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Software Review
Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
7/2/2008
At first, I thought it would be really self-indulgent to keep posting what I was doing every day, so I spurned that option. I thought, "Who cares that I'm worrying about the weeds in my tomato patch?" In fact, no one does. But, again, there's that serendipity. The communication act is the key: Just that I've updated what I'm doing "32 minutes ago," emphasizes my social presence. People know I'm there reading what they were doing 32 minutes ago.What I didn't anticipate was finding out how hard it is to think what you want to say in those 20 words. Doing the updates forces a self-reflection that is different than a diary -- how do I encapsulate myself in 20 words at this moment in time (as in "Trent is listening to his daughter's baby shower crowd just a floor above")?
Wasting Time
Yes, people do "waste" time on Facebook (whatever we mean by that). And, it can become an obsession. This says more about humans, however, than about Facebook. It is a social space and humans are creating the space just as they do all public spaces. For academia, however, this space is a golden city. As transient and distributed as we are, we academics need Facebook and more to sustain informal collegiality over distance. Those who have re-discovered me on Facebook will be much more open to an e-mail about professional inquiries than if my e-mail was a bolt from the past.
This informal collegiality through Facebook is educational value that needs no testing or assessment -- any more than a 'hello' in the hall does. Of course, once we academics become too present in Facebook, whither go yon youngsters?
Trent Batson, Ph.D. has served as an English professor, director of academic computing, and has been an IT leader since the mid-1980s. He is currently Co-Lead for the Web2ePortfolio Initiatve (W2eP), a Senior Associate with the TLT Group, and Editor of Campus Technology's Web 2.0 e-newsletter. batsontr@mit.edu
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