The Geek Community

There's a television show that came out a couple of years ago, called Freaks and Geeks. I've watched through it a couple of times, and have really enjoyed what I've seen, but there's always been one thing that's bothered me: the kids in the school really hate being called a geek. They're repulsed by it, go to great lengths to avoid the term, altering their own behavior, and things like that. Part of this, I know, comes from a lot of the negative connotations with the word, which I've always found troubling, and another part is the times, and the possession of some hindsight.

Geeks are cool these days, for a lot of reasons, and there's a lot of writing on the walls that says so. Avatar, and a number of other science fiction, fantasy or horror films topped the box office for monetary totals, Neil Gaiman's book, American Gods was the first book to be chosen for an international, interactive book club on twitter, and so on. There is an entire sub-culture blooming that centers around every element that had once been only reserved for the geeks exiled to the back of the cafeteria.

It's not the material, however, that really determines if any one person is a geek or a nerd, it's largely in how they perceive the world, approach problems and how they value knowledge. I've come to understand that in a large part, reading Lord of the Rings, the Foundation Trilogy, watching Star Wars or Star Trek a hundred times or obsessing over movie rumors is something that appeals to those of a more geek-oriented mindset. It might be something about the way authors construct totally new and alien worlds, landscapes and events in all forms of media, or it might be some more basic desire to explore, and more importantly, to learn, about something.

I had a friend of mine tell me, when we lived in London, that she found me to be very passionate about any number of subjects: history, science fiction, travel, whereas she noted that she felt that she lacked that. I don't know if that was the case, but I do know that I'm not alone in that mindset, and I don't think that it's something that's grown or changed. I suspect that a very real reason for why geek culture is really something that's become somewhat more popular is the ability for people to really begin to talk with one another. Since high school, I've begun to realize just how vast the 'geek community' is, because it reaches into so many subjects and places. My earliest experiences with this sort of networking goes back over ten years, to Star Wars message forums (TFN Boards, Starwarz.com, Starwars.com and various EU book sites), to major blogs and their commenting abilities (such as Boing Boing, io9, SF Signal, Tor.com, to name just a couple) to things like facebook and twitter, which allow for their own cross-communications to spring up and flourish.

Geeks like information, I've come to understand, and the best thing to happen to Geek culture is to have the ability to share and create information across the board with the internet, where it's easy to find and to distribute, through any number of means. We talk about books, films, comics and concepts, across the world or with a simple meet up in a library or bookstore to create a rich environment that really allows for something special: community.

Community is important, I think, much in the same way why groups such as Gangs, the Boy Scouts and After School programs exist: they give people a sense of purpose, belonging and a place to exchange ideas amongst their peers - this has always been the case. In 1940s England, Science Fiction fan clubs sprang up across the country, often with small groups in individual towns, which would later coalesce into larger groups with time. The same thing happened in the United States, and throughout these groups, members wrote letters to each other and magazines, gathered in homes, small conventions, to discuss what they had been reading and often, their own works, giving rise to science fiction writers in their own right. The same thing has happened in the digital age.

Thus, these interactions and groupings really are important, especially to those lonely kids in Freaks and Geeks, who had no one to turn to - they turned to each other, and supported (sometimes) their friends when needed. The same is true, here, because when that happens, new ideas are exchanged, created and brought to fruition, in a fantastic fashion.

Changes to Facebook

A couple weeks ago, Facebook changed its overall website appearance and layout once again, prompting user outcry and complaints about how the site had changed once again, and that they were going to leave the site. However, the frequent changes to the site's appearance are the reasons why Facebook is going to be around for a while.

In the time since Facebook started, it has had an incredible amount of influence on how people begin to interact with one another. Growing up with much larger, completing websites such as Friendster and Myspace, the website has shown that it's able to take on their competition by adapting to major changes in how people utilize the internet. When it started, the website was essentially an online profile, listing someone's name, their favorites, a picture, a way to upload photographs, and a wall. Originally, when I first started with the website in 2005, the wall feature had a disclaimer on it: "We don't know what this is for, but type away", or something along those lines. Initially as a comments field, the Wall has become a central part of the Facebook website, changing how people interact with one another, share information and update their friends on the mundane aspects of their lives.

The wall feature is the most important aspect of the website, and something that other websites have attempted to copy - Myspace now allows for status updates, as does numerous chat clients, such as gchat and AIM, while becoming the literal center of attention for users. The home page, once one's profile, changed to a friends list, to a new feed that gathered everyone's status updates to keep everyone up to date with everything that was going on. The result is an addicting one - hundreds of millions have signed up for the service, and while each new update undoubtedly sees a drop off in people, either out of frustration or security concerns, the site has continued to grow.

