It is a normal day. I am finally relaxed after a good Saturday night sleep, and a hot bath in the morning. And now, I sit on my desk and fire up my laptop. Pretty much the same routine as always. All my days begin this way. I don't do prayers, I'm not that much religious. So, I directly go on to the issues of the day. And as my laptop starts up, I immediately open up Facebook in my browser. I check all the vital updates in the sequence: Notifications, Messages, Friend Requests. I see the red sign glaring at me, shouting to me that I have 9 unseen Notifications. I click on the tiny globe, and I get to see a list which has had me curious for the past two minutes or so. But this list is hugely a disappointment. Among these nine notifications, two are game requests, two are some stupid photos I'm tagged in, two more are some posts in a group, and only three are notifications that really matter to me. Nevertheless, after this short ritual, I jump to my wall. I peruse through whatever new updates my wall has to offer me; at the same time, judge some people for their bad photo or another copied status update. Once I am done doing all of that, I move on to yet another social networking site - Quora. Unlike Facebook, Quora has even more notifications, but most of them are just upvotes to my answers. Yes, one of my answers on Quora has already gotten around 650+ votes, and counting. I immediately click on the 'Clear New Notifications' button. I then, start to read answers and upvote some very good ones. After around half an hour of doing so, I decide to leave Quora for the good. And so, after completing this daily ritual lasting upto an hour or so, I finally get ready for important things of my daily routine.
Staring at the screen for like half an hour, and that too, in the morning, makes me a bit dizzy. So, I sit quietly for two minutes, stretch my body for some exercise (because my mom is continuously talking about the need of exercise), and after those two minutes of exercise, I am back at my screen. After half an hour of checking my mails, I finally realize I have work to do - I have assignments to complete, I have classes to attend, and other loads of crap. With a heavy heart, I put my laptop to sleep, and return back to the normal world. But, as I step outside my room and into the hallway, I take a very deep yawn. And that is how I start hanging in my classes like the Gardens of Babylon.
I guess you might get the point of my little experience above. And of course, you would be having some questions about my daily routine. I would love to not answer them. (I might answer which soap I use for bathing, though). Social Networking has been around us for a long time now. This is the generation of social networking. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and many more have become a part of our daily communication. A majority of our knowledge of the outside world is gained through these sites. And an introvert like me definitely likes and prefers these networking sites to day-to-day conversations. That is a good thing, actually. The merits and demerits of these sites have been discussed and again discussed, and then discussed all over again. And, people may say what they want to; I certainly like social networking sites.
Networks are important for knowledge. Since a major part of my summer this year was spent studying about networks and networked knowledge, I would like to share some interesting ideas about networks. So, networks are essential in the process of information transfer. In our brains, how does information become knowledge? Do we remember some fact as a sentence? No. When we get any new information, neurons in the neural network of our brain fire up, in some sequence. This firing of neurons establishes a neural link in our brain, which leads to knowledge. So basically, knowledge in our brain is nothing more than a pattern of specific entities connected to each other via a network. And so, networks are the building blocks of information transfer process. Same thing happens when we move onto higher levels. A network of persons creates a society. And just as formation of links between neurons leads to exchange of information, the formation of links between humans in a society leads to information transfer...
And so, social networking is not a bad thing. It is basically a replica of what happens in our brain - in this case, we being the neurons. Every single day, we get so much of new information via these social networks. There are trends in a network, and we can get to see those trends and try to implement them, and then what was once social knowledge becomes personal knowledge. And memes are a very good example of them. Memes have now become a massive hit. Imagine just a year or two ago, if one were to write "One can has cheeseballs", every single Grammar Nazi would be more than ready to shoot him down. But now, this language has become a part and parcel of these memes. Why? Because, well, Grumpy Cat can't spell. And so, we have a whole new dimension of entertainment, and we get loads of new information and current affairs from these trending posts. Until about a week ago, I didn't know that Ben Affleck is the Batman in the next Superman movie. But, when I saw all those trolls about him, I was compelled to look at one. And that's how I got my information. I wouldn't have known of Miley Cyrus's performance at the VMA 2013, had it not been for the Zac Brown Band's status update (A page that I have liked). And so, I would have missed up on such a good piece of news trending all over the Internet if it hadn't been for social networking.
