View source for Sociality and Digital Lifestyles

==Description:==

The near-total triumph of the �online revolution� (2b people online - 30% of the world population) lead towards having the �offline world�, more often than not, playing a second fiddle in everything from commerce, to entertainment, to communications and politics. <br> <br>
Today the digital life style has left many of the analog media collecting dust. We replaced paper and books with word docs of google docs, pictures with the digital photos and online photo organizers (www.picasa.com), CD music with itunes and online music libraries (www.grooveshark.com), videos with youtube or www.megaupload.com, storage and organization moved also online with the help of cloud computing (www.dropbox.com) . As a matter of fact the is an entire eco movement fighting for using digital reading devices and resume as much as possible the use of paper.
The new era is so digital that it got to the point when an former banker launched in 2009 the digital Glo Bible. Retailing at �59.99 in the UK, Glo claims to be the Bible that will engage the digital generation of Christians. �We two generations which favor interactive media. Unless you put the Bible on that media you won't connect with them. It's not about mimicking paper. It's about offering an experience." Nelson Saba (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/14/glo-bible-digital-christians). <br> <br>
The revolution got so far that there are at this point (2010) plenty examples of products which start out online-only, and somehow find afterwards their way into the offline world. One of them is  a contest held by EA and H&M: Sims 2 H&M Fashion Runway Contest. Sims 2 player could participate by designing an H&M-inspired outfit using the game's design tool and uploading it to TheSims2.com Exchange. The winning outfit has been made available for purchase in nearly 1,000 H&M retail locations in the US, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong and China for USD 14.90. <br> <br>
[[File:3.jpg]]<br>
Further on, social media (and social networking) gained a high numbers of users abd with them some addicts in the late years: 500m accounts on Facebook in only 6 years, 12m World of Warcraft players and 72m LinkedIN users. Social meadia�s new features support modifying as far as humans interaction with each other.  People certainly still meet others at social venues like clubs and parties, but it is easier than ever to discover people who share our interests through social media, whether that means via groups on Facebook or following people on Twitter. Even if your interests lie in an obscure area, like 15th century poetry in France or Nepalese art, there is probably a Facebook group about it, and a Twitter search will likely turn up other people talking about the same subject. (http://mashable.com/2009/10/16/social-media-changing-lives/)<br><br>
This medium changed not just the way we interact peer to peer but how crowds communicate also. There are several examples proving the structural changes created by networks like twitter and facebook. One of the recent ones is president Obama�s 2008 election win. Some have gone as far to say that he would not have been as successful if it wasn�t for the internet.�Obama�s Presidential campaign has been widely praised for its use of social media and online tactics. The results speak for themselves.�In just a few months, Obama raised over $200m in online donations, mobilized over 850,000 social networking participants and promoted more than 50,000 events across the U.S.�(http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=12452). <br><br>
In 2009 in the Republic of Moldova started what is now labeled the �Twitter revolution�. Some activists from the country used the latest democratic tech tool, Twitter, to push and somewhat organize the masses to protest against the results of the presidential elections. Thousands of young demonstrators have been clashing with police and ransacking government buildings to protest the election results. (http://www.rferl.org/content/Moldovas_Twitter_Revolution/1605005.html).<br><br>
The prediction is that members of these web-savvy �Net generations� will tend to view the Internet as an extender of their own cognitive capabilities and as a portal to virtual experience. <br>



==Enablers:==
* cloud computing
* social media
* our natural desire to communicate
* practicality on on-line communication

==Inhibitors:==
* the possibility that perhaps internet excited just us - the generation which discovered it but being a given to the "digital generation" - they will not build upon it as fast
* language (not having a common one)
* resources

==Paradigms:==
ddd

==Timing:==
[1]The Phone Phreaking Era (1950�s � Early 90�s) <br>
[2]Bulletin Board Systems (BBS�s) � (1979 � 1995)<br>
[3]Commercial Online Services (started with Prodigy and Compuserve) (1979 � 2001)<br>
[4]The Dawn of the Word Wide Web � 1991<br>
[5]IRC, ICQ and Instant Messenger - 1996<br>
[6]P2P � BitTorrent � and �Social� Media Sharing - 1999<br>
[7]Social Networking & Social News Websites - 1997 (Facebook - 2007)<br>
[8] The Real-Time Statusphere & Location-based Social Web (2008)<br>


==Web Resources:==
[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/14/glo-bible-digital-christians<br>
[2]http://mashable.com/2009/10/16/social-media-changing-lives/<br>
[3]http://www.rferl.org/content/Moldovas_Twitter_Revolution/1605005.html<br>
[4]http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=12452<br>
[5]http://socialmediarockstar.com/history-of-social-media<br>



[[Driving Forces - Reference Page]]<br>
[[Future of Innovation Main Page]]