In a move that surprised me as much as anyone, my entry last year on Networking made it into the OpenLab anthology, at the expense of the far superior Stardust. You’ll be happy to hear that I didn’t abuse my Deputy Editorial privilege and overrule the judges’ decision, but I do have another plan up my sleeve for that particular entry…
Anyway. Last year I talked about the growing plethora (can you have a ‘growing plethora’?—Ed.) of networking sites, and wondered if any of them—and by implication scientific networking itself—were working. And if not, was it worth trying to make it work?
A bunch of you folks have been away at ScienceOnline’09 (and what it is it with the word ‘unconference’? Surely a conference with no agenda fixed in advance is still a conference? Just a badly-organized one…) and have come back full of beans and happy as happy things. Which is neat, but… well, you’ll see. I’ve already noted that Jonathan Gitlin thinks that science social networking sites are hopeless and useless—a conclusion he’d reached before he went to ScienceOnline’09. And it appears that the conference has not changed his mind, in fact it seems to have strengthened his conclusion:
As it turns out, the moderators, Cameron Neylon and Deepak Singh, had about as little time for these platforms as I did, and we weren’t alone. I was frankly horrified at one of their slides, which was filled with the URLs to social networking sites aimed at scientists—I thought there were a just few out there, but they’re numbering in the hundreds!
And yet just about all of them suffer from the same problem: not enough users and nothing to make them inherently better than the established players in the market, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Nature Networks.
Let’s ignore the back-patting that is likely to come of being ranked alongside Facebook and Linkedin, by an Ars Technica writer no less, and think, for a moment, why this might be so.
Jonathan says that the other sites don’t have enough users, and don’t have a unique selling point. But you’d have thought (well, I would, but what do I know?) that such problems would be easy enough to overcome, especially if you’ve got VC money to pour into the marketing tank. Various suggestions were made in the comments, and David Crotty wrote an exceedingly long post about what’s preventing uptake of these tools.
Part of it is that tracking multiple, simultaneous conversations across different platforms (Twitter, Facebook, blogs &c.) is not straightforward, although that might be amenable to a technological solution, but I think the real problem is deeper, more fundamental. Martin said,
I forgot that virtual networking is much more important if you don’t live in Central Europe or on the United States East Coast. I can be in London, Munich or Paris within two hours and without spending too much money, but that is obviously different when you live in Sydney or Cape Town.
and while I think he’s right to an extent, I really don’t think that virtual networking is ever going to take off in that way (until the oil runs out/air travel becomes too expensive—and even then we might simply find different circles to move in).
I was talking, at the weekend, to a medic friend who has to give a talk at a conference next week. He hates giving talks and I offered to do it for him. I reckoned I could bullshit my way out of any awkward questions (hey, it’s only medicine after all), and then he said that he was only going because he had to give that talk. There weren’t any other sessions he wanted to attend.
And then it struck me. Humans (including scientists) are social creatures. The main point of conferences (with the possible exception of Gordon Conferences) is not to exchange information. The main point of conferences is to socialize. To get to know people—and not in the measured, manicured, mannered way that scientific social networking sites facilitate. We want to catch people unguarded, after a few beers, away from their home turf: we want to find out what we’re really like.
We can’t do that virtually. Nature Network, as fun (and useful, maybe) as it is, is no substitute for meeting people in real life. How many of us, having met only virtually, were completely stoked to finally meet each other in London?
You can’t have a virtual martini. We are made to interact in the flesh, and any attempt to take that away—any social networking site that doesn’t have its roots in a real-life experience (or at least the potential of such)—is, ultimately, doomed to failure.
Now this is going to be in next year’s Open Lab, of course.
I’m inclined to agree, but I’m not sure. I’ve met people from all my past and present social circles, but in all groups there have also been people who couldn’t ever make it out to meet others, and they are still just as much part of the group. At some point the lines start to get blurry about whether or not you have met someone in person. Henry and I both thought that surely we had met each other in person before, but
it was just a bad dreamwe hadn’t until last week. So is the prerequisite that some people must at some point be able to meet each other, and others can happily tag along?We have regular blogger or other geeky meetups in Toronto, and it does make things very cosy and friendly and such places (there are many online social groups in Toronto) are always very welcoming to new members, even though they haven’t met them yet.
