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Teddy, he’s got a claw into the end of a ribbon and is being dragged up and down the house. Teddy does this while considering solutions to the world economic crisis.

There is some crazy stuff on the internet that one can waste time on. twitter and the mass of other social networking sites for a start. The interesting thing is that when Web 2.0 started to gain currency and people like Andrew Keen (link to his blog) started to discuss the pro’s or more likely the con’s of the latest web technologies there were hopes that it would develop ino a powerful set of tools that would enable people to collaborate and share ideas. Of course there are a large number of educational and informative web 2.0 sites for example (yes of course) Wikipedia. There are actually masses of business based networking sites where companies and individuals can share information or make connections.

Unfortunately it seems that people like Mr Keen are turning out to be correct in their assertions that web 2.0 is nothing but a waste of human creativity and time.  There has been a proliferation of ‘interactive’ sites over the past couple of years that allow people to say what they are doing now (twitter et al) places to gather new and old friends  Facebook, mySpace et al and now even sites that allow members to upload a daily picture of themselves such as dailymugshot and the guess my age project. I suppose adding the word ‘project’ instills a certain amount of gravitas to the site.

Other distractions include web 2.0 sites that pick websites from selected categories and then randomly display these to viewers the best known is of course stumbleupon. Web 20. does of course encourage creativity and innovation but as with that other time waster computer gaming it is in the programming and site design that the true creativity exists.

One strange effect of web 2.0 sites is the growing compulsion of users to sign up to every new site out of fear of missing out on something also there does seem to be a social network peer pressure to be the first or one of the first to discover something new related to something that people already know about. What do I mean by this? If you are a Twitter user you will most likely be aware that there are currently about 163 different ‘complimentary’ applications that allow users to update their ‘status’ online, by phone, by iPone, by another application altogether, by a blog post, by voice via a phone call or instant messanger. It is possible to see a kind of arms-race mentality where developers try to bring out the next best top rated twitter device and the users try to be the first to use the next best top rated device.

twitter is particularly interesting as it has recently been the subject of a lot of media attention mainly due to a couple of newsworthy incidents, the Mumbai attacks and a recent plane crash. The intersting thing about media interest in twitter is that media people seem to be in two minds about the application as a mainstream news source. During the Mumbai attacks there were many references to twitter posts being used by the press agencies as the stories were live and ahead of anything the news reporters could keep up with. After the attacks there was a review of the usefulness of twitter on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme where it was said that out of the thousands of posts only very, very few were newsworthy and the majority were rehashes of actual news or links to other people’s links and so on.

On one hand ‘traditional’ media seems in the thrall of micro-blogging but on the other it is fearful or just plain dismissive – well social networkers are not trained journalists so quality and verscity of stories  cannot be relied upon.

At the end of the day social networking and web 2.0 applications are what the users make of them and only as useful as what individuals do with them. I’m sure that some people will have gained some business advantage from telling 5 million people that they are putting the kettle on or spending the day in bed or by gaining another 10 followers today. If so then well done and good luck…

Here is some stuff I have done over at storytlr:

Went to see the exhibition ‘Cold War Modern’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition plots the parallel paths of political and artistic lives in the East and West from the end of the second world war in 1945 to 1970 when the current environmental awareness movements started.

The exhibition is thorough and very well researched and contains many items that I have never seen in a gallery before. The exhibition gives details the impact of the cold war on the art and design and architecture movements and the impact of these on the daily lives of pretty much everyone in the world.

One revelation was that the modern buildings (high-rise blocks) were actually designed and built in the ‘50’s and were initially built in Eastern Block countries. The architect Le Corbusier was in the forefront of designing ‘modern’ the modern city. There is a comment in the exhibition by Le Corbusier along the lines that he envisioned high-rise blocks as spiritual bases for the masses. Interestingly the same buildings are now being demolished and cleared for building more ‘traditional’ houses. I suppose this is an indication that the socialist experiment failed not just politically but in terms of architecture and social policy.

What was interesting was the increasing use by the West of product advertising and technology as ways of demonstrating the West’s superiority. One of the main uses of advertising in the 50’s and 60’s was to make the populations under Soviet domination jealous of the western peoples lifestyles. Many of the technological innovations that we now take for granted such as the transistor radio, small form TV and the use of plastics came about as a result of the cold war.

At the end of the exhibition there is a poster of the famous photo of the Earth taken from space by the Apollo astronauts that kick started many of the environmental movements around today. The interesting point here is that environmental awareness is not a new issue – going back nearly 40 years – and today we are just starting to get to grips with the damage that has been done over that period of time.

Earth from space (Soil-Net)

For me the main lesson of this exhibition is that human’s have an exceedingly short memory. Today we don’t seem to have any idea of our own cultural history or why the things we have are here. For example the iPhone and the laptop computer are both direct descendents of technologies that came about as part of the West’s fight against the ‘Communist threat’. Television and advertising have been used to sell us our lifestyles but these have become distortions without any political or philosophical underpinning.

People seem to think that the products now on the market come out of nowhere and that history is something that happened 500 years ago. I would recommend that as many people as possible see this exhibition to get some context into their lives.

Sputnik (BBC website)