.
A friend of mine has a young daughter, she is 10.
She has a face book page, one of her school “friends” posted hard porn on her time line, I saw it and was horrified, I have no idea how the poor thing felt.
The boy was disciplined, and the picture removed.
But why has this young girl even got face book, and how and why does this young man have access to that. I wouldn’t even know how to get it and post it.
I like to use pay pal because all my info is stored in one site, if I use my card for every purchase then lots of different places have my details, and who knows how careful they are. I take credit card payment over the phone all day long, I burn all files at the end of the month, that is more than enough time for a query.
Your identity
I do worry about all the information stored about me, my car details, my insurance, my mot, it’s all on line for anyone who has the right programme.
I have a relay service in my shop, that is you can contact me to send [material redacted here to preserve anonymity] anywhere in the world. You pay me and HQ sorts out all the finances at the end of the month.
In order to transmit an order we have to type it into the system. We have “quick address” which allows us to access the electoral registry to check on names and addresses. I can tell you who lives in every... well almost every... house in G.B. Scarey...
I would be more likely to “open up” with the M.O. than on the internet, because, although it may be read by lots of people, you don’t know who I am, so if the directive were a bit “personal” I may well answer, but not on the internet.
I have researched my past, but only in a fun way.
When you think a computer that covers my lap once would have filled a room.
And what next, who could have imagined that we would have the things we do, and as for the next 25 years, I think my head will explode trying to think about it.
If you were to take my nan and bring her to this world of TV, phones, internet she would scream.
All she had was radio.
I have a pen pal, I could email or text her, she is on face book. But although I do type my letters on the computer I print them of and post them.
I still get a thrill getting a real letter in the post.
I often write a letter to my sons or grandchildren, just for the fun of it.
I do text.
I text short “Hiya” texts to my friends. My daughter was taken into hospital 2 weeks ago, she had pneumonia, I sent the same text to everyone, job done, they all knew she was ill without me having to phone one by one.2
I order my stock by text.
I text the traders, who now have a written note of my order, and I can check they have sent me all they should.
[material redacted here to preserve anonymity]
Copyright reserved: Contact The Keep BN1 9BP
Observations recommended in conjunction with D156’s response:
Scan of original submission to MO by D156
29/9/15 email
D4736
Male, 49, Married, Southampton, Air Traffic Services Assistant
Summer 2015 Part 1: You Online
First Task – Five words or phrases
Computer
iPad
Smartphone
Early Experiences
I use the internet on a continually daily basis.
At my secondary school in the early 1980’s we had in a dark corner of the computer room a large and bulky IBM VM370. It must have been someone’s bright idea in the borough of Stockport to acquire, at probably great expense, one of these computers for each school in the area. This was at a time when secondary schools were just getting a handful of BBC microcomputers for teaching, some rich kids would have a ZX Spectrum at home, and the concept of the desktop PC was still some years away.
No one, not even the teachers, knew how to use this thing or what we could do with it. It was so densely unusable. The very beginnings of the internet was ten years away, there were no programs you could load on to it that we knew of, and this was a time when all programs had to be written in obscure machine code and typed in there and then. There didn’t appear to be any instructions, method of storing data or saving programs easily that we knew of. This was a time when people were still figuring out what we might be going to use computers for. Even simple word processing or desktop publishing was a concept yet to be grasped. I remember lessons explaining how computers might be used in all sorts of applications that never came to be. Computerised scales in the kitchen that would automatically weigh ingredients and suggest recipes? Fridges that would tell you when you were running out of certain items? (Because opening the fridge door and looking was so old fashioned and unnecessary.) The most we ever did was the most rudimentary creation of data files, or creating a loop that would print a rude word across the screen until you pressed <ESC>.
So, this pointless behemoth would sit in the corner with its little green cursor blinking away. Until one day, a message appeared: ==> Anyone there?
Someone had worked out that these computers were networked across the phone lines in the borough, and that we could send messages to each other; a schools intranet. Those at the back of the class soon figured out that this was a school on the other side of Stockport messaging us, and that we could reply when the teachers’ back was turned. Computing lessons took on a whole new interest as messages went to and fro, and over the months we built up a picture of over twenty schools, those that had discovered this new portal of communication, their identities, and those that had yet to tap in to this new form of distraction.
Despite our teachers insistence that “this is not what the computer was for” we always managed to grab a few minutes at the end of a lesson, or in break times. Soon jokes were passed back and forth, other bits of trivia and gossip, and eventually an ever-growing list entitled: “101 uses for an IBM VM370.” Most of these involved disembowelling the giant monitor of its screen and cathode-ray tube and utilising it as a plant pot, umbrella stand or hat.
We had inadvertently stumbled across what the majority of people would use computers for in the future, some twenty years ahead of time!3
I first became connected online properly in 1999 when we bought our first home computer. It was a slow and frustrating business then. I remember Sunday evenings being the time when most people were on and the connection would grind to a halt under the internet’s inability to keep up with demand. Email was the most important thing then, and as we had our newborn son, it became the medium by which to share pictures and keep in touch with the ever-growing number of friends in cyberspace.
Among early sites that became important was Friends Reunited, but this was soon eclipsed by the better connected and organised Facebook. I remember early websites being those created by individuals rather than the global companies that dominate now. My interest in aviation meant I was often looking at an individual photographer’s collections of aircraft. In particular a chap called Mike Barth catalogued a gallery of the individual tail designs worn by British Airways’ controversial ethnic livery at the time. Through this I soon found my way onto Airliners.net, which had existed since 1997, and has now become the go to website for photographs of airliners past and present.
Daily routines and practices
I use the internet and home and work on a daily basis. At home I have an 8 year old Compaq tower which is in our living room, and this I regard as the “main” computer – it is connected to a printer and has an external hard drive plugged in to accommodate all our family photographs. I also have a Samsung NC-10 Netbook which I use mostly for writing which I keep in my workbag. I often use this to access the internet quickly as the main computer is much slower to boot up, and its flexibility means I do use it around the house and when I go away on holiday or trips. Occasionally I use my Samsung Galaxy smartphone but only sparingly as I don’t like its slowness or tiny screen for most of my internet use. It comes in handy for weather, road traffic, occasional Google searches on the go or a look at Flight Radar 24 for positions of aircraft flying over. I do not access email on this, preferring to do all of that on my main computer so deal with things in one go rather than being pestered all day.
At work we have a number of hot desks which we use to access email and updates on work procedures (air traffic control) as well as the company’s intranet. We have internet access and I usually have at least one look per day. As I work in an operational environment we have several half hour breaks per duty where I might do this, I am not sat at a desk all day as in a normal office environment.
I try to ration my own internet use each day. It is far too easy and time consuming to sit and surf, wasting hours on pointless pursuits and distractions. I find I have to discipline myself and avoid turning on the computer unless I have specific work to do on it. When I do I tend to find I will swirl around for a couple of hours going through my bookmarked favourites unless I am doing something positive like banking, editing photographs, emailing or writing.
I would like to ration my family as I think they spend far too much time online. The precedent is set perhaps by my wife who suffers from arthritis and has had to medically retire in her 40’s. She has to manage her energy through the day so will sit with her Kindle for a few hours at a time. My daughter will usually spend time on her iPad in the morning before school, and will be on it all evening apart from dinner, homework or other activities. Similarly my son seems to have spent most of the summer holidays playing online games or on his smartphone. Both of them watch a lot of vlogs and would count themselves as [sic] 'youtubers.
My most regular sites are Facebook, Airliners.net and Flight Radar24 which I will look at on a daily basis. Other that I use when needed are the Met Office weather forecast, BBC weather forecast and occasionally news, Google maps and streetview and AA route planner. I use a few sites for research for my aviation hobby – mostly the Airline Fleets Index at planespotters.net, and LAAS Bizjets (The London Amateur Aviation Society) for executive jets. I have a few music and theatre venues and pop/rock band websites that I look at from time to time.
I have never completed a course to help use the internet or a computer. Despite doing computer studies at O level and A level in the early 80s, and studying computer science at Polytechnic, I wouldn’t say I had any formal training other than picking it up as I went along. The way people use computers today is totally different to how it was when home computers and PCs were in their infancy. Generally speaking the idea of having a manual or instructions for us has fallen by the wayside as programs, games, applications and websites have become “user-friendly.” Usually by trial and error you can find your way around, although that can lead to all sorts of frustrating hours spend at a screen. The things I was learning about at school and college might have stood me in stead if I had gone into the computer industry, but have had absolutely no use whatsoever to the way we use computers today.
My first job after school and before going to Polytechnic in 1985/86 was at a company that sold early PCs to small businesses in. I had to sit and learn the word processing, spreadsheet and database programs just by trying to follow the manual and by blundering through. I was given only rudimentary introduction then left to get on with it myself. I guess they expected a teenager fresh out of school to be the expert while the other 4 or 5 staff were busy chasing customers! These early PCs were the Sanyo MBC-555 and Olivetti word processors, and compared to what has superseded them they were very clunky and not user-friendly.My official job title was “computer demonstrator,” but I admit I had not much of a clue when my first nervous secretary sat down for her first experience with a computer. I think I tried to cover every single text function the word processor could do in one day and the poor woman left in a state of utter bewilderment.