So, hm, not sure. We should do an experiment where we start a social network and don’t have any friends join – only strangers who have never met and never will meet, and see how that works. Oh, wait. [heh] It’s been done, hasn’t it? All those failed social networks…
And as someone pointed out at the conference, Facebook, Myspace, and Nature Network all congregated around groups that already existed (students, bands, and scientists that read Nature – respectively).
And there’s the matter that people stop believing in you if they never met you
Please add the word “online” at the appropriate place in “I’ve met people from all my past and present social circles”.
It’s true even without it, it just makes less sense.
snigger Yeah, thanks Eva.
Yah. Facebook, Friends Reunited (Linkedin possibly a special case)—based initially at least around people who already knew/have known each other. And NN: of the people who went to London in August, what proportion want to do it again (even if Henry is there)? I’d say it was pretty high, and I’d also bet there are lots of people who weren’t there who will make every effort to attend the next.
We are (even introverts like myself) basically
egregiousgregarious creatures. And electrons won’t cut it.Yeah, well, maybe. Possibly, and a bit of both, sometimes (closed Wednesdays – in the town hall, if wet). I’d met none of the NN regulars, either in person, or digitally, before NN started (true, some of the same people hang out on LabLit fora, but under pseudonyms). Now I consider some of you, and Richard, among my best friends. (Sob. Grabs Hanky. Snort.)
but… now you have met us (and bought some of us beers, on the Nature expense account), you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?
(/me passes clean hanky)
At the risk of being perceived as (French expression spoiler:) spitting in the soup, I wouldn’t attend another NN shindig in London, having been to one. I’m sure I would have fun, and in an ideal world I’d love to, but the social aspect does not outweigh the “professionally fairly useless in the immediate future” aspect. So cost-benefit analysis leads to – not going again. It was a similar calculation for CISB’09, as delightful as it sounded. Not everything gets weighed up like that but I’ve too many other competing ways to spend my time socially and even socio-professionally (conferences) to not leave the spot to someone else next time around. No regrets, of course, for the first meeting!
Of course not, Richard.
Tangentially, the whole networking thing raises entirely new emotions (or perhaps old ones, reworked) namely the excitement of meeting someone physically whom one feels one knows well through correspondence.
Sometimes it feels as if you can simply carry on a conversation where you left off, and feel totallty at home in their company, to the extent where you aren’t quite sure whether you’ve actually met them or not. For example, as Eva says above, I first met her at SciOnline and we just carried on a conversation convinced that we’d met at the NN unconference in London – when we’d never actually met at all.
Sometimes, though, there are surprises. I had no idea what O’Hara looked like, having some vague thought that he had pointy ears and whiskers.
Thanks for the hanky by the way (SNORT). Do you want it back?
Um, no thank you, Henry. Keep it.
I have other hankies.
Heather, do you have Asperger’s? (he asks, only semi-jokingly).
(ducks)
Heather – being careful to step round the poo that Richard has left on the information superhighway, I think that one should never put off until tomorrow what one can do today, because one might want to do it again tomorrow.
For sure, one attends meetings as part of one’s job, but one’s job is in large part all about networking, gossip and social contact. When I go to conferences I’ll learn about new things, but after being cramped in an office looking at manuscripts it gives one a lift to meet old friends in person, and make new ones. I loved the NN bash and I also enjoyed SciOnline09 mainly for this social aspect.
The fact that I learned a great deal of online science – in other words, the future direction of my trade over the next few years – was a bonus. It was refreshing to hear the often trenchant views of advocates for open access (for example) in a convivial setting, sometimes when we were doing rather silly things.
By the way, Gee Minor is aspergic and would LOVE scientific conferences, because she enjoys the company of intelligent adults far more than she does children, and also has few compunctions about doing silly things.
