Bonus Assignment

The Internet changes rapidly. Five years ago popular social networks sites like Facebook were in their infancy. Ten years ago chat rooms were actually popular (gasp!). Twenty years ago the world wide web as we know it was little more than a collection of telephonically connected system of text-based bulletin boards. Thirty years ago few people, but professors and scientists connected over the web. As the Internet continues to change, our use of it and especially, our familiarity and acceptance of it has increased. This continual interweavening of life and the web will mean new discovers for social computing psychology and rethinking of previously excepted beliefs. Some theories will changes, others will continue to hold, and new issues will need to be addressed.

We already saw in our studies, that some psychology of social computing theories are beginning to lose their value. The Cues Filtered Out perspective may be becoming harder to apply as the breadth of communication channels on the web increases with photo and video sharing sites. New friends can immediately access a vast array of information (albeit likely self-representatively managed) on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Further, our knowledge and understanding of social norms and interaction practices on the web affects the way many of the CFO theorums suggest we might. The Hyperpersonal model says we should view new encounters as hyperboles of their real selfs; however, continued use of the Internet often builds target understanding and people come to expect these exaggerations-- perhaps, overlook them.

Other theories seem to stand up better to the advancement of the Internet. O'Sullivan's discussions of Impression Management relate that people will present themselves in the best light by holding back what they percieve less than ideal characteristics. We often studied how people use Facebook and how truthful their profiles are to their life. We found that consistently small lies are told to form a better self-representation. Some newer theories, such as the Proteus effect, which discusses the effect of online avatar use on personality and behavior stating a person will act as he percieve his or her online avatar would act based on its characteristics, seem to have created solid foundations that will be true on the net for years to come. Many of these theories, including the Proteus effect, are based off decades old research and ideas that held true offline and then are brought onto the web for new understanding. Frank and Gilovich dressed up study participates in black uniforms found them to more aggressive than subjects in white twenty years ago; now, Yee and Bailenson perceived similar results noting confidence with taller online avatars when they were forming the Proteus Effect.

As technology on the Internet continues to develop, new theories will have to be created to understand how people will use them to interact with one another and what implications these might have on society on the web. While our class has generally been on the cutting edge of technology and research (even reading scientific papers not yet in print), what is new is constantly changing and the web is so vast some things are bound to be overlooked. The online economy and commerce is one big aspect of social computing that this class didn't seem to delve into. While business and commerce may not seem like prime topics for social interaction studies, it is a major use of the internet and often an axis of interaction. People spend hours shopping on the web, writing reviews, trading experiences with products and merchants on discussion boards, comment chains, and chat. It is an excellent way to build common ground by finding people with similar tastes and creating shared experience purusing the same goods and wares.

Yet, even as we miss some things now, new and exciting developments on the web will come to change many of our current understandings. Currently, we are able to self-representation manage by creating personal profiles on social network sites or choosing our own avatars in 3D worlds like World of Warcraft. What if we come to a point were our whole lives are documented, recorded, and posted on the web. Every moment captured, every success detailed, and every failure displayed. Theories such as the Proteus effect and Impression Management, which I think are so enduring, might become completely obsolete. There was an article in the New Yorker (sorry no citation) about an old player at Microsoft who sought to put his entire world onto his computer. He carries a camera that snaps thousands of pictures a day-- every five seconds, when light changes, on demand, and when it senses motion. All his legal documents, childhood drawings and schoolwork, every email, consumer goods manuals, etc. everything has been uploaded to his computer. The goal of the project is to find ways to use all this information such as computer programs to automate biography and memoir writing. But, what if everyone's life was recorded in such a way and posted publicly? Then many of our ideas would cease to hold. We could no longer manage self-representations nor be affected by avatars (the avatar would be our true form 3D modeled). Online (gulp), we'd have to be ourselves.