A few years later (1988) when I was working at a college in Cambridge as part of my sandwich year at Polytechnic, I bravely stepped up to take an evening class entitled: “Introduction to computers.” None of the older staff were willing to do it and I saw it as a chance to make some extra money. For one evening a week for 6 weeks or so I had a group of about 20 folks, all of whom had never touched a computer before, eager to dip their toe in and find out. Computers were going to be everywhere in the future and everyone was going to have to learn how to use them. The idea that they would become so ubiquitous and simple to use was still unknown. There was no concept of the trivial uses to which they have been put today – it was really a glorified typewriter and data storage device.
In contrast to my earlier efforts I kept it really simple, demonstrating the very rudimental features of a word processor: creating a letter, saving it, and the basic editing functions of how to use the backspace, delete and cursor keys to move around the text on a page. In an era when most people were still using typewriters this was a novelty and a revelation!
Despite my early experience of the world of computing, I did not pursue a career in that field and wouldn’t call myself particularly computer-savvy. I use them at arms length much like most people these days. I stubbornly refuse to use my phone for much else other than phone calls and texts, so am not particularly into apps per se. I have downloaded a cycling app that uses GPS to show distance travelled and average speed. Similarly my daughter got me to get one that acts as a pedometer – they are interesting curios but I don’t use them as part of any fitness programme or lifestyle. I’m not that into sports or exercise enough to warrant any wearable technology.
Communities and social networking sites
I use Facebook and am on a number of message groups mainly in connection with my aviation hobby.
On the other hand it has been enlightening to see people airing their views on immigration, refugees and migrants. With some people I think I would rather not know their politics.
What has been particularly nice is getting in touch with folks I have lost contact with. It’s an extension of what Friends Re-united tried to do, tapping into that “what happened to them?” question when you think back to schooldays. Facebook’s advantage is that it casts the net wider. A friend from church nearly 30 years ago who had emigrated to New Zealand popped up one day, and it was great to find out what had happened to each of us. We got to know his wife, always have a game of Scrabble on the go, and met up a couple of years back when he came back to visit his elderly father. We got on well and he talked up life in New Zealand so much that we decided to go there for a holiday, staying with them for some of the time.
I have kept in touch with dear old friends this way who now live in Australia too. How amazing one evening to say hi to my friend who is a geological surveyor, and get a selfie back saying here she was outside a factory early in the morning her time, waiting for them to open up! It reminds me of what we were doing at school 30 years ago – using computers in such a trivial way that could never have been predicted.
Within Facebook are common interest groups, and I post pictures to one that covers historical photos of the London airports and the aircraft that visited them in the past. There have been some wonderful pictures of long-gone areas, people and aeroplanes, and plenty of interesting stories and banter to go with it. Although I have not met any of these people you feel you are getting to know a whole new crowd that share your interests, and a number of them do get together.
My wife writes a blog from time to time and began following a lady in the US who wrote one under the name “10 minute writer.” They struck up an online friendship which developed on Facebook and in due course we became beta readers for her first three novels. She was commissioned by a publishing house to write a book entitled: “How to write a novel in 10 minutes a day.” I was invited to help in its development by “road-testing” the writing exercises for each chapter, along with another friend of hers. As we came to the end of the project I was due to travel to the States so we arranged a very serendipitous meeting to bring the project to a close.
My wife has also travelled to the States for a short break to stay with our friend in her home city, and I cannot but marvel at how far flung and disparate people can be brought together via the internet and what it has lead to. There is now a large Facebook group of more than a thousand members gathered around the “10 minute novelist” banner, a worldwide community of writers.
There are a few networking sites that I have deliberately avoided. I have in the past been active on a couple of discussion forums. One was for a pop musician with a very long and varied career and a fascinating character. It was fun for a while and there was never any bad stuff on there, but I came to realise there are only so many hours in the day. These things can be very absorbing, and likewise with the many aviation discussion forums, a lot of time can be spent very quickly scrolling through endless conversations. For the same reason I have never signed up to Twitter, Linkedin, Pintrest or Snapchat. Quite simply: There. Is. Not. Enough. Time. My wife has been on Twitter and is seems very schizophrenic to me. Too many voices. At one time she had this thing called a tweetdeck, with conversations in several columns continually scrolling every few seconds as another message beeped in. I have difficulty keeping up with one conversation never mind several. It feels to me like one giant global pub, with a million different conversations going on at once which you can never hope to follow. There is a lot of shouting and only the loudest get to be heard. Not for me. I prefer everything in one place where I can manage it, and that place is Facebook. Even my wife has abandoned the tweetdeck, thank heavens.
Facebook has changed somewhat since its inception. Where people used to write a line I’m doing this, I’m doing that, it has become a much more visual place as people share pictures of themselves or funny ones they have come across. A post without an accompanying graphic generally goes unnoticed now. That level of detail about life has migrated to Twitter I guess. However Facebook seems to be able to encapsulate several uses and has been able to evolve with the progression of social media into our lives. That and its sheer inertia – I wouldn’t use any other site as we’re all signed up to Facebook. There would have to be some dramatic shift or revolutionary development to get everyone to find another site, and way, of communicating.
It is clear that different ages uses different sites, but I wouldn’t say there was a typical user of social networks. I think it very much depends on the nature of the site: mumsnet will have lots of mums, aviation sites will have lots of geeky blokes in their forums. It has surprised me who has popped up on Facebook. Some unexpected faces have joined, and others who you think it would appeal to steer clear. I imagine there is some reluctance to join the herd in the same way it is always cooler to be into a rock or pop band that no one else has heard of. Some people are just put off when everyone is on a bandwagon, regardless of what that bandwagon is.
I don’t know of anyone personally that has misbehaved on social networking sites, either using them to have affairs or trolling. These things do appear in the press from time to time but I don’t believe it has anything to do with social media itself. It is merely another way humans interact, and the same things happened and caused concern/outrage when the penny post introduced letter writing or the telephone became the instant means of communication.
Memory and imagination
I haven’t used the internet to a great extent to research things from my past. My sister and uncle have done considerable work on the family tree, but from my experience it can take a lot of trawling to find information. My sister has found she has spent a whole afternoon either online or looking through records in a library to only come up with one piece of information, so that puts me off.
I do quite a lot of aviation research online. I am always looking at photos taken at airports of the aircraft, buildings or vehicles from the past which is very enjoyable and nostalgic. I have recently been trying to fill some gaps in my notes and putting enquiries out on a couple of Googlegroups has come up with nearly all the answers. Looking at one website of old pictures I was surprised to see one of myself aged 11 with a group of spotters! Some people may be unnerved by this but it doesn’t particularly bother me. Unlike my sister, who despite taking the lead of researching family history, won’t sign up to one of the genealogy sites for fear of identity theft. I feel her embrace of new media stopped at email.
I think in the next 25 years the internet will continue to have an all-pervasive hold over our lives. It is difficult to imagine life without it now, just as we wonder how we ever managed to exist without it before. I anticipate we will become better connected, but less relational.
The internet can connect people so quickly and all of the time, and introduce us to new like minded people in any part of the globe. This morning I answered a question from an aviation enthusiast from Thailand who is staying in London about the best place to watch aeroplanes at Heathrow. I may never communicate with this person ever again or we may become the best of friends. He might be a terrorist who shoots down an airliner and I end up in prison by this evening. Who knows? The internet is a strange land that we are still exploring. Current fads like Facebook and Twitter will fall out of fashion and something else will take its place; even if it is the same thing but in a different form.Eventually I can imagine all communication and entertainment will be through computers, rendering TV sets, cinema and radio receivers redundant. Our identities will be encapsulated online, we will be able to choose how we present ourselves and to whom, and it will be a nice or nasty surprise to actually meet in the flesh.
Personally I would like to spend less time on the internet in the future. Even Facebook or aviation and music websites that interest me can be huge timewasters, never mind all the videos of cute kittens and people falling over. I don’t like how much time we as a family spend online, often all three of them are sat there flicking at phones and iPads. The entire world is there in that tiny screen, but you can’t see or comment on every single thing going on.
There are a couple of events that wouldn’t have happened without the internet – both through connecting with people via Facebook. I wouldn’t have got in touch with a friend I hadn’t seen for 25 years or so who lives in New Zealand, and that led to going over there for a three week holiday last year. Similarly I wouldn’t have got involved with a writer from the USA, with whom we have beta read her three novels and worked together on another. Following on from that my wife visited her and I got to meet her separately to close up the work we did.
Media
I don’t think have written a letter since the 1990s, and then it would be probably a half yearly catch up with only distant friends when sending a birthday or Christmas card. When email appeared I used it for a while to communicate the equivalent of letters but it has become a much more a way of sending “domestic memos” to organise things. Letters really are a summary of what you are doing, and these days that has been replaced by continually or occasionally broadcasting what I am doing or thinking on Facebook. I think in this day and age we are so used to immediate communication the idea of composing a letter is quite antiquated, even though receiving one is actually really nice.
