PHOTOGRAPHY & CULTURE

What does “status” mean today?

Downtown Chicago, IL
Status | Chicago, Illinois, USA | Oct 2008

While we have created a new set of online activities and behaviors through our increased adoption of online systems and applications, we still largely use a language and set of terminologies ported from the offline world.

Yet we’ve spent little time thinking about the implications.

Couple thoughts:

  • What does “status” mean today and how do we display it (online and offline)?
  • Why do we use words like “status” to detail our online actions?
  • Why do we use words like “friend” to denote our online connections?
  • What other words could we use to create different interpretations and reinforce different behaviors?
  • Will our increased usage of terms online change how we use them offline? will their offline meaning change as well?

By creating systems that allow us to publicly display, measure and compare some facet of ourselves, we implicitly create societal competition over that artifact.

Obviously this isn’t new:

Hierarchical awareness seems to be deeply embedded in the human brain, so much so that there are distinct circuits activated by concerns over social rank. (ScienceNOW)

People have no obvious outward, physical signs to denote their status, so we rely on artificial ones: the big car, the mansion to live in, the arrogance of manner to inferiors, the ostentatious spending on designer clothes and expensive vacations. (Slow Leadership)

But we face different challenges in the online world:

  • Do we want to create competition over the number of friends we have?
  • Does the way we use the word “friend” online cheapen the meaning of the word?
  • Are we creating systems that encourage narcissism?
  • How are using and manipulating online systems to create artificial signals of status?
  • Are the notions of visibility and status starting to merge?
  • We use a bevy of stereotypes in the offline world to make status judgments: what online stereotypes are we creating?
  • What cultural norms are being carried over from offline to online? What new cultural norms are being created offline from our online behaviors?
  • Has the increased use of online profiles changed how we use traditional offline ways to signal status?
  • How do the traditional signals of status “work” online: possessions, conspicuous consumption, inheritance, landed title, wealth, appearance, family, profession, class, time?
  • How do different cultures, nationalities and socio-economic groups use online systems to display their status? How is communicated differently in and across cultures and socio-economic groups?

Thoughts?


SIMILAR THOUGHTS
  • Is the context of time the untapped issue in social media development?
  • Venture outside the bubble to create change
  • How can people define their brands in physical spaces using digital content?
  • Can I create a .ME?
  • Workspaces: How We Work and Our Changing Workspaces


    • This entry was written by Taylor Davidson, posted on October 30, 2008 at 11:25, filed under Business & Society, Unstructured Thoughts and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

    Viewing 4 Comments

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      • v
      My status is my Blackberry Messenger client status entry (typically blank), Facebook status, Linkedin status, and sometimes Twitter. But really, short of ping.fm, it is a different set of networks to touch on the web. The truly close business groupings and personal groupings are Blackberry Messenger status. The device is not me of course but is the extension of how to be reached. My desk phone status is to forward to a mobile device. "Find me follow me" is the name for reach oriented telephony service -- and for all the promises, you still have to set it up and maintain the settings for home, work, play, hours, and any out of service time you plan.

      Status never caught on with IM -- point of fact -- in my realm of contacts. Mostly, I see iTunes tracks being played as the status but a select few might be "Away" but this is likely an automation by default at a 10-15 interval when the IM client has not been in focus on a desktop.

      I am finding that many status services are, as the saying goes, a status symbol.
      • ^
      • v
      It's amazing how disaggregated all of our services are: but perhaps that's what we want, to be able to present and sell ourselves in different ways to different audiences. I'm amazed by all the ways hacking everything together, the beauty of APIs and distributed data.

      The majority of status prompts are our status symbols, methods to passively communicate and share information about ourselves and our lives. We've always had this ability to present ourselves offline, and I'm curious what will happen as the online world continues to evolve.

      Perhaps there is a business opportunity in helping people show off, in helping them show off how they see themselves. Or is that simply Facebook?
      • ^
      • v
      HP had the notion of presence and relevance based on a fob you carried around the office using RFID, WiFi and interaction agents on devices (phone, celluar, keyboard/mouse activity) that would give a view not unlike a MMORPG but I don't think a Second Life interface is practical for the real world.... btw... that was in 2002.

      So, there -is- a market that doesn't know it exists and there is a business opp for when people demand some method for teaming and presence -- it's just hard to lay out the scenario where everyone needs it. More and more I am seeing Unified Communication being pushed into places it does not and should not fit.

      For example, none of this is remotely useful or needed with a workforce that is tethered to a desktop in a call center or highly sedentary environment. Contrast this with distributed sales teams or multi-timezone project teams and you can see it isn't something you can ignore as you break up the proximity of a team but it also isn't a fit for everyone.
      • ^
      • v
      It's a technical solution to a problem people adapt to. Making people change is nearly impossible: helping them make their lives better, helping them be who they want to be: know that's a business.

      I see a lot of unified communication applications that simply require too much from the user, too many routing, device, time and caller scenarios requiring too many pre-selected decisions. The potential is in passive information sharing instead of active, interruptive collaboration.

      (btw, I wasn't even thinking of unified communications when I wrote this post: we've gone down a "status in the literal sense" train of thought, interesting...)
     

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