@Richard: not to my knowledge.
it gives one a lift to meet old friends in person, and make new ones.
Well, that is why I would attend that or a similar event again. It was stimulating, and that’s productive. But if you have no time left in which to produce…
Henry, I’m surprised you don’t remember Bob from London. You got the whiskers right, anyhow. Meeting GrrlScientist and him was one of my more formative experiences at SciBlog ’09.
hm, I would like to meet up with people form my networks – this is probably the first time I have not met people from the “internet” ^^ although I could not squeeze a trip to London into the strange time that was last year. And this January the Scionline proved to be full when I finally realised I could have gone.
so, I guess I will be hoping for another oppotunity, and /or another (regular) conference where one can meet some of you all. I am hoping to go to the FEMS meeting this summer (microbiology in the beautiful country of Sweden) in case anyone wants to have company for a beer or two in the summer light in the middle of the night :)
Oh dear, Heather. I’m sorry.
Although it’s good to hear that there will be a SciBlog’09 and that I’ll be attending. :-)
Henry, I’m surprised you don’t remember Bob from London.
But I do remember meeting Bob. It’s just that he didn’t look like a cat. He and I are now firm friends, and his cat and my dog are regular correspondents.
Exceedingly long? Just wait till you have to sit through that talk in person, I’ll show you exceedingly long. I guess you can tell I’m not a big fan of twitter. 140 characters? I can barely clear my throat in 140 characters!
Excellent blog entry, and I think you’re right on the money with many of the points here-in. For those working in areas with a good concentration of research happening, there isn’t a real drive for online networking—you can do better just by walking down the hall or out into the street. And FriendFeeding is never going to give you the same results as a late night brainstorm in the bar after a few too many.
The thing I’d add to the discussion is the question of time management. How much of your time as a scientist should be spent networking? It seems to me that it’s a minor part of the job, at least compared with doing the actual research and raising funding. Which is more important to you, doing the experiments, writing up the paper for Nature, getting a grant to pay your postdocs or chatting up other scientists? Networking is important, to be sure, but it’s meaningless without the actual work being done in the lab behind it.
And the problem with most Web 2.0 ventures, and most social networks for scientists, is that they assume a much higher priority for networking than is the case for most scientists. They demand time, effort and attention that most feel would be better spent elsewhere. Social networks for scientists and meet-ups like Science Online do a lovely job of putting together people who are really interested in science networking, people for whom this is a priority. I tend to avoid such things as they strike me as a lot of “preaching to the converted”. For the average working scientist though, are they really going to spend that much time blogging when they could be running more experiments? Are they going to spend the time and money to come to a meeting on networking when they could instead go to a meeting in their field and do some actual networking?
I’ll ask you and your commenters, what percentage of one’s working day/week should be spent on networking and doing things like blogging as compared to things like doing actual research, reading the literature, securing funding, faculty duties like committees, meeting with one’s students/postdocs/PI, teaching,etc.?
“are they really going to spend that much time blogging when they could be running more experiments?”
But that’s the thing. Nobody puts their experiments aside for blogging, as far as I know. People do it instead of watching TV at home, or instead of checking the sports scores while they wait for their experiments that are running in the background.
“Are they going to spend the time and money to come to a meeting on networking when they could instead go to a meeting in their field and do some actual networking?”
No, but you can imagine there being field-related online networks that then have physical meetings, or (better!) extending physical conferences that already exist, like a Keystone conference, with online discussion fora so participants can follow up and/or meet each other before the conference so they have a better idea of who they would like to meet in person, and just sort of solidify the connections. I would have liked to stay in touch with some people I met an an RNAi conference a few years ago, but after two e-mails it all faded out. If we had all been on Facebook or LinkedIn or Nature Network at that time, we would have added each other, and created a little online hub of people who met in real life at an actual conference and have professional interests in common. We wouldn’t have had to sit down and e-mail to actively stay in touch, but the connection would always be there, ready to shoot a quick question or message without having to go through the whole “Hi, remember me, how are you?” e-mails. I’d dare to bet that that is what is happening nowadays at scientific conferences.
