Rapture

      Having grown up drenched in the internet, I now cannot appreciate life without it. I mean this quite literally; time spent past a week without access to broadband wears thin on my nerves. I recall having to visit an internet café in the Bahamas after sailing for a week to satisfy my craving.
      What about the internet makes it so addictive? What has caused it to be ingrained in my lifestyle to the point of reliance? The answers lie in the human mind.
      What we refer to as the human soul has an unusually contagious property. That is, by picking up an object we place into it a shard of our soul and effectively integrate it into our skeleton. Picture a baseball bat. Holding it, you unknowingly are judging its weight, feeli      ng the forces applied against it, assimilating its structure and reforming your idea of your arm to include the bat. The same effect happens when we spend significant time with an object on a less tangible and more emotional level—we describe this attribution as sentimentality. Another iteration of this can be observed in mob mentalities and hive minds, wherein each person of a crowd extends himself emotionally to those around him creating a passion-driven greater consciousness.
      The relation to the internet at this point might be hard to grasp; more explanation is required. By exploring the global network, one discovers interest-relevant areas and sites which they set claim to on a personal level—a typical surfer will develop haunts, the oft-mentioned Favorites. In some instances, checking these haunts for updates becomes almost compulsive for the surfer. A feeling of being connected to others and to information is thereby fostered: the surfer has scattered himself among his sites and incorporated them into his persona. The concept sounds almost ridiculous, yet evidence abounds in its favor; the readiness with which students attach their residual self-images to their Facebook or Myspace profiles lends my theory credit. The phenomenon is also present in online gaming, where a person’s avatar is made to adopt many of its owner’s mannerisms and is functions as an extension of the user. Time spent with the internet is time invested—and like any good investment, it is not easily abandoned. The internet has two properties that allow time to be easily invested in it. One—the internet is interactive—and two—the internet is social.
The internet allows users to further customize their experience online by producing content in the form of web pages, pictures, videos and discussion. Carving a niche out for oneself becomes easier when that niche contains one’s own media. Again, the investment of time in the form of content cements the bond between user and information.
      The internet compartmentalizes basic social interactions to a degree that allows those interactions to occur more frequently. For example, IMing simultaneously manages to provide the convenience of the traditional phone call with the multitasking associated with technological efficiency. The effort needed to meet with each friend offline, compiled over the course of an entire buddy list, requires literal hours of transportation to accomplish what a single internet-enabled program can do in minutes. Actual locations have become irrelevant as forums and chat clients eliminate the need for face-to-face encounters.
Broader access to more people, a byproduct of this feature, results in the assembly of geologically separated persons, united by a single interest, to locate one another and share thoughts. A home exists for a person of each color on the internet, unlike the smaller, less diverse samplings for which real-space provides. Real-space interactions lose their flavor and relevance when an internet-enabled crowd exists for one to broadcast to.
      My own internet addiction was fostered and fueled by these traits. Chat, for me as for many others of my age, first roped me in. The program allowed me to stay in touch with my friends after school had ended without wasting time on the phone or with transport. I began to chat while powering through homework, but as I embraced the connectivity of IM I found my brain unoccupied in what I will refer to as microboredom, the feeling one has during insignificantly small waiting periods—such as between receiving IMs. That space I occupied with the diversions of the internet; i.e. webcomics, online gaming, illegal downloading, and forum visitation. From these initial haunts I developed my internet niche, one that has evolved with me over the last 6 years but held my interest throughout that time period.
The internet’s inherent growth factor provided new areas to explore, but my Favorites retained and grew in sentimental value the more I frequented them. The end of 8th grade saw my dependence on the web arise, and in 9th to social networking; 10th grade my lethal addiction to gaming was born, in addition to my Gmail account, and in 11th the web became my library through Wikipedia. 12th grade had Web 2.0 come to fruition and I dabbled in MMORPGing, much to my social life’s chagrin. Throughout these years I was constructing a niche comprised of my haunts, pumping content into them and thereby investing time, culminating in a web experience that is uniquely my own and is reflected by my current Favorites. This subnetwork, the Patnet, is a realm that I skip across to pass the microboredom periods while multitasking. It consists of entertainment, education and even business related sites, games, and internet-enabled software that provides for me a sense of connectivity—a sense so strong that being disconnected feels like leaving part of my soul, the part I’ve invested in the Patnet, in an unreachable location. Like Voldemort.
      As a result of my investment, the internet is now nearly irrevocably part of who I am. Without its influence I cannot predict with any accuracy who I might have turned out to be, although I can guarantee my innocence would be much better preserved. Yet I would no sooner discard its influence than I would any other part of me.

