Category Archives: socialnetworks

so when are you going to retire?: a book in process about age, work and identity

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I want to give a shout out to a wonderful new project by a dear friend of ours. So When Are You Going to Retire? is -? or will be, or is in the process of becoming -? a book exploring questions of age, work and identity through the stories of people over 80 who continue, against the odds, to work for a living. As of very recently, the author, Ashton Applewhite, has begun documenting her research on a very attractive new weblog, and is inviting readers, writers and experts in the field to join her in conversations and story sharing that hopefully will shape the book’s development. In an email, Ashton explained to me why she’s doing this:

I’m a generalist writing about a broad topic: people in their 80s and 90s who are still in the workforce, and what we can learn from them. Following on the Institute’s work with Siva and Mitchell Stephens, I’m excited about using the blog as a mechanism for thinking out loud as I go through my material, formulate the themes of the book, and write the proposal. I think that ongoing feedback from experts (gerontologists, social scientists, demographers, etc.) and discerning readers will sharpen and inform my thinking -? in other words, that the network will help me build a better book. I also think i’ll end up with a valuable platform for leveraging and disseminating my work over the long run -? one that could radically revise conventional notions of shelf life. Cutting Loose, my book about women and divorce (HarperCollins, 1997) is still in print; imagine what sales would look like if it were at the hub of an ongoing social network, and what a rich site that would be?

Though this isn’t an officially Institute-sponsored project, we’ve done a fair bit of kibbitzing from the sidelines on the conceptual layout of the site and on general strategies for writing it (this being Ashton’s first foray into blogging). We’re also brainstorming with Ashton on that most crucial of issues: building an audience. Most of our networked book projects have been on technology or media-related subjects that naturally appeal to online readerships and get picked up easily in the blogospheric grapevine. Ashton’s book doesn’t have such an obviously built-in wired constituency, although its potential readership is far broader and more diverse than that of any of the works we’ve published. I imagine it will be a gradual, word of mouth kind of thing.
So check out Ashton’s rich and inviting site, join the conversation, and spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested. If you know of any specific sites or online communities that Ashton might want to connect with, let her know through the “email me” link near the top of her site. There’s already quite a lot to delve into since Ashton’s been blogging under the radar for the past several months, cutting her teeth on the form and piling up some wonderful stories (many of which you can listen to in audio). Help start building this network, and this book.

of shelves and selves

William Drenttel has a lovely post over on Design Observer about the exquisite information of bookshelves, a meditation spurred by 60 photographs of the library of renowned San Francisco designer, typographer, printer and founder of Greenwood Press Jack Stauffacher. Each image (they were taken by Dennis Letbetter) gives a detailed view of one section of Stauffacher’s shelves, a rare glimpse of one individual’s bibliographic DNA, made browseable as a slideshow (unfortunately, the images are not reassembled at the end to give a full view of the collection).
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Early evidence suggests that the impulse toward personal mapping through media won’t abate as we go deeper into the digital. Delicious Library and Library Thing are more or less direct transpositions of physical shelves to the computer environment, the latter with an added social dimension (people meeting through their virtual shelves). More generally, social networking sites from Facebook to MySpace are full of self-signification through shelves, or rather lists, of favorite books, movies and music. Social bookmarking sites too bear traces of identity in the websites people save and tag (the tags themselves are a kind of personal signature). Much of the texture and spatial language of the physical may be lost, a new social terrain has opened up, one which we’re only beginning to understand.
But it’s not as though physical bookshelves haven’t always been social. We arrange books not only for our own conceptual orientation, but to give others who venture into our space a sense of our self (or what we’d like to appear as our self), our distinct intellectual algorithm. Browsing a friend’s thoughtfully arranged shelf is like looking through a lens calibrated to their view of the world, especially when those books have played a crucial role, as in Stauffacher’s, in shaping a life’s work. Drenttel savors the idiosyncrasies that inevitably are etched into such a collection:

I have seen many great rare book libraries…. But the libraries I most enjoy are working libraries, where the books have been used and cited and annotated – first editions marred with underlining, notes throughout their pages. (I will always remember the chaos of Susan Sontag’s library, where every book had been touched, read and filled with notes and ephemera.) The organization of a working library is seldom alphabetical…but rather follows some particular mental construct of its owner. Jack Stauffacher’s shelves have some order, one knows. But it is his order, his life.

Or, in Stauffacher’s own words:

Without this working library, I would have no compass, no map, to guide me through the density of our human condition.

a new face(book) for wikipedia?

It was pointed out to me the other day that Facebook has started its own free classified ad service, Facebook Marketplace (must be logged in), a sort of in-network Craigslist poised to capitalize on a built-in userbase of over 20 million. Commenting on this, Nicholas Carr had another thought:

But if Craigslist is a big draw for Facebook members, my guess is that Wikipedia is an even bigger draw. I’m too lazy to look for the stats, but Wikipedia must be at or near the top of the list of sites that Facebookers go to when they leave Facebook. To generalize: Facebook is the dorm; Wikipedia is the library; and Craigslist is the mall. One’s for socializing; one’s for studying; one’s for trading.
Which brings me to my suggestion for Zuckerberg [Facebook founder]: He should capitalize on Wikipedia’s open license and create an in-network edition of the encyclopedia. It would be a cinch: Suck in Wikipedia’s contents, incorporate a Wikipedia search engine into Facebook (Wikipedia’s own search engine stinks, so it should be easy to build a better one), serve up Wikipedia’s pages in a new, better-designed Facebook format, and, yes, incorporate some advertising. There may also be some social-networking tools that could be added for blending Wikipedia content with Facebook content.
Suddenly, all those Wikipedia page views become Facebook page views – and additional ad revenues. And, of course, all the content is free for the taking. I continue to be amazed that more sites aren’t using Wikipedia content in creative ways. Of all the sites that could capitalize on that opportunity, Facebook probably has the most to gain.

I’ve often thought this — not the Facebook idea specifically, but simply that five to ten years (or less) down the road, we’ll probably look back bemusedly on the days when we read Wikipedia on the actual Wikipedia site. We’ve grown accustomed to, even fond of it, but Wikipedia does still look and feel very much like a place of production, the goods displayed on the factory floor amid clattering machinery and welding sparks (not to mention periodic labor disputes). This blurring of the line between making and consuming is, of course, what makes Wikipedia such a fascinating project. But it does seem like it’s just a matter of time before the encyclopedia starts getting spun off into glossier, ad-supported packages. What other captive audience networks might be able to pull off their own brand of Wikipedia?