“I’ll ask you and your commenters, what percentage of one’s working day/week should be spent on networking (…) as compared to things like (…) meeting with one’s students/postdocs/PI, teaching,etc.?”
Huh?
Perhaps it’s time for a compendium of “blog posts featuring Richard Grant with a drink in his hand”. An entire volume in and of itself.
Personally, I have a LinkedIn profile, a NN profile, and read blogs and posts here at NN, over at the Science Advisory Board, and a variety of “personal” blogs (including some by certain over-achieving NN bloggers). I write two myself, only sporadically. All of that together, I suspect, still leaves me in a very low percentile as compared with other NN members and their online activities.
Which makes me wonder – how do we all manage to stay on top of this stuff? I know that RSS and Twitter and suchlike have been discussed at length, but honestly, who has time to read everything? Even if I didn’t spend inordinate amounts of time editing photographs in the evening, and writing the odd blog post, instead of reading online content, I don’t think I could keep up with everything I’d like to. Why, I’m at least 300 strips behind on the Irregular Webcomic, let alone everything else. Anyone have any helpful thoughts?
Yes: give up.
Give up, I agree. However, Friend Feed is useful as it is an aggregator so it integrates yours and your friends’ blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and about 50 other services. People sometimes say to me that I am everywhere, but I’m not, I’m just (it seems) exporting the same thing to various platforms. I like the idea of trying to integrate one’s online activity – because as David is asking, for me it is usually compressed into a spare hour at the end of the day. So the more efficient I can be, the better.
(I can’t answer David’s questions for scientists, but of course, very few scientists do blog or use social networks.)
“I don’t think I could keep up with everything I’d like to”
But, but, I thought you were bored ?
Eva, what I’m asking is how much time should one devote to these things? Put it this way—I try to put up at least 2 new blog posts a week. Each of these usually takes at least an hour, often several hours. Each day I scan through around 75 blogs in an RSS reader, and actually read maybe half a dozen articles. I’m e-mailing constantly with colleagues, authors, etc. This eats up a huge chunk of my day, and I don’t go to the extremes that many do with a constant stream of tweets and FriendFeeds rolling in through the day. Like most people, I have regular work I need to accomplish. Yet most science social networking sites are asking me for even more time—I’m supposed to be tagging papers and putting them online for others, writing reviews of what I’m reading, criticizing papers, reaching out to collaborators, etc. It’s unclear to me where the time for that is supposed to come from. Like Richard Wintle asks above, “who has time to read everything”, let alone write and participate?
But that’s the thing. Nobody puts their experiments aside for blogging, as far as I know. People do it instead of watching TV at home, or instead of checking the sports scores while they wait for their experiments that are running in the background.—-
I guess, but those are the bloggers I don’t want to read, nor am I interested in blogging in that manner. I don’t want to read something tossed off in 2 minutes. I want to read something that’s well-written and well-reasoned. To me, those are the sorts of blogs that will be widely-read and have an impact. And that takes time and effort. If this is really the majority case, that participation in science social online activities is relegated to brief and sporadic time-killing, then no wonder the quality and usefulness of whats out there is so poor.
No, but you can imagine there being field-related online networks that then have physical meetings, or (better!) extending physical conferences that already exist, like a Keystone conference,—-
Actually, the place to look for these is less at meetings, which are fleeting, but instead at courses, where you spend 6 intense weeks (or more) with the same group of people. Although I imagine these groups use things like Facebook moreso than specialized networks for scientists.
Note—this response took me over an hour to write, with frequent interruptions. How many such responses can I be expected to write during a day, and if I fail to do so, am I letting my network down?
“I don’t want to read something tossed off in 2 minutes”
It’s hard to tell, though. You can have a draft of a long post and work on it in short intervals and not put it up until it’s done. That’s how I wrote all my long posts. In one extreme case it took me five months to write and publish one post. And I also often compose something in my head while walking or riding public transit, and then sit down and type it out.