Facebook's constant changes to the design are what will be keeping the website from going the way of their now smaller cousins. It's a good business practice, and demonstrates that the site is not only keeping up to date with what their competition is doing, but it shows that the company is innovative and looking to lead the way in just how people use the internet. This, I think, is the most important aspect of the site's longevity thus far.

Since the site began, the ways in which people have utilized the internet has changed a lot, partially at the site's prompting, but also with the introduction of other websites. Looking at the bigger picture, it's unlikely that the website Twitter would have appeared without the introduction of Facebook’s status updates, and in its stripped down form, Twitter has become incredibly popular. With this new competition, the latest versions of Facebook have focused on the updates that people post to their profiles via the news and live feeds that exist in the home page. With it, Facebook is able to offer the exact same thing (although with four times the characters as their competitor), with all of the extras that the site already offers. Its adaptation comes not only in how people use the internet, but how they access the internet. Dedicated Facebook sites for mobile devices have been developed, while some of its competitors, such as myspace, keep the same format, reducing functionality and the overall appearance to the site.

Similarly, the introduction of new features, such as the suggestions to users who they might know, as well as easy ways to import contacts allow the site to keep users invested, talking and continuing to use the site as often as possible. The site’s purpose, in this instance is to become as useful as possible for people to connect to one another, and it’s certainly succeeded in the time that I’ve used it, keeping me in touch with a number of people whom I would have fallen out of touch with years ago.

As the site moved from a social networking site into the greater business world, it's also been clear that the site has had longer term business plans as the site has begun to expand, hinging on the ability of the site to adapt effectively to new online environments. The introduction of small paid applications, targeted ads and other similar practices help with the website when it comes to its finances, helping to generate cash for the site. This, in my mind, is why Facebook will never charge for access, no matter how many of the groups out there claim that that's in the works. It doesn't make sense, because a lot of the site's growth is most likely contingent on signing up as many people as possible, and introducing a fee, no matter how small it is, would impede that greatly, although long-time users would likely cough it up. No, the key to Facebook is the growth of the platform, and clearly, they're doing something right in that regard.

Ground Control to Major Tom

On Monday, STS-125, the last space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to replace gyroscopes, batteries and to install two new cameras to outfit the aging satellite for the last time, making it the most powerful in its history. I've talked about space before, and I find it utterly facinating. Hubble itself has had a long and varied history when it comes to space, from a blotched lense to the historic repair mission, not to mention the thousands of beautiful pictures that it's captured over its long life.

The current mission is one that I've been looking forward to for a while now. A couple months ago, I wrote an article for io9, titled Stalking NASA, which was a laundry list of ways in which someone can follow up on NASA's activities via social networking sites. What they have been doing with this launch is really highlighting the mission. In the leadup to the launch, there was numerous updates from a number of twitter feeds for Space Shuttle Atlantis, a couple of the astronauts, NASA and a couple other lines. Facebook had a number of status updates for the specific pages for the mission, and almost the entire mission has been broadcast live online.

I'm really digging the ability to watch this stuff live. Whether it's watching Atlantis docking with Hubble to watching the astronauts work (in some cases, watching from THEIR view) has been absolutely fantastic. You almost get a feeling that you're right there with them in space. The images are absolutely stunning, and I really hope that this'll attract more interest to the space program.

Man, I want to go to space.

The Future, Catching Up to Today

On July 20th, 1969, an estimated 500 million people around the world  turned on their televisions to witness Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon. In the years since then, interest in NASA has certainly waned, even after the second moon landing. Apollo 13's live broadcast while they were en route to the moon was not picked up by any of the major networks, something that none of the astronauts were aware of while they were recording. Unfortunately, interest in NASA still seems to remain low, until high profile problems crop up and really serve only to cripple the agency's image. That's hard to counter when they have a hard time reaching the population with the good news - which, surprisingly enough - does happen.

One thing that I've found recently is that NASA has entered the social networking world of the Internet, bringing live updates to users. Social networking sites fascinate me, and we're only beginning to explore their use. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are only the latest big sites, and NASA has begun to use these, and by doing so, will hopefully reach more people around the world with what is going on.

Facebook has numerous groups and pages for NASA. The Official NASA Facebook Group has some active discussions, but the real place to keep an eye on is the pages and events, which can allow users to keep up to date on announcements and updates, as well as letting people know when things, such as launches, happen. I've subscribed to a couple of pages, notably the Kepler Mission, and the Last Mission to Hubble which is scheduled for sometime early 2009. The space shuttle has its own page and links in to two event that have been created, the launch of STS-119 (Discovery), which will be February 12, 2009 and STS-125 (Atlantis), which launches May 12, 2009. Both pages link in to other pages, where I've since learned that 119 will be carrying a truss for the International Space Station and that 125 will be servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.