Similarly the diary I keep is for my own reflection and recording, whereas a blog is for broadcasting to whoever would be interested. Blogs tend to be more specifically tailored to particular interests I find, but some like my wife do write about personal issues as a way of exorcising her thoughts. She finds the feedback and encouragement from friends or occasionally people she doesn’t know helpful. I don’t write a blog, not being convinced people want to know my innermost thoughts or opinions. Perhaps I have MO for that!?
I’ve never used FaceTime or Skype. It looks like a more personal form of communication than a phone call, where it is more important to see someone, say between partners or children and parents if they are away. I can only think I would do this with my immediate family, or possibly closest friends for a particular reason. A phone call is on another level of interaction that suits most situations and wider circle of friends, relationships or “business” needs in daily life.
I keep coming back to Facebook as my preferred platform for online communication as it is so powerful and flexible. I can message friends directly, creating the equivalent of an email or text. This can be practical information like a text, or more personal like an email or letter. Unlike the letter the response is prompt, it is current. It allows me to broadcast what I am doing or what interests me, with pictures. Most conversation is trivial, and I like that about Facebook, that you get to follow that day-to-day week-by-week activity that keeps you in touch just enough with people. Letter writing and email even now is too stiff, too formal.
Your identity
I don’t worry about identity theft or impersonation, and I don’t know of anyone who has experienced this. I feel reasonably sure that the anti-virus software on my computers is doing its job, and I know the banks have some fairly sophisticated methods to check activity. Something like 2–3 times a year a credit card purchase made online will generate an automated phone call from my bank to confirm that I have made that transaction. I keep a careful check on all my financial transactions and I feel sure that if there was any illegal activity like an identity theft, it would all be possible to sort out. I would like to think that companies are aware enough of this kind of thing that they are able to sort it out. Maybe I’m just fortunate so far that I’ve not had my email or Facebook spammed to hacked to pieces. Online activity is so convenient and often essential to modern living that it would be foolish not to take reasonable precautions, or rational to worry about it and not be online.
I can only imagine impersonation is a problem if you are someone in the public eye, where you need to have some control over your image to prevent people posting things in your name?
By the very nature of business conducted online, companies have to store personal data and I recognise that. Equally I recognise the need of governments in this digital age to use every means at their disposal to combat cybercrime and expose threats to our security. It’s no big a question than that which has always been posed of how much governments should know about its citizens and intervene in their lives. It’s like back in the days of the cold war in the Eastern Bloc where every other person was an informant. A society ruled by fear is unacceptable, yet we need a certain level of surveillance and policing to ensure security for all. It’s that age old question of how far...? Only an open and fair society can function properly, yet we have the paradox of needing surveillance to ensure things are open and fair for all. I have nothing to hide, and I feel fairly secure in an open and free society that I can express myself. However if something I said were to fall foul of whoever was in power – easier to do in other countries then here – then I and everyone could be in trouble. Even innocent information about me could become dangerous in a different set of circumstances. Is it likely to ever come to that in Britain? It’s not worth lying awake at night worrying about it otherwise you would not get anything done or enjoy the benefits of being online.
Online advertising is something that irks me somewhat. I feel I am fairly immune to advertising wherever it appears. I never look at any advertising in newspapers, and I only give a cursory glance to those that appear online. They really are an intrusion on my screen and I would never click on one. If I want something I will go and look for it, either in the shops or online. It is particularly noticeable though if I purchase something, especially an airline ticket, that I will see ads popping up for hotels and car hire at my destination, or ads from the same airline for the same destination! It is unpleasant to know that what goes into a search engine is clearly being picked up and distributed. Especially distasteful is the fact that the internet somehow knows I’m a 49 year old male, into stuff like aeroplanes and music, and insists that I want to see ads introducing me to Russian ladies or Chinese women seeking romance. I stopped using Google searches and tried Duck Duck Go which declares itself to be the search engine that doesn’t track you, but it hasn’t made a huge difference.
I resign myself to online advertising being a necessary evil like all advertising in life. I suppose it serves its purpose and means a lot of money goes into supporting a lot of things we use, but it washes over me. Spam and junk mail is another matter altogether and it is almost always intentionally malicious. The tedious side of online life, having to check emails carefully even though they are nearly always obvious. Even with legitimate emails that come from any company that I have purchased something online from, I will always immediately unsubscribe just to keep my emails to a minimum.
Needless to say, I would never go there, and it is alarming see how easy it is to access pornography online, even with the filter settings on the computer. Like every male, I would daresay, I have had a look to see what is out there, but it’s not a corner of the internet you want to hang around in. The likelihood of going to dubious sites with cookies, spam, and computer viruses ready to infect your computer makes it just not worthwhile. Equally the threat to the relationship with my wife makes it a no go area.
Task
Googling my own name came up with 389,000 results in 0.53 seconds. I have a fairly unusual surname which is most commonly found in the North West of England, so I was surprised to see my namesake turning up quite a lot in North America.
The first result was for my profile on Facebook (which I share only with friends so a casual “Googler” wouldn’t see). There were only 6 others sharing my name, all from the USA, and a couple of others with different names but who lived in a town in Massachusetts that shares my surname. The origin of this towns name stems from someone who settled there from NW England, so the connection is unsurprising.
The second result was for a law firm in Ontario, Canada. A civil litigation specialist who shares my name and has a business in association with another lawyer. Very professional website which was nice to see.
Third result was LinkedIn profiles. I don not have one so I didn’t turn up there, but there were 8 sharing my name here, 5 in the US and Canada, 2 in Australia and 1 in the UK. All holding quite impressive business credentials – automotive manager, medical student, American Express regional manager, an arts & crafts studio director, someone in the mining industry, a construction manager and a handyman.
It feels nice not to see too many people sharing my name in the world, make me feel a little rarer and special. It’s nice to see all my namesakes doing well for themselves too, but that is probably down to the nature of what they do resulting in having a Linkedin profile or website rather than our name being associated with special gifting or exceptional business prowess.
Further down the results is a baseball player from a team in South Dakota, who appeared twice, once on the team’s webpage and as a link to his personal Twitter account. There is a also a trainee curate in the Church of England’s West Yorkshire & Dales diocese! Successful and holy...
The fourth result was for a website “192 UK Address” which was the most unsettling result. It derives its data from the electoral roll and showed my partial address, wife’s name and 19 others people in the UK sharing my name. Notably most of these were in the North West. It said it was based on the 2002–2008 records and actually had one of our former addresses from before that period and had my age incorrect. It did show names of other people who had lived at that address and our current one, and there was a link to any county court appearances. I was surprised to find this information publicly available, I didn’t know such a service existed. By signing up it appears more data is accessible, so I guess this is how advertisers get hold of you. I wonder if the data is not released immediately from the electoral roll which is why it is partly out of date? Slightly reassuring if it is. I suppose to live in the modern world one must be resigned to having some of your details openly accessible, otherwise you just cannot function. This information was probably always available in some dusty town hall filing cabinet, but with everything on computers these days it is so easily and readily accessible. That is all fine in principle and generally I’m not too bothered by it. I have done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide. I am a decent law-abiding citizen. It’s just you know in a different kind of society, in another country, it might take on sinister implications.
Copyright reserved: Contact The Keep BN1 9BP
Observations recommended in conjunction with D4736’s response:
On Privacy, Identity, Identities
Scan of original submission to MO by D4736
9/11/15
MO number: E5296, female, age 35, single, Stirling, Podiatrist
Current Directive
Part 1: You online
It seems that the Internet is now part of daily life and is a tool that many people use to socialise, represent themselves and communicate with others. This Directive explores your attitudes towards identity and the Internet. Please note this directive is NOT aimed just at people who spend time on the Internet or social media, but all of you. We want to know what you think – or imagine – about identity and the Internet, whether or not you have ever been online. Please use the questions below as prompts...
First task
Please list the first five words or phrases that spring to mind when you think about the term "Internet and online communities."
social media sites like facebook, twitter, instagram
boundless information on anything and everything
news from around the world delivered on many different formats
finding new friends and keeping in touch with family or friends in other places
online shopping
Early experiences
Now I use the internet on a daily basis and very frequently. When I first went online it was 1998 and I was studying at uni, I used it to research for essays and assignments mostly. I did not use it as heavily as I do now. I would use email a lot to communicate with friends back in the early days, and just to find information for uni mostly. Back then, it was common to log into chat room like the Yahoo browser chat rooms, I think it was one of the first ways to get in touch with random people elsewhere in the world. I guess the novelty was fun to speak to people in america or elsewhere for free! Back then I made some chat room friends who were other students in other countries, though in the chat rooms you had to avoid weirdos who were just out to have explicit conversations with anyone willing. But they were often easy to avoid coz they usually had obvious user names! Back in those days there was no Facebook and such. I am glad because I’m pretty sure I would have got far less studying done.
