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<div>Hi, my name is Matt Waxman. I am a fifth year senior at UC
Santa Cruz and will be 23 years old this Summer. I'd like to
take a stab at this whole web 2.0 thing, participation in it, and
maybe ground the newness and it's ideas in personal experience and the
world around me.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>From my experience, it seems my generation of youth grew up
during the internet's grand explosion into cultural consciousness and
any transition from an "old" to "new" kind of
web-usage. By tracing my own history of using the internet and
social networking sites, and observing internet use by people in
similar ages to me, I believe the idea and relevance of a web
"2.0" can be observed.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I started using the internet in Middle School. At that time, many
people were already using the internet, but for many of my peers and
I, we only used the internet from school computers. My family
got the internet for the first time on a 56k modem (my parents were
waiting for that technology to be more economical with monthly rates)
during my sophomore year in High School (1998-1999), and it was a very
big deal to have access from home (and the phone line being occupied
was always a constant issue). I should add, from Middle School
on, I grew up in the town of Moraga, middle class suburbia in the San
Francisco Bay Area.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>For my peers and I, at 15 years old at the end of the 1990s, the
internet was very new. Personally I loved to explore the internet and
became very fascinated by online design communities coming from
forum/portal sites like k10k.net. I also became very fascinated
with web design and web programming and taught myself mostly by
looking at other people's source code (plus Wired tutorials and code
archives always helped). Other things people the same age used the
internet for: other forms of creative expression, research, porn, and
communicating with other people (this includes email, early social
networking forums, and building personal homepages).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The internet and my fascination for web design ate up a lot of my
time during high school. When I wasn't using the computer--which I'll
stress again, because of the internet was less than healthy in
retrospect--I would sometimes be outside, go over to a friend's house,
go skateboarding, or go back to doing some of the activities I would
do a lot before the internet, such as Legos and drawing.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>It wasn't until freshman year in college (2001-2002) that I first
learned about AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), and it was from a girl on
my dorm hall (who I'd later talk to on AIM even though she lived three
doors down). Now, I think I knew a lot about the "cutting
edge" in online design, but social communication came a little
slow to me. Nonetheless, I think this in itself is quite
relevant, as most people don't participate in these communication
infrastructures right off the bat, it takes time to catch on. I
should add that I quit using AIM at the end of my sophomore year in
college because it had become an addiction and it was eating up time
which I could use for extra-curriculars and studying. I have
only met a few other people in college who have also quit AIM, most
students still use it, and it still remains a very large part of their
social and personal lives.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I should also add that at this time (in fact I think it was all
the way through my junior year in college) there was no massive,
campus-wide (and national) addiction to sites like Facebook and
MySpace on any scale like we have now. I did have a few
friends who used Friendster; but in contrast to the permeating,
everyday social-consciousness and colloquial referencing emanating
from Facebook and MySpace, Friendster cannot compete. I don't
think Facebook and MySpace even existed as they do now either--and if
they did, most people didn't know about them yet.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In June of 2004 I first received an email from the
collegefacebook.com website (which seems to be the less-popular and
parallel version of the popular Facebook.com), and assumed it was
spam. It took a couple of months and talk with friends and my
brother to learn that it wasn't spam, and was actually worth joining.
At first I was skeptical and found the idea of adding "friends"
bizarre, but loved the idea of connecting with friends and loved even
more the ability to read profiles and look at pictures of people (the
voyeuristic and self-showcasing is great). A few months later,
at the end of 2004, I added myself to thefacebook.com (which is now
just facebook.com) because "everybody" was on that network.
</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I've remained on Facebook ever since; I can't say I'm addicted
but I do have my binge runs now and then. In the single year of
2005, Facebook really exploded with intense campus-wide and
nation-wide networking. One of the most interesting experiences
I remember with Facebook occurred at the beginning of Summer 2005 when
I received a facebook message from a girl who was going to attend UC
Santa Cruz in the Fall. I just so happened to be the first
person listed in her "social network" (a list of people
connected to people you're connected to), and she had decided to
message me asking about college. I responded with a lot of tips
and info. Amazingly, for that girl, college has had and will
always have Facebook as an important part of the college experience.