Wikipedia comes into play here with all aspects of upcoming space information, especially with the upcoming shuttle missions, with a page for both STS-119 and STS-125. Each page not only outlines the mission that both shuttles are scheduled to complete, but also information about the crew, the mission patch, pictures and other relevant information. People with free time on their hands can also go to information on both shuttles, Discovery and Atlantis, which gives you more information about the shuttles individual history.

With the upcoming missions to the Space Station, it's interesting to find that astronauts on the International Space Station have begun to use twitter. Twitter is a newer service called micro-blogging, and allows for short status updates in the real time, which has proven to be extremely popular. Looking around the internet, there are a number of other NASA services that utilize the tools: NASA has an official feed, as does the Space Shuttle Endeavor, as well as upcoming missions: STS-119 and STS-125, which help to pass along developments as the crews prepare for their missions. Each one of these has several thousand followers receiving the updates.

Even sites such as Youtube is extremely handy for getting up to date information. A couple months ago, Astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her tool bag while making repairs to part of the International Space Station. Video, taken from her helmet camera, was up on youtube fairly quickly. (Interestingly, the tool bag is visible if you know where to look). There are other videos online, such as STS-126 crew wake-up call, Flight Day 14 and Riding on board Atlantis during re-entry. There's even an entire section of podcasts available through iTunes, which I haven't begun to explore yet.

I have my doubts about wikipedia, especially for concrete historical research, but for things like this, especially as events happen, and social networking sites are even better, because they allow the PR people to release whatever information they want, to a specialized audience who wants to receive this. Not only that, but there is an incredible ease to which users can pass along information to other users who they think might be interested, by inviting them to events or just passing along the URL to someone. NASA has kindly posted up a page (Riding onboard Atlantis during re-entry) that links into a lot of the sites that they have begun to post up update to, which touch on some that I don't do much with, including Myspace and flickr.

There is a vast amount of potential for the general public to have an unprecedented view of NASA's operations in ways that weren't around just a couple years ago, let alone fifty years ago for the first moon landing. Yet, with that number, 500 million people watching those first steps, it's a wonder why we have yet to see the same level of interest with space exploration that is currently ongoing, even with the ease and degree to which we can watch. Hopefully, person by person, NASA will once again command a certain amount of attention, even for the more "mundane" missions to outer space. For me, I now know when the shuttle missions will be happening, so I won't miss another one.

History and Social Networking

Okay, this is just plain cool. Someone has started up a photo account that features pictures from the Normandy invasion. These seem to be period pictures, I'm guessing from press photographers who landed on the beaches and with the invasion force during Operation Overlord.

The entire photoset can be seen here, but be warned, there are some pretty graphic shots. The account has a number of other photosets, with thousands of pictures.

I find this interesting on a couple of levels. The first, as a history geek - these are pictures that seem to me to be pretty candid of the invasion - I'm guessing that most of these weren't staged - as some Civil War photographs have been - and show a side of the Normandy invasion that really looks past the invasion component. We see the civilians caught in the path of war here, a lot of the devastation that the war left behind, and some of the very brutal elements as well.

The second thing that makes me interested here is that this helps to illustrate how the internet is potentially changing things. I came across these pictures via random search, something that I might not have come across otherwise. Social Networking sites such as Flickr have the potential to really link up some historical content together. Imagine an interactive historical site that allows for uploads of various events, written historical content and user comments about the event. This could really bring about some interesting changes in the way that historical events are studied, researched and interpreted, especially with events that are currently happening.

I've posted pictures up on flickr as well - when I was working on my Normandy Project back in 2007, I uploaded my shots of the Norwich students who fought at Normandy. I've since taken them down because they were only up there because I had forgotten a thumb drive, but I can see the benefit of having content such as this online.

What would be facinating would be a way to look over the entire Iraq war from its beginning, and watching how opinions change over time, but also to get first hand comments from people who were there. First-hand accounts, from the moment, are extremely handy, especially without the use of hindsight and interpretation from people at the scene.

There are some obvious problems with something like this, and other user-generated content sources, such as Wikipedia, as items can be updated, but they can be updated incorrectly at the same time. At the Society for Military History conference that I attended earlier this year, this seems like it has become, and will be a very contentious issue. Thus, items such as this can only be trusted so far, as incorrect information is a really bad thing to have when doing research.

I suspect that as the internet gains even more prominance when it comes to research in the near future, this will become more of an issue, but we will also see more historical content being published via sites such as this. It should be very interesting.