Do you use the Internet? If you do, please write about your first memories of using it. What sites were important to you when you first explored the online world? If you don’t use the Internet, please write about why you have avoided it and say if you find it difficult not being online.
Daily routines and practices When and where do you use the Internet today? On what devices? Do you ration your Internet usage or that of your family? What sites do you regularly use? Have you ever completed a course to help you use the Internet or a computer? Tell us about this.
I use the internet constantly. It’s ridiculous, from everything to checking the weather to reading the news, to chatting with friends who live abroad, to internet shopping. On my phone and laptop mostly. I use the facebook “on this day” feature which basically shows you what you were doing 1 yr/2 yrs/4 yrs ago or whatever. It’s nice, but it’s also kind of pointless, the past is the past. I am trying these days to try to live more in the present, as the past is gone and the future is non existent!I actually think I use it too much. Back when I didn’t use the internet so much I used to phone people on my landline, and now only about 3 people even know my landline number. I do think, that although the internet is a great thing, it has for me, cut down on the amount of actual contact I have with people. My friends and I tend to text on things like whatsapp/ viber/facebook rather than phone, which is ok but I do miss actual communication. It’s had a weird effect actually. One of my good friends lives in australia and she created a whatsapp group chat which we (five of us) all chat on. It’s good in some ways as if you miss out on “chat” you can log on later and “catch up” on the news, but it’s not the same as actually talking. I can’t remember the last time I actually talked to one of them on the phone. Only my parents, or sister ever ring my landline. It’s kinda sad how having more communication channels seems to have reduced the amount of actual communication. Often I find myself logging on to sites like facebook, my email account, and say BBC news on one device, only to (about 3 mins later) open the same thing on my phone. It’s so stupid! I think I do need to give myself actual internet breaks now and again as it kind of sucks you into this unreal world. I think that the whole online chat/community is in fact detrimental to communication. Even when I am running my clinic most of the younger patients (about my age and younger) will have their phones in their hand constantly when I am trying to ask them questions etc. The younger ones (20 and under) hardly look up to answer you sometimes! I have actually told people to put their phones down during appointments to which I usually get looks of horror. HAHA.4
So basically even though I am a high internet user, I think I mostly don’t really like the concept of it all when it halts real life interaction, which I think it does frequently.
Do you use any apps or “wearable technology” that try to influence your behaviour? For example, to help you diet, manage a health problem, run faster, concentrate better, etc.? Do you prefer sites that connect you to a community or do you prefer to go it alone?
Yes I use a “fitbit one” pedometer and activities tracker. I actually really like this device. I play touch rugby in the summer and go to fitness classes/the gym in the winter and I like to see how much progress I have made/steps I have taken in the day. I like that the fitbit device links up to the “my fitness” app as well, as then I can keep a wee food diary and this takes into account how much activity I have done and adjusts my advised calorie amount accordingly. This might sound like control freak madness but I like to be more aware of my health and this suits what I like to know. You can also link up with friends online who also have a fitbit but I only have it linked with one friend and that’s just so we can encourage each other, we talk frequently though so it’s not our only means of contact.
Communities and social networking sites
Are you a member of any online communities? Or forums? Or review sites? What do you get out of it?
Hmm... I am in a few Facebook groups. Mostly for my profession, they are not really much use in practical ways although you get the occasional bit of useful info. Mostly it’s just people whinging about something or other, so I don’t pay them a huge amount of attention. To be honest, I try to avoid them as it’s just another way to spend hours staring at a computer or phone and I don’t want to do that.
Do you use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkdin? Which ones and how regularly? What do you use them for? Do you use the sites for the purpose they were built for, or for a different function (for example, using Instagram to keep a food diary)? Do different sites “feel” distinct from each other? Have you left any sites, if so, for what reason? If you don't use (any or particular) social networking sites, why not?
Who do you imagine are typical users of social networking sites? Have you experienced or heard any stories about people misbehaving on social networking sites? Please give details.
Everyone uses social networking sites, from young to old. The younger ones are more intrenched in it though, and use it more than my mum’s generation (she is a “baby boomer” – I also hate that term!) People are always doing stupid things on social media, I have an uncle who posts stupidly offensive crap from racist groups (I had to block him and my sister tried to report him for posting some crap from the Britain First party but Facebook deemed it “not offensive” HA the disbelief!!) and you always get news stories of people posting stuff on twitter and then getting sued or sent to jail for writing offensive or idiotic things.
Your identity
Would you/do you use your real name and face online? Do you use aliases? Is "who you are” the same across different Internet sites? Has this ever caused any problems?
I use my real face/name in certain things, and use an alias in others. On facebook have pictures but all my settings are the most private I can manage and I don’t put on my second name as a deterrent for people finding me that I don't want to be “friends” with. I haven’t had any problems with this so far. Let’s hope it stays this way.
Do you worry about impersonation and identity theft online? Have you, or has anyone you know, experienced this?
I don’t worry about this at the moment. No one I know has had any identity theft issues though I have had friends who have lost mobile phones have problems with people being able to access apps like FB etc. But this can be shut down quite quickly if you contact the mobile company and they deactivate the phone.
Are you bothered by the idea of governments and corporations accessing and storing personal data?
not really... I don’t tend to surrender much personal data or save cards online when shopping etc.
What do you feel about online advertising? Is it different than how you feel about spam or junk mail?
online advertising is necessary to keep sites income but it’s very annoying. esp when you have browed a pair of shoes on one site and the low and behold they haunt you in FB ads for ever more. At least with online ads I don’t have to throw them in the recycling, which is a daily task with the ridiculous amounts of junk mail I get. I expect my post man will develop a spinal kyphosis and then sue royal mail for using him as a human donkey.
Has the Internet changed your attitudes towards friendship, romance and sex? What about money?
Yeah as I said before I think the internet makes friendships lazy. Even writing all this has reinforced my thinking that I need to wean myself off the internet more. Or maybe just use it for an hour a day.
Are their some topics that you would tell Mass Observation, but you wouldn’t put or discuss online? Please give details.
I’m pretty sure most of the things I write to MO I wouldn’t put online! haha! Count yourselves lucky! (or not)
Memory and imagination Have you used the Internet to research something from your past? How was this experience?
The Internet is only 25 years old, how do you think it will influence society and personal identity over the next quarter century?
Bloody hell, I’m older than the internet. Will that be a saying like the sliced bread thing is now?? yes the internet has and will continue to shape the world we live in. In some ways a positive, but there are lots of negatives too, social isolation, social inclusion, wars, spying, paranoia, reuniting with lost relatives... so many different things. Often I think it would be nice to not have that constant need to look at stuff or check in at places via the internet. I have one friend who is extremely obsessed by having a busy and positive online presence. I can’t go anywhere with her without her saying “wait a minute, I’m going to check us in on FB.” I mean really, who cares! Also I think a lot of people are obsessed with what other people think of them online, especially on FB and instagram etc. It’s almost like their online life means more than real life. My friend who is obsessed with checking in everywhere always checks who has liked her posts and who hasn’t... it’s a lot of utter crap really! That’s why I really try to concentrate on the “now” of a situation and not try to live a “duel” [sic] life if that makes sense. I do genuinely worry about younger folk growing up with that kind of expectation that you have to have a perfect online life, the tendency being that there’s a danger that you forget to enjoy reality. I saw a picture online (oh the irony) of a crowd of folk watching some sort of parade and only one person was actually watching the parade and everyone else was videoing it or taking pics on their phone. When you go to gigs now a lot of folk spend their time recording the gigs instead of enjoying the present moment of being there.
Has there been an event in your life that wouldn't have happened without the Internet?
not really, only indirectly. ie. I joined my sports club after looking for a sports club online, and other similar things, but if the internet didn’t exist I would have looked for them in another way. By speaking to people and stuff, like in the good ole days haha!
Media
What is the difference between: A letter and an email? A blog and a diary? A video chat (Skype/FaceTime) and a phone call? Tweets and text messages?
Do you present yourself differently on these formats? Please give examples.
Letters: are nicer, unless they are from the bank or a utilities company! I still send hand written cards and letters to a few people. I used to send letter [sic] much more ten yrs ago when my gran was still alive. but not so many people send letters now. it’s a shame.
Email: slightly less nice than a letter but still fun to keep in touch, and obviously more immediate. I email friends and use it for business communication too. Letters are still more official though.
Blog: modern versions of diaries open to the public sometimes. I don’t read any blogs. I went through a phase where I did, but I don’t anymore.
Diary: I still keep a diary, not as frequently as I did when I was younger. I don’t actually know why I started writing a diary when I was younger but I did write in them all the time. Especially when I was a teenager. I think it helped me figure out my thoughts. I still write in mine from time to time. I would write more personal things in a hand written diary than a blog.
Texts: handy way to send a short msge.
Tweets: I dont send many and it’s usually just for sharing any podiatry items in the news.
A Task: Please search your own name (remember not to tell us what this is!) on Google (or a search engine of your choosing). Tell us what you think about the results. How does it make you feel?
