feelings are stronger than you think.

Like many others I’m now curious of why i’m spending most of my online time on social networks. Except for what i’m reading in the FeedReader, i’m experiencing a decrease of the quality of my online time. Maybe people is putting all their energy on those super boring facebook statuses, they are so easy to comment with those useless likes or comments. My trusted friends are living their lives far from me and their need to post those elaborate and meaningful blog posts that i loved seems now ended.

Also casual online gaming is stealing a lot of my time. Plus finally I managed to have a private life and when I’m online i try to get only some stats about current projects, read+answer to emails and a lot of feedreading for my personal interests. All I need from an internet connection is now in my cellphone and I try to focus on work while on the PC.

I’m not happy with my productivity but I’m not in the need for a job so I keep alive only the minimum of my will to focus on my customer’s needs during online consulting sessions.

My offline world now speaks about what is online, the TV news are now mostly empty and distant stuff. I try to keep updated with my few real life friends, but it’s hard to meet in some physical places.

Since I completely detached from my work aspirations, 2 years ago I started focusing on how to achieve a personal life. Now that I’m having some rewarding time with my loving girlfriend, I’m digging in my experience to take out something interesting for my work future.

I know how to be a guide for myself during hard times of sacrifice, and that sacrifice now is invisible.

I’m also getting more and more philosophical during my work-time instead of being technical as I would like to be. Working on this side of the search engines is a matter of trust and it’s more about believing rather than knowledge.

Another fact about my personal life is that I left much of my need for work satisfaction behind while trying to get in touch with lost parts of my family, and my family is big now, and full of memories about each one of my relatives. While I’m still losing contact with a big part of my family, my online friendships are the same and very rewarding for the latest bunch of years (they are still M., Adam and Alessandro the undead) despite of that useless time on social websites.

There are just few moments dedicated to deep emotions, while we see silent actors looking at each other, or the same actors looking to the other actors disguised as robots. That use of silence reminded me some Korean indie movies. Maybe it’s a meta-movie too, it could speak about any verbal difficulty in human interactions. Here’s the movie recipe, if you are interested:

• 15% old people (mostly bruce willis, bruce we <3 u!)
• 30% jumping robots + explosions
• 10% silent gazes
• 5% messed up humans connected to big virtual reality environments
• 10% thriller plot
• 30% rhetorical questions

If your are interested in my personal life, after this movie something has changed (in my DNA) so I’m bravely switching  from a sentimental involvement to another almost painlessly. My business it’s ok and is shifting to SEO consulting (which i find very rewarding). Later this year I’ll go for a quick visit to friends in Arizona and California.

I’m no more a child, but I try to keep alive my inner child, when possible. When i’m deeply into some analytical task, having an alive child inside with all his creativity and lateral thought can be very useful to get new thesis to analyze.

What happens when errors and bad experiences in life force this little guy to stay silent? All the inner team get depressed and it’s difficult to get them back.

I know when I’m not ready for a jump, and I also know that I don’t have to tell anybody that I’m planning some kind of jump: because when someone know that you are trying to jump somewhere it’s natural their try to influence the normal flow of things.

They try to encourage you, they say what’s right and what’s is not right. They even say “yeah! it’s time for you to try“. And when you trust people, and you try, and you fail, there is just you and your inner guy to deal with the failure.

as Adam said some days ago, keeping things inside is painful, but most of the times does the job. Then what happens if after too many things kept inside you start losing some people? and what happens when even if you are trying, you lose anyway people during your journey? This is happening to me, and I don’t know where this road is going.

But failing with my own decision is better than failing for other people’s decisions.

where is the info stored? in a collective mind or in your friend’s mind? if you know this, you know where to start your search… but if you don’t know that… what is google doing to get to your eyes a unique place where to search for anything?

first of all google is multiplying the spaces, gmail has its own search engine, wave has its own search engine, google search do not gather info from them yet, google docs cannot search between gmail… etcetera.

is this right?

more questions: what’s special in your friend’s mind? their unique way of tagging and manipulating concepts? their life experience?

for both google has its own copies (ok ok… not identical to the real ones but man… we’re working on that). Even if we wanted a copy of our shared experiences with friends google could gather something nice, depending on our connectivity behavior .

time

it’s one of the greatest shifts between google’s on demand service and our friend’s constant streams (do we go on polling with them? or we get each single message on some kind of popup feature? (the popup feature also fits the “where” paragraph) When i’m writing facebook has the best real time feature. (update: google launches its real time search)

dispassion (neutrality)

google’s knowledge compared to our friend’s knowledge filtered by their life experience: google gives me the info to commit a perfect suicide, would a friend do the same? does google have to censor the info request if there is the proof of a bad intention?

and… when I got the info, do I still want to commit suicide? Giving the whole info could have a potential prevention ratio on bad behaviors? A search engine’s neutrality’s border is close to common people’s privacy, and privacy can be broken only at a precise user’s request or after a signed pact. Would a friend wait to see you dead before breaking into your privacy without your consent?

what?

natural language it’s just a part of the issue. do we search for info? or we search for a guide to do things? a question posted on a social network’s wall can have deep answers, just because our friends can see deeper than our first questions meanings, and they gamble a part of their involvement taking action with their words.

google is (or will be) alive. do we want him/her as a friend? do we trust/fear him/her? anyway what’s the sex of google? (lol)

half lies

our friends have ears, when we speak to them we know that it will be recorded and used somehow even against our will. google does not have ears, but every keyword typed for a search is stored and used to know more about the users. should this be more clear to people? (i mean what’s beneath that “privacy” link at the bottom of the page that only journalists and nerds read. There should be instructional flash games that must be played in order to let people know what they are using?) (update: on search engine learning)

culture

when the search engine will be able to give cross-language results? For the moment, the social network has a little solution to cultural gaps, but largely depends on the quality of each own personal network.

article references

• rrr – Finding information on search engines compared with social network
• Thomas Baekdal’s – The Future of Search is More than Social
• Thomas Baekdal’s – Where’s everybody?
• Adam’s – More and more time on social networks

• Mirror’s edge
• Syndicate
• Zak mcKracken and the alien mindbenders
• shadow of the colossus
• call of duty
• prototype

Yo dawg,

I heard you like social advertising so we put an advertising in yo’ social so you can advertise while you social.