My first response to you is something I had thought about before, so it only took me the time to type it to post it. This one too, I guess.
But your comments are interesting, and the matter of time does come up a lot. I’m actually going to be speaking about hurdles of social things like blogging for scientists at a conference in a few months, and while doing research for that I came across many of the same statements. Even coming from myself =) So, thanks for taking an hour to reply to me! That is a long time, and I wasn’t aware that it could take an hour to type a comment, so I learned something new again.
I had one instance today of someone that I’d had lovely conversations with over the last two days almost running away when I mentioned that I (oh my) have a blog. On the other hand, when I asked Joellen Russell whether she’d let me post her comments, she was very happy to have me do that. Just goes to show something, I just don’t know what.
Thanks for popping over David.
Yes, it’s a balance. I wonder what the pay-off is? I’ve got one job offer because of my online presence, although it’s difficult to know which of the pies I had my thumbs in I should thank. Conferences, real life conferences, are more about meeting other scientists though, aren’t they? Finding jobs, collaborations—it all happens there.
A conference about networking though… maybe too meta.
When email was new, people would often ask (1) how they’d find the time (b) whom they’d contact, anyway ? And look, it’s now a part of everyday life. The same might be said of Facebook, Friendfeed and so on. I suspect that what will happen is that most networking services will quickly die, and just one or two will predominate
Henry, I was in grad school when e-mail first started turning up commonly at universities (late 1980’s). I don’t remember anyone asking about finding the time or a use for it. The advantages were obvious (like using a word processor instead of a typewriter, or online journal articles instead of going to the library for paper copies). As I recall, the big problem was not having enough computers around the lab for everyone to access it as much as they would have liked, and not enough of your collaborators/colleagues having e-mail accounts yet.
That obvious advantage is lacking from Facebook et al. It may actually be there, it’s just not as apparent.
There’s something else I’d like to think about—the same information coming through multiple sources (Hi Maxine!). Suddenly I find that Twitter is unusable because there is too much happening, and it’s all happening elsewhere, too. Time to change my modus operandi, perhaps?
Oh, yes, get Tweetdeck! You can make groups and filter out all the drivel while still having ready access to it should you need them. I am going to confess a horrible secret: I only read about 10 of the 87 people I am subscribed to on Twitter. You can also filter by phrase. At some point half of my contacts were blabbing on about some tech conference they were at (liveblogging the whole thing) so I filtered out the exact same hashtag they were using to track conference info. Muhahaha!
Hexcellent. Thanks for that—you’ve sold me. And it’ll be even more important for my new gig.
Hrm. Tweetdeck takes up a lot of screen real estate, and doesn’t look like a proper application (should be a preferences menu…) and… ew.
Ugly. Bad app. No biscuit.
I don’t remember anyone asking about finding the time or a use for [email]
Very different from my experience. Took until the mid to late 1990’s before I could rely on anyone I wanted to contact (a) having an email account and (b) ever actually checking it. It was well into the 2000’s before I started assuming I could use email to do most communication.
oh, oh, I know this one!
Ringing someone up to see if they got your email…
@Richard: LOL – literally. I forgot that era of “did you get my e-mail?”, mostly because I was slightly younger in the late ’80s and I quickly took it for granted (once I finished proselytizing to the unconverted and making them get accounts in the same way that certain younger folks may have directly or indirectly converted us to Facebook/LinkedIn/Friendfeed).
@David: How much of your time as a scientist should be spent networking? Obviously there is no fixed response to this – but some people flit more than others. I’ve always been one of these natural multitaskers, which is not to say that I carry out any of those tasks as well as a person who can really prioritize and concentrate on one thing at a time. Social networking has always been a boon for me and I am naturally drawn to it. I’d say I probably spend two-three hours a (working) day combining those activities that can be construed as such – including coffee breaks and lunch with my colleagues who are physically present. Many of the exchanges combine work with pleasure, in a way that I feel somewhat deprived (but can quickly adapt and focus) if I come in on a weekend and it turns out the Internet access is out.
