As a consumer, and we are all consumers at this point, every ad you see every TV show you watch is working to change your perspective. They are all lovingly crafted to showcase, in most cases, a racially diverse group of people enjoying an experience with a product.

Some products target down to specific groups they are trying to reach, others work to include people of differing abilities and disabilities into their message, still others work to make sure that not only are gender roles equal in presentation but that the women or young girls in the situation feel empowered by the position similar actors to their own perspective are experiencing on the screen.

This is the business of TV and advertising as it stands, each piece of content is filtered shifted and cajoled to be as inclusive and sensitive to the message they are sending out as possible. I’d suggest an exercise, stop tuning out when the commercials come on, start trying to pick apart the 30 second narrative they play before you, what are they trying to sell, how are they trying to make you feel? What do they want you to do?

Once you start paying attention to the commercials, and which shows they choose to be seen with, it’s pretty eye opening.

Digital Natives, or those who grew up using higher end technology as an integral part of their education brings with it two very real problems. As generations are removed from the invention of a technology the mystery behind how it actually works deepens, people on whole do not care how a telephone works, it is a tool. They use the object for what it was intended. You don’t have to know how the network was built to use it effectively. However without knowing anything about the network it is also quite easy to gloss over the value of the basics.

The second problem is that people take certain aspects of the operation of the network or technology for granted, and there are fewer people who understand how to fix it. The more complex a system gets the harder it is for one person to know it in its entirety. Specialization breeds disorganization and a dilution of ideas and a much less cohesive vision for where the technology is headed.

Think of it this way. In terms of an older Generations networks. Eisenhower and his administration envisioned a network of high capacity highways crossing the country to facilitate  interstate traffic, and build a quick network to be used in defense of the country. In the simplest sense this network was designed and built over the course of very few years, it was one of the largest public works projects ever conceived and completed. The system 50 years after its inception covers almost 50,000 miles of road. The problem with this system now is that the traffic patterns are changing as population centers shift, and areas of industry go through changes. In the Philadelphia area there are a large collection of exists close to previous centers of industry, which now lie fallow for the most part. The areas of higher population density become crowded and jammed routinely causing delays.

The network has grown in usefulness and necessity far beyond what was envisioned over 50 years ago, and by its usefulness it is also impossible to simply tear a highway down and build a new one, things are incrementally more difficult to maintain when they are in high use.

It is much easier to build a new system than it is to maintain an older one, if you weren’t the architect.  Europe has mastered the art of City planning having continuous population centers for over a thousand years in some parts, ever changing and every shifting. The United states on the other hand is still going through growing pains in that area.

Take this allegory on put it onto Computer networks the Internet was designed about 30 years ago and came into its own a little over 15 years ago at this point, the speed of adoption has slowed recently but more people are online now than ever. Countries originally left out of the plan are now making up large slices of the traffic. Lucky for us the network is not a permanent thing such as the highways but rather a constantly vacillating enterprise all its own. The network has grown beyond the ability of one person or one company to manage. By its decentralized nature the network was never designed to go through one hub of decision making, and this is a constant source of irritation to the country that built the network in the first place.

The United States grew up with the Internet, but the people who designed the network are a slowly dwindling resource. Yes the kids today who hope online and facebook, and twitter without a second thought are building new networks and exploring new terrain, but they lack an understanding of how the network is built so they don’t understand the dangers of the network.

System admins know that there is no such thing as anonymous traffic, The designers of the network knew this. However ask any 15 year old kid on any social network if they are anonymous when they are online and you are apt to get a positive response. This is a dangerous thing, When the network grows beyond the understanding of the drones who use it it starts to lend itself to serve those who strive to understand it, and use the data streams for profit. How long before the mindless video watching, twittering and status updates all feed into the coffers of unseen data mines?

Its already here, Big Brother is no longer watching, he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
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It has a lot to do with the way they were introduced to it during their lifetime. Think about this,  Someone who today is 60 was born during a time when color TV was in its infancy, you couldn’t dial long distance phone numbers without talking to an operator and the first computer had only recently been turned on. If the person is 40 today then they grew up in a world still dominated by black and white television, lacked video games and  had tethered land lines. If the person is 20 years old today think of the wonders that they take for granted. Space while still mysterious has been traveled, cell phones are replacing land lines at a steady rate. Soon Analog transmissions of TV will be a distant memory.

Digital Divide:

This term is commonly used to describe the gap in economic penetration of computer access. But it also can explain the generational gap seen in computer use. the younger you are introduced to technology the closer you get to fluency in its language. I’m not talking about understanding command line interfaces, or programming languages, but there are certain skills that need to be developed in a person before you can sit them down at an unfamiliar piece of technology and have them begin to approach it. Call it the tinkering gene or machine fluency, those skilled in the art of playing around with things seem to find themselves at an advantage when confronted with new technology. This skill needs to be developed.