Well I searched my name and nothing came up, just a random girl I know who has the same name as me. When I search my full name (four names) then all that comes up is my university graduation degree announcements which were in the local papers. I’m glad I have some degree of anonymity.
Copyright reserved: Contact The Keep BN1 9BP
Observations recommended in conjunction with E5296’s response:
On Time – past, future, wasting
Scan of original submission to MO by E5296
10/ 11/15
MO Number:
J4793
Sex: Female Age: 34 Marital Status: Married Town: Johnstone, Renfrewshire Occupation: Self-employed (as a writer, blogger and creative)
Summer 2015 Directive - Part 1 - Me Online
First thoughts
Laptop screen, Facebook, gravatars/avatars (of friend’s profiles online), mobile phone (where I tend to access these networks), invisible wires, friends, groups, sharing, creativity.
Early Experiences
I remember being introduced to BBC computers at school – black and white, small monitors with curved screens. I took Computing at school to Higher and I remember learning how to create simple programs such as listing the seven dwarves and seven chores and getting the computer to generate a different task each day for each dwarf. It was where I learnt about the internal workings of a computer, binary, file storage, disk defragmentation etc but it all seemed quite far removed from me and I wasn’t sure how useful it would be in the real world; it didn’t fire me up with any kind of passion for computers as such or make me want to study further. These computers weren’t connected to the internet.
Subsequently I learnt to type on a special kind of computer in an Office & Information Studies class with all the keys on the keyboards covered up so you had to learn to touch-type.
In my last year or so at school (around 1996/97) they got Apple Mac computers in a refurbished computer room that was bright and airy. Apple were using their rainbow apple logo at the time and it was on these I learnt about the internet and conducted very basic searches for information for some of my other classes, i.e. an image to draw in Art or researching facts for an English or History assignment. I don’t remember it being “Google” as a search engine, though it could have been.
There was also a school messenger service that was my first introduction to electronic messaging/forums and I would message friends in other years/classes with plans for meeting up later or the weekend in a very basic way (because obviously there were no mobile phones!)
During this time my Dad got a desktop computer which I would use for typing up ideas and stories (he was an accountant so used it for that with Excel). I also learnt (not sure where) how to access the internal memory of the computer using basic .Dos commands and would play around with that thinking I was very clever. I even bought some PC games but they were very basic and slow and required typing in commands to get the characters to do anything.
There was no thought (or even availability?) of getting an internet connection (and we also lived in a very rural area).
After leaving school I got a job as an Office Junior so was then using a computer for Word Processing and Spreadsheets in a formal setting away from school. I was able to type and all of my computer skills improved and I was “the one in the know” in the office about how to get different effects in MS Word for documents etc. There was still no need for the internet and I don’t recall anyone mentioned it or using it at that time. This was 1997.
I then worked for a company who made information available online, however I had nothing to do with it and it seemed like some faraway, out-there place that no-one was really involved in, or at least, a select few. Most companies/services didn’t have websites and so there was no real pull to use the internet.
When I went to college in 1999 we had to conduct research online and it was then I started to use the internet a bit more – because I had to and it was encouraged. I still don’t remember it being Google, and it almost seemed like a bit of a drag to trek to the college library where there were less than 10 computers so as a class we took it in turns. It was at this time I got an email address for the first time though it was used in a very ad-hoc way and I didn’t receive anything much, just “forwards” and jokes from friends who were also just in the early stages of being online. The internet formed a very small portion of our time/teaching at college although as time progressed we were encouraged to use it more and of course we heard about companies using CAD.
Around this time I started going out with someone a bit older than me andhe had a home computer and dial-up internet connection. I tended to use the computer at his house instead of at college and did research for fashion brands like River Island and Monsoon. My boyfriend was interested in politics and became involved and very active in online forums. It felt very intrusive because I quickly realised there was never an end to these forums (even then!) as people were posting on them all the time. He became addicted to them and it put me off the whole concept of “the internet.” This was also in the days when companies such as BT would offer “free” internet through the night from 8pm until 8am or something similar, so he would sit up into the early hours reading and commenting on information online. I suppose this was the precursor to mobile phones that now command our attention more than they should.
Daily Routines/Now
It’s a network of like-minded people who we each think of as friends and I think this is where the coin “finding your tribe” stems from. Many of these people (actually most of them) I have never met and may never meet, as they are from all over the world such as Australia, America, South Korea, Russia, etc, yet I “speak” and interact with them online most days (i.e. more than other friends or friends I’ve known for much longer and who live near to me but who I rarely see).
The way I manage this is only checking at certain times (early morning, late evening for example), and by turning off automatic notifications.
I haven’t attended a course specifically to learn how to use the internet because that has happened organically through daily life and work requirements. I now bank online, manage things like energy accounts, TV, etc and I do shop online for certain things (books, gifts that I know people want) but I prefer to shop in person for clothes and shoes because I need to try things on and hate the hassle of sending things back.
I’ve noticed that certain retailers have said they are going to scale back their physical shopping environments in favour of their online spaces and click and collect desks (John Lewis) and that Marks and Spencer’s now prefer you to search or order in their stores via an iPad. I’m not sure how I feel about that as I’d rather just do it from home and I fear it may alienate customers who are not able/willing to use newer technologies?
My husband and I have both fallen into the habit of “double screening” – using our phones while watching TV. I hate it actually and have recently started turning my phone onto Do Not Disturb mode in the evening otherwise you become a slave to beeps and notifications like a Pavlovian dog. I hate that every time I turn around to share the joke or what has happened in a film or TV programme, my husband has missed it as he’s scrolling through Ebay or something else. When I ask him what he is doing he always replies “nothing” which makes it even more frustrating. I tend to only respond to direct messages rather than passive activity if I’m doing something else. I think this passive activity and always turning to our phones for support – to check for messages or to see if anyone has “liked” anything of ours, has become a problem for us as a society. I hate the almost magnetic pull of it myself, but feel a bit helpless because everything I put out there happens online and that’s where the engagement is. There is also the self-imposed agony of feeling the need to “catch-up” if you miss the original discussions and that becomes overwhelming. I would truly feel lost if I lost my phone or left the house without it for a day-if meet-up plans changed with friends then I wouldn’t know! (Another modern-day issue that years ago would never occur because if you arranged to meet someone at x time, you had to be there.)
I got a free Fitbit to track fitness, weight and sleep goals but can’t bear the idea of something tracking me in that way, no matter what the apparent benefits are. My husband had already bought one and said he was going to use it every day and it would be great, however he lost interest and stopped using it a few weeks in.
I think wearable textiles will have their use in certain applications – actual medical care for example or with infants/children, but for more lifestyle issues and passive use, they are not for me and they tap into the “Big Brother” is watching mentality where I feel corporations/companies/governments already know too much about us already.
I don’t read the news online and prefer to use the internet for research, information, updating my own websites, selling online (both Ebay and creative/handmade environments such as Etsy, Folksy and Society6) and for inspiration and sharing.
I have often taken part in projects where the use of social media performs an accountability function, i.e. the 100 day project where you could create your own project and hashtag, but whatever it was, you had to post each day on Instagram (for 100 days). It brought you into contact with the whole “100 day” community which I enjoyed for discovering other creatives to follow. I also took part in a sketching challenge (TinkerSketch) for the month of February this year, where the creator posts a list of words to inspire a sketch and each day people respond by posting their sketch and using the unique hashtag of that community. It really does work for accountability!
Having access to your “tribe” also means you have access to support 24/7 because everyone is in different places and time zones so there is always someone online. Seeing someone “like” and comment on something you’ve uploaded to Instagram or a private group is a great feeling that feeds into a basic human need for connection, recognition and approval. Sometimes social networks are blamed for having the opposite effect – causing depression or FOMO (fear of missing out) but I think that’s why you need to be careful which groups you choose to be a part of. My favourite groups are private and involve creativity or having taken part in a specific course or programme before being able to join so it’s like-minded people rather than just “friends” or “colleagues” that may have wildly differing views
I also try to post positive, inspirational things only and don’t get involved in discussions about politics, religion or highly controversial things online. My parents worry about “trolls” that seem to plague sites like Twitter, but I hope that by sharing happy and positive things with the best intentions then there’s little scope for being trolled (perhaps I am naïve). I’ve made my online activities sound rather bland perhaps, but that’s not it at all. It’s more about using your voice in a clever way and getting across a message without striving to shock. I hope that makes sense.
Online Identity
I use both my real name and an alias. I own the domain name of my name and at one point had an online business so it was important to use my real name. I now use the same alias across all social media and on sites like Twitter you can still use your real name too.
[material redacted here to preserve anonymity]
The fact I have experienced this does make me concerned for more damaging/malicious identity theft online though this is the world we live in and if I want to curate my online presence that I have to put myself out there. I am however very careful about what I share in terms of images of myself and never give personal details that would particularly identify me or my husband. I have the incorrect name of the town where I live on my Facebook profile and I’m happy about that. After holidays or trips away, I share the link to my blog where I have uploaded the images rather than directly upload images to sites such as Facebook (to avoid them owning the copyright of the images or being able to use them without my permission). It’s a different situation on Pinterest/Instagram but you have to weigh up the pros/cons.