My contention is, as you wrote, that my version of time management does not allow much more room for meta-networking in person about networking, unless I justify it otherwise by saying that I am going to meet up with some friends in a nearby locale that is inexpensive to attain time- and money-wise. So it comes out of my personal time, rather than my professional time.
Eva’s point about making latent connections that can be reactivated quickly well describes my perception of the usefulness of networking.
@Bob: oops. Time’s just slipping away, you know. It’s one of the first years I haven’t written the previous year on all my January checks.
This response took me a good 15 minutes to write, right there.
Doesn’t that line get a little blurred in our profession?
That obvious advantage is lacking from Facebook et al. It may actually be there, it’s just not as apparent
Not just Facebook but other ‘communities with notes/friends/selection’ – the obvious thing I like about them is that you can update your friends fast and/or look for someone to connect again (rather than the email addy that someone has changed a zillion times). Then again, it is very unpersonal and kind of boasting (?) in that feature ;) But it is easy and kind of very “in time” as it gives you the opportunity to tell people things about you that you think they might find interesting [status feed: Asa is trying to focus on the grant application]… it leaves it to someone else to pick up and be interested in you rather than the other way around (which I would call more traditional letter writing and inquireing).
Then there are a bunch of things that I don’t like…. but hey, nothing is perfect?!
Finding frustration that not everyone was using e-mail is a very different thing from thinking that you wouldn’t find the time for it, or that it wasn’t worth contacting others, as stated in the post to which I responded. As I noted, the big problem was that not everyone had it yet, and not everyone had internet access to check frequently. But I don’t remember anyone thinking it was without merit, or a waste of time, as is frequently the case for the “Myspaces for scientists” out there.
Today is the day when I leave my happy Luddite cabin, and start sliding down the slippery cyber-slope of DOOM. Yes, I plan to purchase an iPhone this afternoon. I can only hope that my descent is halted by an e-ledge on the way down, before I reach the crevasses of FriendFeed and Facebook, and the desolate Valley of KTHXBAI.
Why does the image of tumbling down scree slopes while descending mountains in the Cascades keep flashing before my eyes?
Good point, David.
Kristi, I don’t have an iPhone yet, and feel quite inadequate compared with the hordes of other NNers who do have one (not mentioning names). However, it is top f my list for when I get back to the UK.
I only use ‘KTHXBAI’, &c., ironically.
Well, I am now officially one of the horde of NNers with iPhones. Like my MacBook Pro, it has many more functions than I’ll ever use, but I can banish those icons to the second page.
The “concierge” at the Apple Store showed me how to put the iPhone in Airplane Mode for my trip, so that I can still use it to play all the games that I won’t ever download. Srsly.
ZOMG! I CAN HAS iPHONE! ELEVENTY! w00t!
KTHXBAI
Kristi – welcome to the modern world.
Thanks, Henry. I hope I won’t lose any IQ points during this transition.
Still need to get set up with roaming fees for the two weeks I’m in the UK. And I’ll need a converter/adapter of some sort to charge the iPhone. I’ll definitely enjoy having the iPod function on the trip overseas.
You don’t want to download X-Plane for the iPhone. Srsly. You won’t like the way you can pitch and roll by moving the iPhone itself. Not at all.
You don’t want to download X-Plane for the iPhone
Definitely not. I’m prone to motion sickness anyway (not on boats, though, oddly); definitely don’t need the visual – vestibular disconnect.
That reminds me, I need another tube of Dramamine pills for the flight ….
But it’s only a little trip, Kristi. Barely worth the hassle of getting jet lagged.
If I arrive in Europe in the early morning, and stay awake as long as possible that first day, jet lag is not usually a problem. I used melatonin last time traveled to Europe, and that seemed to help a bit, maybe. I naturally wake up around 4:30 or 5:00 AM anyway, so I’m already shifted in the GMT direction.