Language and Technology

More than any other discipline linguistics lends itself to understanding how people approach technology. Populations with no common language will begin to develop a pidgin version of a new language when grouped together.  This pidgin is an attempt to find commonality to communicate with other people.  The second generation of people born into the community take the pidgin further, adding in new grammatical constructs, filling in nuances expression. The advances are primarily in language use and rules governing new word creation and content explanation.

If you are reading this blog the chances are that you understand Technical Pidgin to a certain extent.  Depending on how old you are and how immersed you have been in technology you can understand how things go together and begin to approach new gadgets gizmos and toys with reckless abandon. Each passing generation becomes digitally aware at an earlier age, moving further away from the pidgin to fluency. But at what point does the learning stabilize?

Digital Natives

Digital native do not know of a time when things were not digital. The network has always been there for them. This is a nebulous concept and ever changing target on the road. Technology is unlike language  in that there is no steady state, but rather a continued expansion of tools and tricks needed to keep your head above the binary waves. To be a true digital native you need to conquer that which has not been invented yet.

Sports is a polarizing area to discuss, no matter which way your approach the subject. On whole people generally have three different reactions to the very existence of professional sports.

1. Fans: People who follow at least one team, diligently if not fervently
2. Casuals: People who will watch a game if its on, or support a local team if they’re doing well. But its not a high priority
3. Disinterested: People who either can’t understand the fascination with the pastime, or lament the wasted money and energy that goes into their enjoyment.

As with anything there is a good deal of gradation in each of the categories. Fans can range from the mild cheering if they catch a game on TV to the incredibly devoted who have mortgaged houses to pay for season tickets. The disinterested can also range from those who h0nestly don’t care a lick one way or another, to the violently and boisterously opposed to the very existence of the organizations.  As with most things the bulk of the population finds themselves as casual or moderate on the scale.

Digital Self vs Tactile Self

Depending on the social network you travel in in real life you may or may not have a chance to interact with groups of people cheering during a sporting event. It can be quite an experience and the noise of the crowd can sweep normally calm introverted people up in its wake. You need not be a super fan to yell scream and boo with reckless abandon, you just have to have a couple people near you leading the way.

Online there can be two schools of thought as to how people show their affiliation, some people find themselves more open about their devotion, while others are afraid of alienating other teams fans. Sports is about conflict and on some level most people understand this and relish the chance at an encounter with an opposing fan. Online anonymity only extends so far, and the more people become familiar with you the less likely they are to behave badly. Notice on Bulletin boards and blogs where anonymous or un-moderated comments are allowed there is a much higher frequency of trolling, ie people lurking beneath the surface of a discussion only to pop up to spout incendiary comments.

However in Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace the level of civility in the conversation is raised. You interact with these people and choose to friend or follow them based off of the value they add to your conversation. the more value you place in the conversation as a whole the less likely you are to go off message, spouting obscenities or derogatory comments, if that is something you wouldn’t normally do.

More and more our Digital selves are becoming extensions of the tactile selves.  Online actions have repercussions in real life, and while you may be excited that your team is doing well, most people who recognize the long lasting legacy of online content withhold the true comment gems  for offline use only. As a result the dialog between fans of different allegiances stays cleaner, and in the end more fruitful for all parties involved.

The one thing left to consider is how you appear to those who have disdain for professional sports in general, more often than not they will remove themselves from the conversation, by unfollowing or ignoring you until such time as you regain your sanity. If you provided enough value in your interaction outside of the contest then they might come back. If you were an obnoxious boar as a fan, then they are probably a little less likely to come back around.

The disinterested have a low threshold for acceptance of fans, more often than not they feel put upon that their tax dollars go to fund stadiums they don’t want, their media coverage is canvased by millionaires they don’t care about and their town swept up into frenzies by a pastime, that is alien or even wasteful to them. These people are much less likely to deal with your fan foibles in virtual space, when they can cleanse their content stream by eliminating your chatter about topics uninteresting to them.

Sports as a whole has been reduced through explaination as a way of controlling the masses through distraction and escapism, or on the other hand has been identified as a unifying force in civic pride. Love them or hate them they seem to be here to stay along with their inflated salaries and opulent venues. The one thing that you can’t argue is that love them or hate them they can change the way people interact and observe each other a good deal. Be conscious of that fact, and enjoy the ballgame, or not. Its your choice.

Cultural Anthropology on the other hand, gave me a unique set of skills which I use every day of my life. Pattern recognition, data categorization, set management and my new found organizational skills. Research is a part of any job, but anthropology gave me a set of tools to bring to the table that my colleges with CS degrees can’t match. I taught myself everything I know about fixing and managing computers and servers. With this blog I hope to tap into that tool-set to bring a different viewpoint to the Internet. There are plenty of anthropologists online, some are even adapt enough to walk in both worlds as I do. Its refreshing to see so many new perspectives online popping up.

Stop back periodically… I hope to make it worth your time