That is exactly how social networking helps us. It increases our knowledge and helps us to know some people better. It makes us more accessible. It makes many a conversations much easier. But then, it is not all goody-goody. There are some aspects of it that make me wanna throw away my laptop (Seriously). First one of them is definitely that 'Future predictions' thingy. I have never ever understood why people want to do that. Some of those are absolutely stupid. 'When are you gonna die?', 'Who will be your life-partner?', 'Who has crush on you?' and 'Are-you-kidding-me?' Okay the last one was just me being a little dramatic. But really, what the hell is this? Is Facebook God? You really think Facebook knows all about your life, when you, even despite it being your life, don't know what you're gonna do a week from now? And I am sorry, Facebook is not responsible here. It is those bloody apps which have crawled into our Facebook walls somehow, and which stop at nothing to irritate us all by generating stupidly stupid images, and then spreading like a virus into everyone's walls determined to uproot their lives by a shitload of spam. And recently, those 'Who visited my profile?' thingies have surfaced to the scene. And there are people who actually click those links, and then the app, which was waiting for this perfect moment, posts the same thing as this victim, and then someone else clicks the victim's link, and this continues. Even though people have learnt all about viruses and even despite knowing that they should not click on unknown or unverified links, they still click on those links, they still fall prey into all those schemes, and then they don't even care to check their Activity Log to delete any such content, because at some level, they don't care. Some Facebook groups are filled up with loads of such posts, and not even the Admin cares enough to delete them.
And Game Requests are not far away here. Okay, when you share your scores in public, which is absolutely not required, we know what game you are playing. But no, you have to pester some quiet people, looking to enjoy the social networking site. You have to invite them to play. You have to add a new notification to their list, and add hope that there might be a like on their photo, only to badly crush that hope with a shameless Game Request. And as if that's not enough, some people go on to tag all of their friends into their personal photos, or even some copied photos with quotes saying 'Friendship is a sea...' or some crap like that. And then, people comment on that, adding to the pile of existing Notifications, and then, it takes an individual almost ten minutes to click, let it open, Unfollow and then close the window. And, then, one has to scream in the pillow to let all that anger and frustration out.
Seriously, networks are very powerful, but only if they are used in a right manner. Spamming these with unwanted content or advertisements defeats the very aim of learning and information sharing. Networks like Quora or forums are some of the best things to happen on the Internet. They actually utilize networking phenomena for information sharing. I learn such a great deal from Quora, or from some random forums. And that is exactly the purpose of such networks. They are there to enhance the process, and we, by doing things we do, degrade the process. All we need to do is be careful, and avoid spamming, and everything will turn back to normal, and networks will actually become what they're supposed to be - mediums of information exchange...
Disclaimer: I don't intend on hurting anyone who does all those things above, but seriously, you need to mend your ways!
The topic of this post was suggested by Shubham Tyagi
Staring at the screen for like half an hour, and that too, in the morning, makes me a bit dizzy. So, I sit quietly for two minutes, stretch my body for some exercise (because my mom is continuously talking about the need of exercise), and after those two minutes of exercise, I am back at my screen. After half an hour of checking my mails, I finally realize I have work to do - I have assignments to complete, I have classes to attend, and other loads of crap. With a heavy heart, I put my laptop to sleep, and return back to the normal world. But, as I step outside my room and into the hallway, I take a very deep yawn. And that is how I start hanging in my classes like the Gardens of Babylon.
I guess you might get the point of my little experience above. And of course, you would be having some questions about my daily routine. I would love to not answer them. (I might answer which soap I use for bathing, though). Social Networking has been around us for a long time now. This is the generation of social networking. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and many more have become a part of our daily communication. A majority of our knowledge of the outside world is gained through these sites. And an introvert like me definitely likes and prefers these networking sites to day-to-day conversations. That is a good thing, actually. The merits and demerits of these sites have been discussed and again discussed, and then discussed all over again. And, people may say what they want to; I certainly like social networking sites.
