“Tools that are designed to make intelligible something alive, the life of the network.” Interview of Hugues AUBIN, ICT Project Manager, City of Rennes (France)
Hugues Aubin: Yes, this is paradoxical. A very interesting phenomenon is currently at play. These two trends need to be debated. Today, however, one out of five users generates content (percentage of creative professionals not included). Scale-wise, the 2.0 netiquette is all about openness. People are now massively taking to expression and sharing tools. In this day and age, very few digital and multimedia items can exist without buying into the social network system. Not only do these tools convey messages, they also enable those interested to get in touch. This massive phenomenon of utmost importance shakes legitimacy rules, and disrupts the way we are used to conveying messages. Users are glad to contribute, no matter how great or small, and even those who do not have any intention of responding to such and such a post are overjoyed to spot a “comment” button. In fact, some may even go so far as to complain to the blog or site owner about the lack of such a button. The general public is now increasingly taking to tools of expression as they become more user-friendly by the day. The leaders are those equipped with significant crowdsourcing and recommendation features, including Amazon, Google, etc. In parallel, social networks are booming. Non-socialized media-objects, which once clustered within “attics” far from socialization, just like the good, old fossilized encyclopedias whose contributors remained in the dark and whose content could neither be commented upon nor relayed to a blog are now outdated. Media-objects have been swallowed up by this socialization. Maybe this is but a temporary trend, and perhaps some type of more qualitative storytelling could arise to cope with the current saturation in the field of media-objects. Still these socialized media-objects do have an outstanding upside: They are associated with personal spaces. Whether on a blog or FlickR-type platform designed for user socialization purposes, everyone builds a content-fed personal space, which, in turn, becomes socialized. This trend is significant because it upgrades the openness, networking, group creation, chat forums, etc. that were seen in earlier versions, such as FlickR. Social networks are a great place for sharing ideas, and where you can choose to expose yourself through a status, and can respond to that of your peers. Therefore, legions of seemingly public areas are sprouting up all over the web. But they’re not actually public because they’re hosted by huge, private platforms based on the all-too standard trade: data in exchange for upgraded tool power. This type of platform offers a substantial benefit: the more items it gathers, the easier it gets for users to find others’ socialized objects, and with just one click, befriend the people whose items appeal to them. As people recommend one another, the value-added increases, and the platform fleshes out. Even in a country like France where the gap between private and public life seemed unbridgeable, as the deeply-ingrained money taboo rightfully shows, social networks have become second nature (especially for MSN or thirty-something Facebook users). This is truly revolutionary. Now the default online behavior of these categories of population is telling their life. To claim some kind of privacy, you need to be very proficient in establishing a set of parameters. Besides technically speaking, these networks are grounded in the immediate and semi-automated. For example, you can post a comment on your wall from your phone, etc. The rising trend at the moment is the increasing automation of series of digital traces. Another way to express this is the design of automated and semi-automated “cross-posting” that draws from several sources, including home automation systems, cars, telephones, etc. This will automatically result in shaping a graduated web structure composed of several small, interconnected elements in which platform managers play an essential part. The social network dynamic is crucial for aggregating these elements (media, text, sound, image, video). Content-sharing platforms (FlickR, Youtube, etc.) are a must in this process. The main reason why such aggregations are operational is due to a contribution/satisfaction factor for the user within this physical/digital social continuum. Take by way of example grandparents who are anxious to talk to their grandson. Even if he does not answer the phone, they can catch a glimpse of what he has been up to, etc.
Grégoire Cliquet:
At the École de design Nantes Atlantique, we strive to explain to students that while Facebook is a free platform, it is, nonetheless, strategy- and logics-driven, etc.
Hugues Aubin:
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