Sorry english readers, this post is in italian. Anyway i’m just recording yesterday’s dream about a coach, a woman and a musical group.

A quanto pare è tornato un altro sogno dedicato agli autobus. Statisticamente ogni volta che ho sognato autobus poi è successo qualcosa di particolare nella mia vita, o perchè ci ho creduto o perchè in qualche modo il cervello ha pre-sentito quello che sarebbe successo, o è un caso, o sono in pieno effetto placebo, o gli autobus hanno un “senso” nei miei sogni. eccolo, come l’ho trascritto stamattina appena sveglio:

ero in una specie di campo da calcio, c’eraltro altre persone e si faceva uno strano gioco lanciandosi una pallina da tennis minuscola per tutto il campo. faccio una specie di mossa acrobatica in verticale rimanendo con le gambe sollevate da terra e qualcuno mi guarda in silenzio. quando nel campo incontro una ragazza e le faccio capire che sono solo e triste in modo scherzoso mi prende la testa e l’appoggia tra le sue grandissime tette. non mi arrapo, anche perchè sono in mezzo al campo con tutti gli altri e devo sforzarmi di stare freddo.

usciti dal campo, sto camminando in una specie di scalinata, mentre scendo incontro una ragazza che sale e iniziamo a parlare, non mi ricordo di cosa, ma poco tempo dopo ci mettiamo “assieme”.

andiamo tutti con una specie di compagnia di persone in una grande sala da pranzo che ha il bagno separato da una enorme parete a vetri e io devo cagare, mentre cago tutti quelli che entrano mi vedono il pisello, per via della mia posizione, e continuano a vederlo perchè anche per lavarmi il sedere devo assumere una posizione accovacciata che fa vedere tutto. Non provo vergogna, ma anzi è un momento goliardico. quando pero entrano troppe persone mi metto un panno bianco davanti, e a quel punto entrano anche una sedie di negri nel cesso, uno dei quali vuole cagare anche lui. gli dico che non si può perchè ci sono io in bagno, mi risponde che lui vuole cagare lo stesso. mi fa una battuta molto divertente e ci mettiamo a ridere, io finisco di lavarmi in tranquillità.

in qualche modo con la ragazza delle scale inizia un rapporto,

dopo mi trovo su un autobus in compagnia con quelli della squadra di prima, e mi danno uno strumento da accordare perchè durante il tragitto in autobus loro di solito suonavano. io ho dimenticato a casa tutto, ho la chitarra scordata che non riesco ad accordare nonostante gli aiuti di un assistente e non ho neanche il mio pletro preferito. quando arriva il maestro del gruppo e chiede chi sono io, un ragazzo risponde che sono nuovo e che mi sono unito al gruppo perchè sto con la ragazza di cui sopra. Un altro dice che anche lui l’anno prima è arrivato in quel gruppo conoscendo quella stessa ragazza e io mi sento un po deluso perchè capisco di non essere “ne unico ne speciale”. però allo stesso tempo ho ancora un senso di tranquillità e di profonda felicità perchè so che tra poco si inizierà a suonare.

• SEO Camp Parma (italy) blog post
• SEO Bar Camp Parma wiki
• SEO Bar Camp Italia 2009 full video streaming

• la sposa turca (gegen die wand)
• amami se hai coraggio (jeux d’enfants)
• blade runner
• secretary

Let’s see what i’m talking about:

• everyday I can decide which feeds I want to read (the subscriptions on the reader’s left bar)
• everyday I get shared items from my friends’ feeds (people you follow)
• I can leave a comment on both kind of entries that I receive, and my comments will be visible by who is reading my shared feeds.
• Sometimes I have the need to comment on a contextual item, and if I comment via GoogleReader interface the “share” is mandatory.

now, I usually like the RSS stream of my friends since I find things I could not imagine that existed. For example in this image you see the latest Paolo’s shared item: today I got a very impolite rant with some spoken violence and menaces. Now, I don’t like this kind of discussion, even if they have good reasons, I think that this violent mood speaks beneath their intentions. So I have the need to speak with Paolo but without sharing his own entry. At this moment this is not possibile on Google Reader.

• If I comment “i dont like this kind of mood” my readers will find that item in their feeds.
• If I un-subscribe to Paolo’s feeds I will loose something nice sooner o later
• If I send an email to Paolo (or other private communication) what can I say? That’s not his words, it’s just an item that he liked, for some reason maybe different from what I disliked in the same item, I don’t want to bother him with my opinions about his feed (I usually comment on his blog about his own entries)
• Silence it a very good answer, but well… not very social
• Or I can post it on my blog, that’s out from my feeds and “maybe” Paolo is reading too.

It seems that we will be dealing with many levels of sharing and stratification of the online conversations. Netiquette is not enough.