Networks are important for knowledge. Since a major part of my summer this year was spent studying about networks and networked knowledge, I would like to share some interesting ideas about networks. So, networks are essential in the process of information transfer. In our brains, how does information become knowledge? Do we remember some fact as a sentence? No. When we get any new information, neurons in the neural network of our brain fire up, in some sequence. This firing of neurons establishes a neural link in our brain, which leads to knowledge. So basically, knowledge in our brain is nothing more than a pattern of specific entities connected to each other via a network. And so, networks are the building blocks of information transfer process. Same thing happens when we move onto higher levels. A network of persons creates a society. And just as formation of links between neurons leads to exchange of information, the formation of links between humans in a society leads to information transfer...
And so, social networking is not a bad thing. It is basically a replica of what happens in our brain - in this case, we being the neurons. Every single day, we get so much of new information via these social networks. There are trends in a network, and we can get to see those trends and try to implement them, and then what was once social knowledge becomes personal knowledge. And memes are a very good example of them. Memes have now become a massive hit. Imagine just a year or two ago, if one were to write "One can has cheeseballs", every single Grammar Nazi would be more than ready to shoot him down. But now, this language has become a part and parcel of these memes. Why? Because, well, Grumpy Cat can't spell. And so, we have a whole new dimension of entertainment, and we get loads of new information and current affairs from these trending posts. Until about a week ago, I didn't know that Ben Affleck is the Batman in the next Superman movie. But, when I saw all those trolls about him, I was compelled to look at one. And that's how I got my information. I wouldn't have known of Miley Cyrus's performance at the VMA 2013, had it not been for the Zac Brown Band's status update (A page that I have liked). And so, I would have missed up on such a good piece of news trending all over the Internet if it hadn't been for social networking.
That is exactly how social networking helps us. It increases our knowledge and helps us to know some people better. It makes us more accessible. It makes many a conversations much easier. But then, it is not all goody-goody. There are some aspects of it that make me wanna throw away my laptop (Seriously). First one of them is definitely that 'Future predictions' thingy. I have never ever understood why people want to do that. Some of those are absolutely stupid. 'When are you gonna die?', 'Who will be your life-partner?', 'Who has crush on you?' and 'Are-you-kidding-me?' Okay the last one was just me being a little dramatic. But really, what the hell is this? Is Facebook God? You really think Facebook knows all about your life, when you, even despite it being your life, don't know what you're gonna do a week from now? And I am sorry, Facebook is not responsible here. It is those bloody apps which have crawled into our Facebook walls somehow, and which stop at nothing to irritate us all by generating stupidly stupid images, and then spreading like a virus into everyone's walls determined to uproot their lives by a shitload of spam. And recently, those 'Who visited my profile?' thingies have surfaced to the scene. And there are people who actually click those links, and then the app, which was waiting for this perfect moment, posts the same thing as this victim, and then someone else clicks the victim's link, and this continues. Even though people have learnt all about viruses and even despite knowing that they should not click on unknown or unverified links, they still click on those links, they still fall prey into all those schemes, and then they don't even care to check their Activity Log to delete any such content, because at some level, they don't care. Some Facebook groups are filled up with loads of such posts, and not even the Admin cares enough to delete them.
And Game Requests are not far away here. Okay, when you share your scores in public, which is absolutely not required, we know what game you are playing. But no, you have to pester some quiet people, looking to enjoy the social networking site. You have to invite them to play. You have to add a new notification to their list, and add hope that there might be a like on their photo, only to badly crush that hope with a shameless Game Request. And as if that's not enough, some people go on to tag all of their friends into their personal photos, or even some copied photos with quotes saying 'Friendship is a sea...' or some crap like that. And then, people comment on that, adding to the pile of existing Notifications, and then, it takes an individual almost ten minutes to click, let it open, Unfollow and then close the window. And, then, one has to scream in the pillow to let all that anger and frustration out.
Seriously, networks are very powerful, but only if they are used in a right manner. Spamming these with unwanted content or advertisements defeats the very aim of learning and information sharing. Networks like Quora or forums are some of the best things to happen on the Internet. They actually utilize networking phenomena for information sharing. I learn such a great deal from Quora, or from some random forums. And that is exactly the purpose of such networks. They are there to enhance the process, and we, by doing things we do, degrade the process. All we need to do is be careful, and avoid spamming, and everything will turn back to normal, and networks will actually become what they're supposed to be - mediums of information exchange...
Disclaimer: I don't intend on hurting anyone who does all those things above, but seriously, you need to mend your ways!
The topic of this post was suggested by Shubham Tyagi
