End of Term Report
It’s almost the end of term. Another year of this digital life is done. Time to pack up the trunk and head home to face the old folks. As the remaining days until Christmas count down, last minute shoppers are scuttling to the High Street as Internet delivery times are no longer guaranteed for the 24th. But never fear, Internet based sales will no doubt have smashed every forecast and if the queues in HMV Hammersmith yesterday are anything to go by, there was enough to go around for everyone.
So what has 2006 brought us digital folk? Consolidation is a word that rather understates the case. Yet leaving web 2.0 aside, consolidation is what has happened. Using an ever reliable benchmark - my mother-in-law, she now meaningfully uses the word “online” in a sentence without skipping a beat. My four year old nephew meanwhile can navigate around the cBeebies site with a deftness of touch and the confidence of a head three times older than the one on his tiny shoulders. Diagnosis, directory enquiries, dating, dogging and directions can all be facilitated by all ages on the Internet. Alliterative generalisations aside, the Internet has completed its permeation into the fabric of our lives to a point from which it can never go back.
But just as we welcome the new maturity of the digital age, the indefinable jelly of web 2.0 comes along and teases us with the next revolution, the new gold rush, a fresh lure of a place in the pantheon of Internet mythology. Names such as Second Life, My Space, Bebo, Flickr etc. have entered our lexicon as pioneers of yet another dawn. Whether it is the ideas themselves or the improved technologies that drive them that are the personification of 2.0 nobody really cares. The delicious irony is that the eye-watering financial exposure in these new adventures is being made by the companies that survived the first boom and bust.
Trying to get a handle on the second wave I plunged into www.secondlife.com and recreated myself as a slightly taller, younger, better-looking character (avatar) and headed off to explore. Tentatively walking around this truly virtual world, within moments I was propositioned by a pneumatic character that claimed to be female from Denmark. Not wanting to appear rude or ungrateful, I teleported to a lounge where I found myself surrounded by a group of very scary looking shemales all “cuddling” and deep in conversation. “Diversity” is what it’s all about I am empathically reminded by one passing exponent of gravity defying cleavage. The PR that Second Life is proudly putting out has it that the average age of their user base, which is about the size of the population of China, is over 32. Indeed this seems to make logical sense as people in their thirties tend to have much more drudgery to escape from than your average life-hungry twenty-something. Second Life offers an alter-ego where cover stories are encouraged (your character has to pick from a list of given, mostly Mongolian surnames) and where escapism and the digital fulfilment of fantasies is what it is by definition. Despite much hype about its commercial opportunities I found little that yet excited me for use in the other digital world beyond the sheer number or participants they claim. Meanwhile, on the mighty Myspace.com I searched and searched to find any of my peers or contemporaries without any luck until, when widening my net, I discovered my 11 year old godson masquerading as someone considerably older. Hmm.
The success in terms of take up is undoubtedly huge for the new generation of sites. But convergence with the mainstream in order to realise their monetisation potential is in many ways what they are fundamentally against. It seems that the need to balance hype with reality remains as important as it ever was. There is no doubt that progress will continue to accelerate at pan-galactic speeds and it is impossible to predict what we will be getting excited about this time next year. Maybe we will be able to walk around the first digital world, like you can do in Second Life. Now that would be something to get excited about! In the meantime, real world, e-commerce seems to have got over the perceived barrier of the need to touch and smell much of the product that is sold. While allegedly, in Second Life, you can have sex but surely that is a million miles behind even the old adage of sex with a condom being like taking a shower with your wellies on.
For a final word before shutting up shop for the year who better than Jeremy Paxman who destroyed the Editor of Newsnight live on air for trying to encourage user generated content. If you haven’t seen this you’ve got to have a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymCABOB_gPk Oh – and thank you YouTube!
Happy Christmas!
Sam Brownfield
December 2006
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