Parallax Inc Facebook
danielstritt
Posts: 43
I noticed that parallax hasn't updated their facebook in about a year or so. Is there another facebook account they are using? Or is it just twitter? I kinda like getting the latest updates right as they happen.
Comments
Which is kind of strange as I always thought facebook was stupid but I'm three or more times older than they are.
So if Parallax want's to be cool with kids today they should remove all reference to facebook from their web site. And probably twitter as well.
P.S. Probably it's not "kool" to say "cool" anymore. It's kind of hard to keep up with these things.
If they were going to do social media, I had them do FaceBook the moment it was available to them, and I did so because the UI and general atmosphere was structured well enough to actually add value. Today they use it, and most of them are in their 20's. I'm an 80's kid, and about a third of my generation uses FaceBook regularly. A surprising number of my parents generation use it too.
So yeah, the under 25 crowd could very easily call it old school, just drool, toss it all in the pool and here is what is cool! (Today, that "cool" is often "sick" or "fresh" or "nice" --and I use that one a lot)
We are moving to a new transition too. We had pre-Internet, then we had early Internet, and now we are entering mature-Internet, and the shift is away from general computers to devices and applications. (I think we will regret some of those moves, but that's just me I suppose) And the kids today are far more interested in what they can do with a phone than not, and "the Internet" is just something a phone does, as opposed to "the place" where things happen.
What was that early Internet like? Well, most of us remember, but for the non-technical people it was a lot like this:
http://cacheruleseverythingaround.me/
Evan Roth linked the culture of the 90's found laying around the Internet, and "Girl Talk" a sampling artist I really like made one of the best music collages I've heard. Enjoy the memories! More is old school now than you think!
A year ago I was invited to the home of my current boss. There I met his two sons, smart young guys one still a teenager and one in his early twenties. I got some time out to talk with them and this is what I came away with:
1) Yes we use Facebook, when we go out we can leave a trail of our adventures suitable for our parents to feel happy about.
2) We of course are busy doing somthing else (which parents would rather not know) for which we have other means of communication.
I never found out what that "other means of communication" was.
Since that time I have noticed this is not just a local phenomena to my bosses sons.
My conclusion: Facebook is a FAD that is passing by.
MySpace came and went. Facebook seems to be the same freak show.
wow, i was following another one all this time. It seemed official. Thanks for pointing me to this.
And it is a fad that is passing by. It won't go away, because it's useful for basic keeping in touch, but that's about it. Well, self promotion works too.
The "other means" is subtle and quite surprising!
I'll explain it like this:
When we were kids, we had plenty of private time. For me, growing up in a rural area, I had tons of it. Others may vary depending, but the key in all of this was having time to be kids and talk without the adults around.
Then we got connected. In the 90's, through early 2000's, there still was a lot of kid time, though kids were already starting to explore how to use the net without being supervised, trading hacks for the school proxies like we used to trade sports cards, or other fun things. My house was "the wired" one, and I had DSL long before most people even had dialup. Kids would gather and use the computers I had in the front room, and I watched them and interacted with them too. I got a pass for being the "cool adult" able to see and hear and talk about things I know most of my peers could not, or were even aware of.
Kids are amazing.
Today, Internet is common and it's watchful. The "big brother" perception is very real and the kids grok it.
Their response? Encrypt meaning. Everything for them happens in the public eye, be it the cell phone carrier, or school monitoring, perhaps the company they work for when they get older does it too. In short, they have accepted being connected like that and the expectation of privacy is near gone and nothing like we experienced.
In fact, I have been able to explain that a few times and they are stunned! Can't even relate. Makes me feel old, but enlightened in any case.
They use obscure references and build mini-cultures in the way we formed peer groups and cliques. That is what the video I linked is all about. That's the bits of culture in visual and aural form, life being just a huge mashup where expression and meaning become somewhat arbitrary and Orwellian in that what you read, see, hear, is highly likely to have double meanings. One appropriate for the world or scenario in play, the other between connected friends.
Simple things, like a knock on the door to validate a call. Text then call, call then text, then call. They do what adults did during prohibition of alcohol in the US did. One meaning for the world, another between friends. Say something specific, or knock or be in a specific place and you get access to the booze. Don't do that, and you get let into the club or ignored.
A very common one is proper grammar. Use it, and you are "one of them" and you get the edited expression, filtered so that it makes sense to you, and they have to work at that. Let it hang loose, and use expedient expression, and you aren't one of them, or are at least approachable. Interesting, isn't it?
Re: Facebook being the same freak show. Well, one difference. MySpace was about rebellion and just getting connected, shock and awe, and somewhat underground with respect to the general society. Facebook is clean, considered valid, appropriate. Translation: It's OK to be a freak now. Everybody else is. That's the difference. We laughed at the MySpacers. We tolerate the humanity we see on FaceBook.
And of course, what you see may not --actually is likely not all that it seems at face value, and the younger they are, the more likely this is true.
The vast majority however are just doing it out in the open with references people outside their peer circle would not understand, or that adults would not understand.
Would you mind elaborating a little more about this?
Yes. I was hoping you might give some more examples of how they are networking and encrypting their messages. Are they forming mini-facebooks of their own? Using steganography? Creating their own languages, something like Klingon?
The replacement word for "cool" is now "sick"!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sick
Funny. I've heard it declared the plague. Sometimes epic. "Epic plague," I guess means it's really "sick." I'm guessing it works well with the zombie-loving/-blasting fetish going on these days.
Must be, because I get facebook updates from parallax about once a week.
https://www.facebook.com/ParallaxInc
True, the younger kids are leaving FB as there are now too many adults there.
Parallax is involved in many other types of social media as well (G+, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, etc.) and we will continue to be involved in the next wave of social media, whatever that happens to be.
Parallax MicrocontrollersandRobots (ParallaxInc) is very active. Helps me stay abreast of stuff going on. I think they have several FB accounts.
-- Gordon
Facebook is an "ok" way to keep plugged into what is going on with friends and family who live out of town, but also a huge rumor mill to which I have no use whatsover. Rebekah has no issue with sorting through it, and I'm happy being notified of the important things as they come up from her.
Jeff