I was in the Sixth Grade when I finally convinced my parents to get an Internet connection. I begged them for AOL, but they refused and got a local ISP named Inter-Global, which was only compatible with a 28k modem. The nerd in me died a little. But honestly there wasn’t much to do on the Internet. At the time AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was only available if you actually had AOL, luckily this changed quickly. But in the beginning we would just sit at out e-mail accounts and reply back immediately. It was a form of instant communication that gave birth to the next phase of technology.
The Instant Message was the tipping point for social innovation on the web. This is equivalent to Sisyphus getting the boulder over the hill. What spawned from the birth of the instant message was the Social Profile. Just as one using Social Media to determine self-worth and social importance the inclusion of the AIM Profile changed the dynamic of our web presence. It was simple, a blank space, but we could fill it anyone that we would like. We used the AIM buddy profile to, one, identify ourselves; and two, to define our social relevance. The profile was a way to publicly say whom our friends were through ‘Shout Outz’ (For some reason Out always ended in a ‘z’), we wanted to share who we were friends with, who mattered in our lives, but our buddy lists were private. This established our social need for an online presence and recognition.
But the Instant Message wasn’t the only online innovation to create Social Media, intellectual convergence with other technologies and mediums aligned. In the case for Social Media I believe two other technologies married to make this union. Those technologies were Web Forums and the TI-83 Plus Graphing Calculator.
Web Forums were a way for people to connect with others over similar interests. You could find a forum about your favorite artist whether it was Britney Spears or the Spice Girls through the DenDen Forums, look for medical advice through WebMD, or get your deepest darkest concerns answered at AfriadtoAsk.com. As forums started to add profile pages and ways to identify yourself, I believe this caused their decline. The topics and opinions were usually too personal to identify yourself publicly with a fear your friends or family would see your posts. However with the instant message and a conflicting goal to be known online other places were born to mesh the two together. (ex. Open Diary, Live Journal, Xanga, and then the now-fallen behemoth MySpace, the first true social network.)
So that all makes sense, but why the TI-83 Plus Graphing Calculator that you were required to purchase for high school Algebra?
The TI-83 Plus inspired innovation from Gen-Y. While Gen-Y was required to purchase this product for school, it was the first way to get legitimate mobile gaming that wasn’t through a gaming console. Games like Centipede and PIMP became viral, and were transferable programs from one calculator to another. It was Gen-Y’s first attempts at coding and many of us created our own simple programs. For instance, the smarter kids in the class knew how to program in all of the Vocabulary words and notes we needed to know for our Chemistry tests so we could cheat undetected. Occasionally even selling our programs to others and transferring the data right before the tests. This created a primitive Wikipedia source, which occasionally would even be passed down to the next year’s class.
We also used the calculators to pass notes in shortened vernacular (though we would need to keep our calculators connected throughout class using fairly short wires), hence the common usages of b4 (before), 4 (for), r (are), u (you), etc. Many of these short forms were inspired by their programming term equivalent. This new language allowed us to be social through a buffered medium, and eventually translated to be used on social media in common etiquette.
While the true birther to Social Media is Gen-Y’s need to be social, it was the convergence of these three technologies that are the basis for all our daily obsessions. I guess chemistry class did matter after all.
What do you think? Do you feel these technologies help create the social medium or is there other technologies that don’t get the credit they deserve?
