Hello everyone! The membership drive has been pretty successful, and the ranks have been culled. So now it is time for more of the promised changes.

1. As with my other sites, I am moving the Project to a new host. This will require some downtime, and hopefully there won’t be any problems, but there is always the chance of disaster.
2. I am going to be re-building the site on the new host with a focus on fast, easy responses using the P2 Theme from Automattic. After this, every day or two I will post a short “prompt” or question, which everyone will be encouraged to answer.
3. Under this new structure, there will no longer be a discrete line between Project members and the rest of the social media community. Anyone will be able to register and post their questions and ideas. However, the Project will still be moderated and, if anyone causes problems they will be removed by one of us admin types, so don’t think I am turning this into 4chan. The goal here is to have an open community that everyone can participate in that attempts to address the philosophical implications of social technologies, and anyone not interested in doing that should go elsewhere.

If anyone has any concerns or suggestions, comment or get in touch with me. Expect these changes to be implemented over the coming weeks.

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OMG we’re all gonna die of swine flu!

No, actually, we’re not. In fact, very little will happen at all. So why is it being so blown out of proportion? Think about this…more people die every day from…well, everything, than swine flu. Name it. Even the common cold has a higher body count. More people have died of being blown up in space shuttles than Americans have died of swine flu. Just think about that. Space shuttles. How rare is that? Swine flu is even rarer. So why is everyone freaked out?

I’ll tell you why…because humans are a panicky bunch. Oh, sure, we like to make myths and stories about ourselves being fearless warriors and unstoppable killing machines, but really we are primates who evolved to live in cooperative groups. We did not gain dominance through martial prowess but through our tendency to work in concert and run when outmatched. Those that didn’t run are no longer with us, genetically or actually. When we try to make humans into these mythic creatures, these warriors, it very often breaks them. Post-traumatic stress disorder, emotional disassociation, and periodic depression are common symptoms of broken humans, but of course there are matters of degree; some are not broken but merely bent, and these often make very good soldiers but very poor humans. While this is regrettable, until humans learn a different way to resolve disputes, it is also necessary. Some must give up their humanity so that others may keep their lives.

But the rest of us are a fearful lot. We repeat unlikely things because they scare us rather than because we know them to be true. We spread fear and inspire chaos. And, even worse, we give license to ourselves and each other to act in idiotic and horrendous ways, all because we were afraid.

So enough. Quit it. You are spreading panic and making everyone anxious for no reason. Quit tweeting and retweeting the latest stupid update on swine flu. Stop making Google Maps mashups. Stop posting the latest WHO and CDC figures. Stop. Even if there were a real danger, this chicken-little crap would not be helpful. Save it for the zombie holocaust…I am sure Tom from accounting will get a big giggle out of your last tweets of “OMG ZOMBIES WDFFBKW” as he chomps your brains.

And on that note…celebrities aren’t celebrities here, so quit letting the media lead you by the nose.

That’s right, I’m talking about Oprah and Ashton and whoever else wants to ply their dirty little trade here. They don’t get it, and most likely never will. Narcissists don’t do well in social media because they give nothing back. Look at the so-called celebrities’ profiles…look at the ratio. Look at how much they interact. Ashton at least seems to make an attempt…most of the “celebrities” seem to think that Twitter is just another place for them to play “look at me!”.

The real celebrities of our ranks are those who interact, who have ideas, and who actually do things. Robert Scoble, Howard Rheingold, Tara Hunt, Leo Laporte, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis…we all know the names. The people (and many more, some of them I am lucky enough to know personally) are the real celebrities of social media. And I know some of you are groaning about me listing all these A-listers and crowing about “internet fame” like it’s “real” fame, but hear me out: I don’t know what “real” or “unreal” fame is. All fame seems to be an abstraction; we made up the concept and apply it as a social construct. And on the basis of this construct I say that “internet famous” (I am talking about the Jason Calacanis kind of web famous, not the Numa Numa guy kind, in case you are confused) is more “real”, or at least handed out for better reasons and according to values I am more in agreement with, than the fame dished out by Hollywood, TV, and the music industries. I like our kind of fame…it comes because a person is smart, cool, funny…not because an executive someone decided to promote them and turn them into a cash cow. I will take the Gillmor Gang over The View any day.

And for my final trick, I will also rant about #amazonfail.