A little while back I dugg an article on digg entitled "The Fifty Most Influential Bloggers." Remembering this article I turned to it to find a blog to write about tonight. After scouring through the 50 I came upon a blog written my marketing specialist Seth Godin, who, as he tells us in his "About me" page, has authored 7 books, one of which is the most popular e-book of all time- the million-copy-selling "Unleashing the Ideavirus."

The premise of Godin's blog centers around his remarkable ability in the field of market analysis. He applies his ideas to patterns and trends he observes in situations that would otherwise not be thought of as marketing attempts. His description of world events in marketing terms provides insight and sets a new framework in which to think about those events. He discusses and lays out goals for his readership to accomplish, in areas from morality to consumer intelligence. His examples hold advice for small business owners and entrepreneurs, as he suggests marketing ideas that would increase business or reduce inefficiencies. The man posts on average of once a day, mostly with medium-length posts designed to provoke discussion. His audience consists of young to middle-aged white-collar workers. Often he rebukes powerful companies and points out where their strategy could be improved. His language is clear and allows a layman like myself to follow his powerful marketing strategies.

Seth relies upon the Google search engine rather than his own tagging for the purpose of searching. He does, however, link to many other blogs that discuss the same topic as his post. Additionally he provides the opportunity to digg his stories or to add them to StumbleUpon. As he is a public figure and benefits directly from the purchase of his books, he in a way markets himself through his blog. As a result much of his personal information is available to look at-the man's public life is no different from his private, and he could not hide his specifics under such public scrutiny. Of course, if he were not a publicized author, his information might have been more heavily guarded.

Anyway, if you want to check out his marketing advice, here's the link. Good read for any business-minded individuals out there.

By the power of Google I unearthed a couple of solidly-written and easily adhered-to blogging policies in use by three different companies: IBM, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo. I doubt the fact that all of these IT-related organizations have blog policies is sheer coincidence. I find it more likely that companies with strong tech focuses will obviously confront and deal with upcoming technological trends. Companies with primarily blue-collar workers and those in the non-technological sectors will have less need of blogging policies. Anyway, I'll start you off with a couple of links to check out.

First, Sun's blogging policy, which (as I understand it) was drafted by an employee blogger and then canonized by the company. Sun is of course the distributor of the Java platform. From their website I took this article. Give it a quick look through if you want, but I'm going to highlight the basics later anyway.

Secondly I checked out IBM's developers' blogging policy. Intriguingly the guideline was found within a blog itself. If you care to look at IBM in general, they are located here (go figure.)

Lastly I found Yahoo's blogging policy. Hooray PDFs! Sorry for the inconvenience, I know no one loves acrobat but this is the format Yahoo's distributing it in.

Surprisingly, these policies were not all rule/regulation. In fact, they attempt to motivate nonbloggers into doing so while placing limited restrictions on existing blogs. For example, Sun encourages blogging not for the sake of blogging, but to "become part of the industry conversation." In this case a company views blogging as much a tool of business as of communication. In this area, the companies encouraged employees to "be interesting," "post links," look at already established blogs for help, and to "add value [....] to the business" via blogging.

All three companies had the same basic guidelines when it came to posting. Each made it clear that the blogger must identify himself as an individual independent of the company; the company has no liability for the blogger's actions. Posts should never consist of industry-sensitive information unless discussion in the area is promoted explicitly by the company. The same goes for fiscal reports. All three speak to treating commenters and fellow bloggers/coworkers with respect. Additionally, they warn against not checking your facts; they want their employees to portray themselves as truthful.

Sun addresses potential buyers looking at the critiques a blogger posts about his company's products. They say the worst thing that can happen is "that a Sun sales pro is in a meeting with a hot prospect, and someone on the customer's side pulls out a print-out of your blog and says "This person at Sun says that product sucks."

Yahoo focuses strongly on the legal logistics of blogging, discussing how the PR department must be consulted before talking to the media about a blog. The amount of information a Yahoo employee can blog about is determined by their employee contract with Yahoo.

IBM tries to promote blogging to expand their influence in the industry. It encourages bloggers to talk about what they know and use the practices they learned at IBM thinktank sessions.

Looking at all three, I was able to build my own, rather more succinct "Best Blogging Policies" list:
1. Make yourself identifiably independent from your company
2. Stay in your own domain of knowledge, and speak only truths
3. Keep necessary antagonism "polite" and not ad hominem
4. Keep company secrets secret
5. Don't blog about anything that would get you fired.
6. Make sure your company knows that you blog/get its permission

Following these simple rules will probably maintain any employee-company relationships during one's stint as a blogger.

Found this fantastic article through good ol' ytmnd. Too tired to respond in full but anyone in the class should read it. Very good social networking commentary/blog commentary.