There are definitely things I would tell MO that I wouldn’t share online. Like [material redacted here to preserve anonymity] most of the memories and stories I have already written about in the years I’ve been a Mass Observer: my opinions on things, how I voted in the Referendum and also in the General Election.
Internet and the past
In some ways you should never go back – even on the internet. I do appreciate the fact that poems and quotes are available online so you can enjoy them easily and quickly without having to visit a library. I recently quoted a Keats poem in a blog post and wouldn’t have known the details otherwise and perhaps wouldn’t even have used it in the end as it would have proved too difficult to track down.
Many people/organisations have spent a lot of time creating and maintaining archives of information so I’m very grateful I can access that information very quickly.
It’s also due to sites like Facebook that I’ve been able to reconnect with old school friends who I had lost touch with as the internet and its resources were not available at the time I left school and also the area I went to school in.
I take online courses all the time and have been able to do things like make a Roman blind by watching videos on YouTube. I stream music online while I work – right now I’m listening to Mozart. I translate things online from foreign friends and use currency conversion sites. The internet feels like a playground for the curious mind.
My main concern with it is scammers and phishing attempts, viruses, hackers stealing information from genuine companies who I have entrusted my information to (or had no choice to share information with if I wanted to buy from them or do business with them), and for the people who share so many images of their children on Facebook and personal blogs.
That should be enough to scare anyone!
Media
I think the differences between a blog and a letter/diary is that a blog is public and is not just shared with one other person (or no-one) and cannot be retracted. I still write letters and I write by hand from the heart and include more detail and emotion than I ever would in a blogpost, or even an email.
Tweets are for fun, sharing information or promotion.
Texts are for exchanging information quickly and succinctly.
Email you can expand a bit more.
Skype/Video chat etc is for when you can’t be there in person, like if family or a partner is on the other side of the world. It creates a connection that would not be possible otherwise though it can never take the place of real-life interaction.
As such I think I am more guarded in electronic communications and even in a video (as elements of “how do I look” come into it) whereas in a letter or even a text, it feels more personal as it is intended for just that one person. The internet is for everyone and so that makes the difference.
Special Task: Search my name online
I did use Google for this task, and I have done this before actually, about a year ago for a creative challenge inspired by the book “642 things to write about.”
There were: About 488,000 results (0.58 seconds)
Like last year, I was surprised by the number of other people with my name who are interested in the same (quite niche) things as me, such as textiles. Is there anything in a name that links those who share it? Maybe. I think it would be quite difficult for someone to find the “real” me out of the list though and the fact that there are a few people that sound like they could be me, it would add to the confusion. I like the idea of being active online but also slightly incognito.
[material redacted here to preserve anonymity]
Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember a time without social media, the internet, a mobile phone; that sense of being connected all the time to…everything. To remember a time when I wasn’t ruled like one of Pavlov’s dogs by the relentless ping! and beep! of notifications and messages via multiple interactive platforms.
Digital communication is great and it’s not.
It makes life quicker and it makes life slower.
It makes me feel part of something and it makes me feel isolated.
It gives me a buzz and it zaps my energy.
I can’t live without my phone; am constantly picking it up, checking my favourite social media sites (Pinterest and Instagram) and waking up to notifications stacked on top of each other in a never-ending list.
It feels like I can never reach the end.
My inbox is cluttered with newsletters that I want to read, but if I read them all I’d do nothing else. So instead they linger, colour-coded, filed, forgotten, starred in a hierarchy, gnawing at my consciousness.
I’ve unsubscribed from things.
I’ve turned off notifications from online groups.
I’ve got multiple folders and folders within folders.
I have rules.
Just another 5 minutes... OK 15..
If you divide the volume of communications “in” by the hours available in the day, the equation becomes impossible, the idea of “catching up” ridiculous. So what to do?
A lot of the time I choose to remain oblivious to the news, to my Facebook feed, to the latest joke or link that I’ve been sent; not because I don’t care, but because I can no longer deal with the amount of information that comes at me each day. I have to censor it and by that I mean censor myself.
I ration my exposure to the plugged-in-always-on-world like I’m an addict, and to do that I’ve found myself deploying my phone’s Do Not Disturb function during the day as well as at night.
It’s not that I don’t like keeping in touch, it’s just...sometimes it’s nice to take a step back and reclaim my time, make time to process my own thoughts for a while. But then I add to it too through my own links when I choose to share them, through the words I share on this blog, through the act of living and interacting where the lines between reality and online become blurred.
The fast pace of the (digital) world is eroding concentration spans too, making us all less patient, and I’ve noticed those things in myself.
If a page doesn’t load in a second or two, I don’t have time to wait, and if the internet goes down for any reason – it’s unthinkable really because how can you live your life effectively in the western world without the internet these days? I know people do, but when it happens to me and those around me it’s like the end of the world, creating stress and prompting rage. This is the price of being plugged into technology, yet it’s also given us so much.
So far I’ve resisted buying a Kindle in favour of a real book, and recently I’ve been investing in my vinyl collection rather than stream or purchase music digitally. There is nothing wrong with those methods, and I’m not slating them, but I like the sense of ownership, the tangible reality, the feel and smell of a book or record in my hands. And I like to take back control and “unplug,” sometimes for a whole weekend; I always feel the better for it.
For people who don’t use the internet (like my Mum!), it’s harder to get good deals for everyday things or even buy from or communicate with a company at all, and I think that’s a bit sad. It's like forcing people to “plug” into something that they don’t want to.
So for me the plugged v unplugged debate is about finding my own balance, something I can be happy with and that suits my lifestyle.
That means some days completely plugged in, writing away on my laptop, researching online, instagramming teapots and sunsets while other days are spent completely unplugged while I scrapbook or draw or read or bake or wander the streets of my city feeling inspired, seeing things IRL.
It’s not exactly the dream of living the slow movement that I aspire to, but it’s something, it’s my way, and I’m clinging to it.
(Interestingly, the novel I’m writing is set in a time not so long ago when the internet wasn’t a “thing” and most people didn’t own a mobile phone. Crazy eh?)
Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to hit “delete” on the whole plugged-in world.
Maybe I won’t want to.
[material redacted here to preserve anonymity]
Copyright reserved. Contact The Keep BNI 9BP
Observations recommended in conjunction with J4793’s response:
On Time – past, future, wasting
Scan of original submission from J4793
7/10/15
T5672 Male, DOB: 1983, Finance Manager
Mass Observation Directive for Summer 2015 Part 1: You online
First task
Please list the first five words or phrases that spring to mind when you think about the term “Internet and online communities.”
I feel like I’m cheating in my very first submission. The Internet is a huge, huge part of my life. I feel compelled to give a very sophisticated answer (as if anything less would do an injustice to my relationship with the internet), and really struggle to clear my mind in order to allow 5 words or phrases to bubble up. I will try.
Data. Amazement. Infinite space. Mine. Alienation.
Do you use the Internet?
Do I!
I first became aware of the internet in either 1992 or 1993 as a young child, reading about it in computer game magazines. I was an avid offline-gamer, the type of which is rare these days (as is the concept of offline at all...). I remember seeing a screenshot of a web browser, perhaps Mosaic or an early version of Netscape. I didn’t quite know what I was looking at. I could understand the idea of a computer talking to another computer – I had read about connecting computers with serial cables, other such local “networking” technology – but the mechanics of a global network were beyond me. All I remember is thinking it was so cool that you could pull up something on your screen that wasn’t in your computer.
My dad must have been proud that I was taking an interest in such a clearly educational topic – and it was genuine interest! I have always been fascinated by astronomy and space exploration. And you can be sure that – as soon as we had installed the finicky PPP software on our family Macintosh and dialled a pay-per-minute local number using our 28.8K modem – the first website we visited was nasa.gov.* I don’t remember how we knew the URL. We used Netscape 1.0 as our browser. The sound of the modem is etched in my mind. It must be 15 years since I last heard a modem, but I can almost whistle its tune.5
*(Actually, perhaps this is not technically true; the first webpage we visited was probably the home page of the ISP, which may have been the jumping-off point from which we found nasa.gov. If there were search engines then, we weren’t aware of them. Finding your way around the mid-90s internet was a matter of finding links, jumping from one island of links to the next, like a frog across lillies on a pond.)
So we got onto nasa.gov and downloaded images of Jupiter. It was exciting stuff – waiting for the image to load, line by line, filling in down the page as the lights on the modem flashed. It felt like we were in the future, like we had acquired a great power. Nobody else I knew had the internet. Suddenly, I had access to this incredible resource. I think it gave me something of a superiority complex, knowing that my friends from school would go home and play their local lives while I could go home and be part of this global phenomenon. Did I use it to help with my homework? Perhaps a few times. I used it more to look up information on computer games and converse with other fans in America.