What the hell is wrong with us? Do we so enjoy schadenfreude that we will leap to offense just on suspicion? I was just as guilty in this one…I jumped up on the issue when it first surfaced in the stream and posted, tweeted, and argued as I usually do about anything remotely related to gay rights. And we were wrong. While Amazon dealt with it horribly and I am still unsure as to whether it was a hack (as was claimed on livejournal) or an honest error on their side, we allowed our collective righteous indignation to flow out and attack with no real information.

Why care?

Well, I am a bit shocked at how easily we are all directed. We make a huge noise about how we have taken control of the conversation, but we are really just spinning in circles. If some of our pet theories are true and there is a collective intelligence going on in social media, then this intelligence has just woken up, is barely sentient, and reacts like an anxious teenager: eager to embrace every fad, governed and led around by emotional reactions, and unsure of its own place. If we are to take advantage of this new world, then our “smart mob” needs to get a lot smarter.

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Social media is a major change in the collective consciousness of humanity. The speed of communication, universality of common knowledge, and distributed nature of the internet allows for a new kind of existence. This alone means social media and the internet technologies deserve profound consideration.

There is a simple fact we must acknowledge: we are changing.

We are changing as a species. Our behavior has fundamentally shifted as information technologies have advanced, and in turn the way we think about ourselves, other people, and reality itself has shifted with it. We are becoming something new.

This change is important. We must seek to understand it.

Philosophy is the study of certain problems or issues. While one can look at any subject philosophically, philosophy in general discusses:

1. Ontology - The study of what exists.
2. Metaphysics - The study of how what exists works.
3. Epistemology - The study of what and how we can know.
4. Logic – The study of how to reason.
5. Ethics – The study of what to do about all of this.

New systems of thought, new ideas of identity, and new ways of living go hand in hand with the “New Media”.

Philosophy ends up considering all five of these branches when it studies certain specific issues, like political philosophy or philosophy of mind.

We have become a new kind of subject, considering new kinds of objects.

This demands a new branch of philosophy. This is Social Media Philosophy.

What’s the blog about?

Here I will examine, study, discuss, and debate the different philosophical implications of social media and the new internet-centered technologies. If it’s about social media, then it is fair game.

How is this blog different?

While many blogs, including my own blog thePuckWrites, focus on social media, Social Media Philosophy will be about the “big picture” questions implied by social media, such as:

1. How does the idea of identity change when you can be in many places at once?
2. What new ethical considerations arise in virtual situations?
3. What are the implications of the differing computing philosophies (open source, proprietary, etc?) when applied to all forms of knowledge?

All of these questions will be discussed from within the heart of the beast, with the subjects for consideration coming from the chaotic online world as they occur. These are no outsider’s theories from on high. Everything will be based on what is happening, as it is happening, with the best speed possible.

Why do things this way?

Philosophy has historically been a monologue, a long conversation that smart people had with themselves in books and journals. This is the old way, the way of the old world and the old media. We are going to do things our way.

This blog will not be a monologue. It will be a conversation, as only our online culture can have one.

Journals are closed. The internet is open.

Philosophy has historically been…well, boring. It has had an incredible need to be respectable, isolated and rational. Philosophy, historically, would tell us that our uses of the internet are a waste of time. Worse, some of them would call us immature or frivolous. They look at our preoccupation with technology, media, and information as philosophically uninteresting. Trivial. Childish.

There are those who would use us.

Even worse, there are elements within the old world that seek only to co-opt the new technologies and media. They make Facebook profiles and fake blogs to try to manipulate social media to their own purposes. Whether it is some law-maker trying to legislate, an “outsider” company (you know what I mean) trying to exploit, or some activist group trying to “radicalize”, none of them understand this new world and all of them want to use it. If we don’t create a new philosophy for ourselves, they will be glad to do it for us.

We have our own world, with our own concerns.

Those concerns are what I want to address in this blog. From all angles possible, I want to consider what is happening within our online world and what those changes mean.

And I want you to do it with me.

Join me.

If you are what you consider a “social media” person, then you know there is far more to this than another fad or hobby. This is a new way of existing. The words we use, like “evangelist”, say a lot about how we really feel. We know this is big. We know nothing will ever be the same.

Through your interactions with me through various social media, we will collectively give birth to a new branch of philosophy. As I have said many times, I will settle for nothing less than a new renaissance, and I want every single one of you to help it happen.

Within this, we have the chance to make history, to create a social media philosophy by using social media. A lot of people have talked about this, hinted at it, and now the time is ripe. It is time to do what we do best.

Create. Share. Debate. Discuss. Collaborate.

Stay tuned.