For her, college does not exist without Facebook and online social
networking. A few weeks ago I was speaking with a different
freshman who had been using Facebook all year and uses the site
constantly. She was very surprised to learn that when I began
college, Facebook didn't exist... she said she hadn't really thought
about it, and assumed it had always been here.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I believe it was in 2005 fellow students really started to join
MySpace en-mass. I have a MySpace account but only use it to
view people's photos on MySpace when necessary (you can view MySpace
profile pages without login). In contrast to Facebook, I believe
MySpace has attracted many more people because anyone can join (not
just college kids like Facebook), you can really modify (sort-of) the
look of your page, and there are many special features. I have
to admit, as I don't use MySpace, I can't really speak from
"personal experience" but only from observation.
Students use MySpace everywhere and all the time. I've seen
students using it while sitting in class, doing nothing but looking at
the messages people have left for them and looking at photos of their
friends and themselves. (...might this be a downside of having
wireless internet in classrooms?) References to both Facebook
and MySpace also seem to frequently pop-up in dining-hall, party, and
meeting conversations.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>A few weeks ago I entered upon a group of students discussing the
injustice of University officials using photographs and text on
Facebook as proof that some students had consumed alcohol and drugs
when cited. Most of the students at that meeting seemed visibly
upset, and they spoke of drafting a petition on Facebook to try and
ban authorities from entering Facebook. To be honest, I find
this ridiculous, and it seems to me these students are still learning
the consequences of engaging in new social spaces: if you don't want
to get in trouble when a photo gets posted, it is really your
responsibility to not be in those photos. Facebook also has a
"Flyer" function where you can pay to advertise with
"flyers" (small banner-ad sized announcements) across a
school's network. The "flyering" and the events
announcements on Facebook work well, and in some cases, seem to be
more effective than physical flyering when people spend an increasing
amount time in front of the computer.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>It's almost halfway through the year 2006 and these websites
continue to thrive with activity. We now also have sites like
Flickr, YouTube, GoogleMaps, etc., which are quite different but very
much related and in the same vein of internet experience.
Facebook continues to grow as well. Fall 2005 they added the
ability for students to add unlimited photos, and last week they added
connectability to Facebook via cellphone text messages (just type
"FBOOK"!) and the ability for users to post "status"
messages saying what one is doing at the very moment (in response,
I've heard students ask each other why Facebook is trying to be like
AIM). Also (I think it was Summer or Fall 2005) Facebook
extended their networks into High Schools, and very recently into some
USA business and regional network categories (I'm part of the UCSC
network and the San Francisco network... and can thus surf profiles of
people from different Universities also connected to the San Francisco
network, and also find people on the San Francisco network who are
connected because their office network is, such as Google.) I
think Facebook should add more international networks, they now only
have London, Paris, and a few locations in Canada.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>What is going on? Due to the internet and online social
networking, High School and college experiences--and I'll add, Youth
experiences in general--of youth today (right now!) are very different
from my High School and part of my college experiences... and I
graduated from High School only five years ago! It is important
to note that the internet existed while I was in High School and was a
younger youth, but that<i> internet experience</i> greatly contrasts
the internet experience of current younger youth.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>It is the very fast, visible shift in the consciousness of
what-is-the-internet, and hence what-is-the-world, among young
internet users that tells this tale. In many ways this story can
be compared to the story of television's evolution: the television I
grew up with (and<i> felt</i> like always existed because it<i>
always</i> existed in my world) was very different from the television
my parents grew up with. Web "2.0", I'll gather, is
one way of expressing a recognition of this new kind of world people
inhabit, a physical world constructed by a new version of mediated
experience. </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>And calling it a "2.0" is in some ways relevant, as
well. As experienced by the college freshman at UC Santa Cruz,
the new version of living with the internet is assumed to be the only
way of living with the internet; a consciousness of only a web
"1.0" no longer exists.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>--<br>
Matt Waxman</div>
<div>Undergraduate, UC Santa Cruz</div>
<div>Film & Digital Media and an Individual Study in History &
Theory of Architecture</div>
<div>mwax@ucsc.edu / 831.402.4770</div>
<div><br></div>
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