The shock from the temperature differential this time of year just might kill me, though.
Some of us are holding out for the Palm Pre…
Have a good flight, Kristi, and a pleasant stay in the UK.
I had Palm’s Tungsten T|X for the past few years and thought it very good. But it was quite hard work keeping it in synch with the Mac environment (Missying Synch is still missing some functionality). Finally bailed and have become an iPhoney and have very few regrets – PDA, phone and ipod all combined in one. It’s not perfect yet – as I think Henry discussed somewhere – but it’s bloody good.
I like ‘Missying’ Synch.
I’ve been reasonably happy with my aging Zire, but I really want something that is more Mac-like. And not being perfect is the perfect excuse for Apple to launch iPhone 3.
I’ve seen many technological changes – at the start of my professional career I was so keen on them all, learnt everything. Now I am not sure whether the technology is using us – eg in the ways people are saying here about keeping up. (As an aside, in my first comment way up there, I mentioned FriendFeed as an aggregator- you can show/hide very easily ways similar to the one Eva mentions – eg hide everyone’s twitters or just one person’s, etc. The “rooms” are also great for very focused activity sometimes with very small groups of people).
However, what I wanted to write here is a bit different. Unlike Henry’s recollection of when email came in, I recall that at Nature we were desperate for it. For years, a kind news editor in Washington DC (who is now v famous) set Nature up with an email account with a buddy at the University of Maryland. Referees could email back their reports! We could not contact them by email, we still had to mail, but they could email back!!! And the person in the Washington DC office printed them all out and faxed them over to us in London.
When I was News and Views editor, we did not even have fax machines, we had to do everything by mail or DHL. We never missed a deadline though ;-) I remember when faxes came in, they changed everything so much, but some scientists in the US could not use them – they were not allowed to make international phone calls! (I remember having to phone people back, eg to get their referee reports over the phone and write them down.)
Eventually we all got email, and things calmed down. We also got three electronic tracking systems, one after the other, and so could junk our card-index boxes in which previously we marked up every referee’s dealings with us – which did help us to be more efficient in many ways, I suppose. But they haven’t speeded up our publication times – they have allowed more multiple options for authors, refs and editors to interact, whereas before, the decision steps were far more clear cut. Also now we have so many technical systems – manuscript tracking, production tracking, comment moderation, web analytics, “staging” servers to check online journal content, automated editing and typesetting systems, blog dashboards, various multiplying internal wikis and intranets – you think all these things are going to save you time and make you more efficient, but sometimes I think that you just spend far too much time learning passwords, access codes, waiting for things to download, waiting for technical support, you name it.
SOcial networks, which I do love, seem to involve even more rounds of interaction. I have to severely restrict my time on those. What am I doing here now, at this moment?! I must go and do some work work!
I am all for technological progress and love it really, but I do wonder a bit!
“What am I doing here now, at this moment?!”
Enlightening the spoiled e-mail generation with interesting stories!
Holy crap. You look away for a few minutes and eleventy-three comments appear.
@Eva – bored, yes. Bored with reading online posts and things.
@Richard G. – “ringing up someone to see if they got my email” – I prefer the “walking into the lab and throttling someone for not responding to my email” approach (as noted at lunch today by John-from-down-the-hall).
@Maxine – thanks for the tip re: FriendFeed. When I’m feeling brave I’ll give it a whirl (might take a while tho’).
Thanks for the story, Maxine. That’s brilliant.
You’re on the money with the comment that social networks “seem to involve even more rounds of interaction. I have to severely restrict my time on those.” Part of what we’re doing now, and this includes my recent tinkering with Friendfeed and Twitter, is shaking all this down to be manageable. Fingering out what’s worthwhile, and how to do it.
Yes, there ought to be some sort of drinking game involving photos of Richard with martini glasses. Social networking sites: I think I’m done with them. Never was very excited about them in the first place, maybe because I’m not usually anxious to be found. If I want to find someone else I go find them. Otherwise — I find these days I have to warn people that I don’t check voicemail for days at a time, and that if there’s something urgent they ought to email, and then I’m likely to read within a few hours. People ignore this and then get agitated when I behave as advertised.