Re-reading the Directive, I notice how it has a very 2015 ring to it because it talks about sites. These days, the web reigns supreme and web sites are what people think of when they think of the internet. True, there’s email too, and that hasn’t gone away, but in 1995 there were other internet services that were popular besides the web. I am thinking primarily of Usenet, or newsgroups. This used to be a first-class offering of ISPs. “Access to x thousand newsgroups!" was a big selling point. Nowadays, Usenet is a faint echo of its former self, killed by spam and subsumed into the web, into forums and aggregators.
I was a big reader of a particular newsgroup, for a particular computer game, and an immature, childish contributor, showing my youthful arrogance. This game in particular was part of a long running series, the latest version of which has only just been released within the last year. I own a copy but as an adult I no longer have time to play it.I yearn for the day when I can truly kick back, with buckets of free time like I had as a child, and explore this game again. It too has been a big part of my life. Perhaps I will pick it up again when I retire.
I also made web pages. I had a site on GeoCities, which has since been shut down. Although it was guerilla-archived by some dedicated people, my subsite had long since evaporated through neglect. My site was all about – you guessed it, another computer game. I recorded videos of me and my brother playing it and uploaded them to the site. They weren’t videos in the modern YouTube sense, but small files containing the keystrokes pressed while playing, which somebody could play back on their copy in real time, to reproduce the way I had played the game. It was a clever approach – designed by the creators of the game – as computer hardware of the time struggled enormously to do anything with video, which was viewed as strictly-Pro territory.
I could probably go on for hours talking about my memories of the early internet. About the experience of upgrading to Netscape 3.0 (too slow, computer wasn’t powerful enough for it!), about the way web pages all had grey backgrounds, and the links were always blue, and visited-links were always purple, and about how I had to wait until after 6pm to use it so that the phone calls were cheaper, and about how I had to ask permission from my Mum or Dad each time, and ...
The internet has been a huge part of my life.
These days, I do find it difficult not being online! OK, that’s a bit of a joke. But I’m only ever offline when on a foreign holiday, and even then rarely, as most places we go have WiFi. A ship in the middle of the ocean for a couple of days is the most offline I’ve been in the last 10 years. There was a time when being on holiday meant genuinely being offline for two weeks at a time. And I remember coming home from that being like re-connecting with your world and having a big catchup. But the need for that catchup is becoming rarer – as nowadays I’m rarely ever behind.
Daily routines and practices
I use the internet on my desktop PC, at work, on my mobile phone, and occasionally on my laptop. I use it on my Samsung “smart” TV in the guise of the YouTube app. And my Sky box is also connected to the internet, so watching On Demand uses it too.
I normally look at my phone in the morning soon after waking up, checking to see if I have any emails, texts or other types of alerts. If I have a spare moment between getting the household ready, I might check a few news websites. I then read my phone on the train to work, and I even use it sometimes while walking from the train station, though I am always careful to look at it only when there is a safe empty upcoming section of path ahead, and never while crossing a road. I see many others around me doing the same thing (not all as safety-consciously as I). Us phone-walkers seem to have developed certain peripheral vision skills. Numerous times I have looked up just in time to see another phone-walker coming towards me, also looking up – both of us just in time to avoid a head-on collision!
I sometimes continue using my phone as I settle into my desk at work, waiting for my computer to get ready. My phone then generally takes up residence in my pocket until the evening, save for the occasional trip to the loo where it comes out and again provides valuable reading material.
On the way home I use it on the train again, and when at home I sometimes use it to answer practical questions – for example, looking up a recipe while cooking, or doing fact-finding during a conversation with my wife (e.g. we might be planning a trip away and we want to know if a certain attraction is open on a certain date).
I will use my phone at night in bed sometimes. If I can’t sleep, I’ll read it while my wife sleeps.
I carry my phone with me nearly at all times. I occasionally get low-battery-anxiety, but have incorporated charging time into my normal routines smoothly enough that this isn’t really a big deal.
I use my phone for almost everything it can be used for. Its main duty is as an internet terminal. It tells me anything and everything! Secondly, it’s my camera. It isn’t as good as my DSLR but it’s with me all the time, and there’s a saying: the best camera is the one you have with you. Thirdly? It’s my portable music player, my calculator, my calendar, my inbox, my picture of wife and child as wallpaper, my reference tool, my clock (I don’t wear a watch; haven’t for maybe 6-7 years?), my notebook and my audio note recorder. Its AMOLED glow is even the candlelight by which I come up to bed at night, not wanting to wake baby by turning on the main lights.
But although my phone wins in terms of number of hours during which it is my primary go-to device for internet access, it’s a close run with other devices with regards the total number of hours spent online. I usually get at least an hour in the evening on my desktop PC, most of which is online. And all day long at work I am at a computer (well, less so these days than when I was a developer and had fewer meetings to attend). I visit only a small subset of the internet at work though, as most of the interesting part is either blocked (e.g. Gmail) or so non-work-related that I couldn’t justify browsing it. At work I use the intranet more than the internet, which I reserve for looking up basic facts and definitions, occasionally for technical guidance, or to read brief background on a topic.
A lot of the time I spend online is time that I would otherwise not be able to make great use of. The aforementioned train journey. Sitting on the loo. Waiting for something. So I don’t feel the need to ration myself, just to better prioritise. As a technologist, I read standard geeky websites. Ars Technica, Hacker News (which, for the uninitiated, I must stress is naff all to do with helping people break into computers; more the opposite), Reddit, and the BBC News website for a dose of normal news. I make huge use of Wikipedia, and have donated to it in the past (I spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time editing it too). I read manuals of software that I use. I read blogs that get linked to on the aggregator sites (but actually I read more comments than original articles; part of this is that a lot of webpages run like dogs on my phone with its old browser and old CPU. I find that the headline plus the commentary gives me an appropriate level of awareness of the topic being discussed. Another contributing factor to me doing this is that most articles on any given subject are of pretty mediocre quality, and it’s more interesting to read what people have to say about the subject than about the article.)
Running down the Firefox awesomebar to see what websites I regularly us (reviews of computer hardware), and... actually that’s it for the regular list.
XKCD should be on there but I only read it on my phone, 30 seconds at a time.
I use Stackoverflow and the Stackexchange network for problem-solving.
I keep up on camera news on DPreview.
I use mobile banking apps rather than websites on my phone, but on the desktop PC I use the websites for several banks.
I use YouTube to obtain the occasional music track or watch far too many back-to-back episodes of Peppa Pig with my daughter.
There is a very long tail of other miscellaneous websites that I use occasionally. This long tail is the bit of the internet that I think of as the real internet. All the sites I mention above are just fancy ways of finding the real content.
I still maintain a website myself, largely concerned with publishing photos (I have more than 100,000 online, all organised along many dimensions, though with varying levels of metadata applied). I used to have a more blog-oriented site up, but I let it lapse just over a year ago. I’ll bring it back one day, perhaps. Right now I’m more interested in spending my time generating content than in publishing it. To that end, I recently started a new blog on a very mainstream blogging service, as opposed to my fully bespoke prior attempts. I could go way off topic writing about this point so I’ll leave it there; also to avoid getting too deep into personally identifiable territory
I have never taken a course to teach me how to use the internet. I think I just worked it all out for myself, reading magazines and websites. The internet is remarkably self-documenting, if you know how to look for information. I have taken many courses on various aspects of computer technology, largely in connection with my job, and largely of a deeply technical, esoteric, and commercial variety. Things like learning advanced programming of a proprietary piece of statistical analytics software, or courses on enterprise IT architecture.
On health apps...
I used to use an app designed to log my weight and food intake, in an effort to lose weight, but I couldn’t keep using it as I found it slow and limiting. I eventually settled on a generic logging app which allows me to define categories in which I am interested in recording log entries (weight, food notes, my timesheet for work, general notes, health notes, when I last had a haircut, when I had a headache, ... and from time to time little projects like logging the arrival time of buses to report patterns of lateness to the local newspaper (this was a project of theirs!)). This app is slick and fast to use, so I use it. It also makes it easy to export the database of log entries, which is important to me. I cannot bear to use software where I put data in without a hope of ever getting it out again – the dreaded vendor lock-in.
When I was training for a marathon, I used a few running apps, including a game that you played by putting in earphones and having it tell you a story about a zombie apocalypse in which you have to run to escape mobs of zombies – sort of motivating, but not quite atmospheric enough to make you believe it enough for it to really work!
I use Google Fit to count steps. I have lots of ideas for apps that I would use for self-enlightenment-through-logging but I’ve never found the time to either create them or get them made.6
Communities and social networking sites
I have accounts and pseudonyms on many websites, but on few would I consider myself a member. I’m not connected enough to the people to feel a sense of belonging. The closest any website came to that was perhaps Metafilter, which I stopped using a few years ago. It’s very USA-centric and is big into the liberal-conservative culture war they have going over there. I became somewhat weary of every topic degenerating into a political shouting match.