Facebook’s been interestingly awkward. I resisted facebook for a long time, and then a client became insistent on facebook email instead of regular email, so I signed up with a fake-o name. Which was all right, and I collected a few friends there, but I don’t care what they did for lunch & don’t need a blow-by-blow of their shifting moods. We have actual conversations and that does fine for me. Was persuaded by the lovely Jenny to sign up with real name for Lablit page, and find that my past has come stalking me. And to be perfectly honest (oh dear) if I’d wanted to catch up with my past, I’d have done it. All that careful disentangling, shredded now. The floridly bipolar Wiccan sex-maniac who’s been off her meds the last 15 years; the bright guy last seen posing shirtless with guns (he’s helping make US interrogation policy now, you’ll be happy to know); the engaging alcoholic who’s now a headcovering (verb, not noun) Christian homeschooler of a quiverful of children (with the man who punched out her window while I watched, last visit, that one was); the loon who abandoned his kid, then took her back, then remarried, became a family man, got a job 45 minutes from home and decided his commute entertainment ought to be talking to me every day — you know, there are reasons I don’t talk to these people. And yet there they are, requesting to be friended. I made the mistake of clicking “accept” to one and now find that there’s no button for “quietly slip out of the room”. I’ve taken to using an old Firefox browser for that account, because chat doesn’t work.
I still find that the most useful, and by far most fun, social-networkish part of los intarnets is fora and friendly-tendentious blogs like these. Anything involving real conversation, not “tag you’re it”, not “I picked my nose and found it tasty”. Because that’s how you get to know people, isn’t it, talking with them. Not trading one-offs or scanning lists of contacts.
Oh, and as for conferences — oh yes, and more! Actually I remember my amazement at finding political demonstrations are the same thing. I’m not usually one for milling around with a sign, but I went to a giant Planned Parenthood thing on the Mall in 2004. 800,000, a milion people, depending on whom you ask. Really just a giant networking/social event.
Gets my vote.
Interesting comment, Amy. You should keep a blog.
Yes, I should, shouldn’t I? Actually that’s a very interesting thing. I’m Googlable because of my blog, and even my old friends are likely to know that I’m the Us Robots Amy Charles and not the porn star Amy Charles or the Florida realtor Amy Charles. But only one person from my past has bothered to find me that way, maybe because “find your past” isn’t the advertised game on Google, and they’re not pushed to do it there.
I read this article yesterday and was overcome with a certain sadness. There is something unsettling about the Gen-Y focus on “branding” and relying for their success on their online presence; their network. Maybe it is just a temporary thing. Or maybe we are doomed to living in perpetual commune with the machine. It could also be that, at 31, I’m already old. At any rate Richard, I more in tune with your perspective that nothing can replace hashing out ideas over a pint or three.
Darned tooting.
I want to know what happens after Generation Z.
Perhaps we go into the greek alphabet?
Bet you they won’t start with alpha.
My parents actually did something like that. They had four girls and ran out of ideas for what to call them, so the fourth was named Delta.
Computer people…what can you say?
I was all for naming my children Five Prime and Three Prime, but was overruled.
Ha, that’s wonderful. I’m simultaneously ashamed and proud of getting the joke, too. I wonder why this sort of thing’s more acceptable on xkcd. Mebbe you need cartoons, Richard.
Cartoons would certainly raise my game I think. Unfortunately the only drawing I’m good at is technical drawing (I’ve actually got an ‘O’ Level in Graphical Communication: I was persuaded to take it because the teachers wouldn’t let me do three sciences at ‘O’ Level, claiming it was too hard. They said that Biology could be picked up at ‘A’ Level because it was easy—which will please Henry no end—and I should take a doss subject. Which, actually, I aced. And they were right about Biology ‘A’ Level, too). Maybe I should persuade someone to be my artist?