I have Stackoverflow and Hacker News accounts which have a moderate level of “karma.” I get some level of warm fuzzy feeling out of people upvoting my comments and accepting my answers. I think I have a basic desire to be helpful, and to want to feel like I’ve solved a problem and given the right answer – or, perhaps, just to be right.
I can’t comment too deeply on the feeling between different social network sites as I don’t use them enough. Facebook and Twitter feel like they are the mainstream. It’s their icons that I see painted on the bottom of adverts. I think Instagram also sometimes gets an icon. The rest are just fly-by-night dotcom-busts waiting to happen. Facebook feels very personal – everything there is about my friends (except the ever-increasing advertising). Twitter is very impersonal. Whenever I see links to tweets, they seem to be full of syntax. @this, #that, http://whatever.
I imagine that everyone is a user of Facebook. Twitter, less so – technologists, socialites, celebrities, paid-microbloggers, ...?
Misbehaviour? Well, I did once block a school “friend” from Facebook due to his escalating racist and misogynist comments. I’ve heard stories in the news about people posting ill-advised statements online that made it back to their employer. I don’t think I recall anything like that amongst my friends – that I’ve heard about. When I was younger I was very much into misbehaving online, or perhaps just cheerleading and laughing about those who did, on IRC channels.
Your identity
It worries me having to deal with companies who I know won’t treat IT security as a priority. I know it’s only a matter of time before they get hacked and their database leaked. Again I try to give the minimum possible personal information.
Only one person I know has suffered identity theft; a colleague at work had his bank account drained by someone in Texas. Otherwise I have no personal experience of it.
I am tremendously bothered by the way my personal data is used and abused by corporations and governments. The latter have absolute sovereign power to do whatever they please (within the bounds of a very flexible definition of democracy). So they are the primary “enemy” of information security. I say enemy, because as far as the National Security Agency of the USA is concerned, I, being British, am a foreigner, and am therefore fair game. Never mind that I am generally a supporter of the USA and hope for the special relationship to continue. Never mind that I share many of the values and aspirations of America and its people. Simply because of my place of birth, that agency sees fit to intercept my email, listen to my phone calls, and grab absolutely anything else it can get its hands on – treating me as a potential terrorist to be monitored. I have no doubt GCHQ does exactly the same thing.
There was a time when I, cypherpunklike, believed that encryption was the answer. The way to fight back. Now I know this is futile. They would just outlaw encryption, and send in men with guns. They will take away general purpose computing if they have to. No, the answer is to maintain a population that is vigilent against these evils – educated and willing to oppose malignant centralised controls.
I will quote from Edward Snowden:
Now, corporations are a creation of, and subordinate to, states. I worry about them less, because their goals are more transparent – to make money. For all the sins of corporations, they don’t generally try to kill and oppress people the way governments do. My main worry with corporations is as I mentioned above – that they will be incompetent, and allow my data to leak to unauthorised third parties, typically scammers and crooks. Sadly, incompetence is often thrust upon them as government security agencies demand companies share information held about their private customers. None of the big web names (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, ...) are immune to a subpoena, and are probably not immune to mass ingestion of data via Room-641A-like exfiltration to Nation State Adversaries.
Online advertising is a difficult one. On one level, I accept that it funds a lot of good things. I don’t block adverts. But I don’t go back to sites that have intrusive advertising (Flash, animations, videos, sound, offensive clickbait, the list of ways in which advertisers can be scumbags goes on). And I do think there is too much advertising in the world. Certainly too much that preys on human frailty, ignorance and emotional weakness. Predatory advertising is like a digital mugging, convincing those who can least afford it to part way with cash they don’t have, to buy things they don’t need. I consider myself highly media literate and thoroughly inoculated to overt advertising, but on a deeper level I am concerned at getting subliminal exposure to branding, native advertising, astroturfing, layering, fake reviews and other forms of advertising that can get into your brain via the back door.
Spam hasn’t bothered me for many years as Gmail’s spam filter is almost perfect.
Likewise money. I became internet-literate before becoming money-literate, so it’s just a normal part of finances for me. Online banking, mobile payments, comparison websites, investment strategy – I don’t know how people can run their finances without the internet!
There is nothing I would tell Mass Observation that I wouldn’t put online, because as far as I am concerned, this is online, just with a time delay. Perhaps the exception is where I am answering simply because somebody has asked. If nobody had asked me these directive questions, I probably would not have taken the time to blog the answers.
Memory and imagination
I’ve used genealogy sites. I’ve even written genealogy software (for personal use). When performing searches online, I found it remarkable that some records that I would consider public are only available via paid subscriptions. Things like birth, death and marriage records. I can’t understand why these public documents aren’t all online for free, when so much private content is.
Despite this, my searches were fruitful, and I was able to trace several generations of ancestors back to northern England and Scotland. I found it wonderful to connect with past generations – my own family, literally living in history. So little survives.
(Who says the internet is only 25 years old? TCP/IP is the core of the modern internet and dates from the 1970s.)
Almost all the events in my life would not have happened without the internet! Perhaps the most significant to me: I mentioned my wife earlier. We met nearly 15 years ago, but as friends at university. We didn’t get together as a couple until later, after going our separate ways. If it wasn’t for the internet, we wouldn’t have kept in touch enough to meet back up when our paths once again crossed.
Media
A letter is a work of art. It takes time and effort in a way that an email does not. Sending a letter, particularly a hand-written letter, says something about your commitment to communicate. I send letters very, very rarely. I think the magic comes from the handwriting and imagery that is possible in a letter. And from the physicality of delivery. If an email made your letterbox flap, and placed a large visible reminder of its presence on your floor, it might be halfway as impactful.
Perhaps one day when everybody has digital paper that can record high-fidelity handwriting, and every household surface is a digital display, it will be possible for electronic communication to become part of your world in the way that a letter is.
A letter is also enormously more private, as it is not subject to scanning (except in the gravest circumstances).
Having said all that, the purpose of communication is usually not to be artistic, or dramatic, or to invoke nostalgia. It’s usually just about getting a message across, and that is where email shines. I sometimes send my Dad email while walking to work. It takes 30 seconds. It’s a piece of contact in our relationship that couldn’t have happened without email. In that sense, email is vastly superior, as it contributes to the project of keeping us all talking.
A blog is a publication. It might be newspaper-like, or diary-like, but it’s nearly always public. I think a diary is necessarily a more private affair, but only for a time. I think very few diaries are written with the intention of being truly private. I keep a diary, and I know that it’s very likely my descendants will trawl through my belongings, find it, and read it – when I’m gone.
I think tweets and texts are a little similar, the distinction being drawn on privacy lines. A tweet is intended to be a broadcast to anyone and everyone – not even limited to a circle of friends like on Facebook. A text though is normally one-on-one. I send hundreds of texts to my wife each month. Usually just little status updates that help us work together more efficiently. Things like “I’m on the 1730 train”... “OK, meet at nursery.” Some people tweet this kind of thing, and I can’t understand why! It’s like privacy doesn’t matter to them at all. Or perhaps they know that their conversation is a drop in a noisy ocean, and only the algorithms will read it?
Our household uses Skype all the time, as we have family abroad that we would otherwise see infrequently. I don’t like Skype as a piece of software; the client is buggy, the company is Microsoft (complete with US-government wiretapping), and the protocol is closed and has poor support for cross-device message history (sometimes my brother sends me a message on Skype and I don’t get it because I didn’t check my “Skype inbox” on the right device). Skype to us represents family. It’s free, and it’s as close to in-person as technology will currently allow. Phone calls seem formal and distant by comparison. And expensive too!
A Task
My name is very common; I’d be lucky for any of the top 1000 results to be about me. Actually, quite the opposite: I feel very lucky that none of the top 1000 results are about me! It’s a nice privacy filter that not everybody gets. I actually considered giving my daughter a common, un Googleable name so that she too may enjoy this. But I don’t think this is a hugely effective long term strategy, as machine learning will improve search results to the point that needles can easily be extracted from haystacks.
Copyright reserved: Contact The Keep BN1 9BP
Observations recommended in conjunction with T5672’s response:
On Time – past, future, wasting
On Privacy, Identity, Identities
Scan of original submission to MO by T5672
Endnotes
- Doubtless people sometimes wrote “ha ha” in letters, but it’s become associated with texting or tweeting now, so this appears to be a case of the language and style of the new media bleeding into people’s writing styles in other contexts.The strange strangulated variable pitch whistle of a dial-up modem is something remembered by several participants, and this researcher . . . ↩
- Hardly any other respondents mentioned this affordance of being able to send messages or photos to more than one recipient, which is surprising given how many people use it. ↩
- This is one of the more striking responses to the prompt about earliest memories of the internet: not only for its account of what he says is actually a pre-internet experience which presages what the internet would later become; but because of the sense it gives of how little people knew (including the makers) about the future uses to which computers would be put. ↩
- See Response 1 – D156, note 1. ↩
- See D156, note 1. ↩
- Few of the respondents use wearable devices or fitness apps, and none use this many. ↩