In its 23rd annual Words of the Year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “hashtag” as the word of the year for 2012. So in honour of our newly crowned word of the year, let’s take a quick look at some recent commentary on the use of hashtags.

In his post On “Hashtag” and Remembering the Internet is Awkward, Drew Breunig comments as follows on the word of the year vote:

Computers don’t understand us. They’re getting better, but this last mile is turning out to be a doozy. Siri garbles every third word and struggles with accents, Google trips on words, and Facebook and iPhoto facial recognition systems see faces where there aren’t any. People are messy and the real world isn’t clean. It’s hard for computers to understand us.

The hashtag is us giving them a hand, providing a clue to our intentions they can easily parse. Hashtags are us talking loud and slow in a foreign land. They’re awkward, which is precisely why they’re important to note.

This is true, but it’s only half the story. The hashtag has become so much more than a way to organise information — it can be a device for humour, activism, spam, and everything in between. The New York Times explains it well in an article full of great examples, called In Praise of the Hashtag:

But the hashtag, for the dexterous user, is a versatile tool — one that can be deployed in a host of linguistically complex ways. In addition to serving as metadata (#whatthetweetisabout), the hashtag gives the writer the opportunity to comment on his own emotional state, to sarcastically undercut his own tweet, to construct an extra layer of irony, to offer a flash of evocative imagery or to deliver metaphors with striking economy. It’s a device that allows the best writers to operate in multiple registers at once, in a compressed space. It’s the Tuvan throat singing of the Internet.

Not all hashtag usage is good, though. Apart from the fact that most hashtag jokes aren’t very funny — it takes some real talent to use it well — it can also be harmful in several ways. For example, in Fear the hashtags of rage, Watts Martin critiques the use of hashtags as activism, saying it has become a way to feel like we’re doing something positive to support a cause — and effectively to absolve ourselves from doing any real work to affect the change we seek:

There’s also an ugly [side to the hashtag of rage]: “it’s somebody else’s responsibility to take the hits for what we want.” We want to write our protest signs and have somebody else march with them. By God, our service providers should stand up for what we believe in, secure in the knowledge that if they lose business, get shut down or even face jail time, we’ll write the angriest blog posts ever about that. Maybe not under our real name, you understand. Can’t be too careful.

And then there’s also the absurd side of things. Luckily I haven’t experienced this myself, but in Twitterish John McWhorter tells us that the hashtag is even becoming a thing in the spoken word:

The new thing, however, is using the word “hashtag” in conversation. Especially if you are under a certain age, you may be catching people saying things like, “I ran into that guy I met—hashtag happy!” or, in response to someone complaining, “My flashlight app isn’t working,” perhaps you have heard the retort, “Hashtag First World problems!” A college student not long ago reported a favourite witticism to be appending observations with: “Hashtag did that just happen?”

Hashtag yikes1.

It’s interesting to see something that was created for taxonomy purposes transformed into such a ubiquitous and diverse linguistic tool. For that reason, I think “hashtag” is a worthy choice for word of the year.

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1. Sorry. It’s a terrible joke. I don’t know why I didn’t delete it the second I wrote it. ↩

Hunter Walk wrote a great article about Facebook Connect and how difficult it is to own the social web, called Trying to be the one true social graph is like trying to hold water in your fist. One of the fascinating parts is his observation about how the next generation is using technology:

Each new group of kids come of age wanting a space they can discover together and call their own. This is DNA, not computer science. It’s not about tech changing (oh, this is Facebook if it was build only for tablets) - it’s about getting to a dry piece of land when you’re 13 years old and being able to plant your own flag. I don’t see how you get beyond the anthropology of this.

In light of that, Josh Miller’s Tenth Grade Tech Trends and Justin Hoenke’s follow-up Tenth Grade Tech Trends (Take Two) are important data points to know about. These are very anecdotal, sure, but Josh and Justin’s takeaways are definitely worth debating. Here, for example, is Josh’s insight based on his 15-year old sister’s comment that Tumblr is just for middle schoolers:

I can’t get over the “middle schoolers use it” comment, especially since they use Tumblr as an identity tool. That’s exactly how my friends and I used Myspace in middle school, and we too abandoned it (for Facebook) once we reached high school. So in middle school you care a lot about your personal presentation (themes and cultural images on your Myspace or Tumblr page), but once you reach high school you care more about the people you present yourself with (photos on Facebook and Instagram)?

If you’re interested in how teens use social media, it’s worth following danah boyd’s blog. She is a researcher on media and youth culture, and her insights are always interesting. Here’s a particularly relevant excerpt from her post Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook:

Shamika deletes every wall message, status update, and Like shortly after it’s posted. She’ll post a status update and leave it there until she’s ready to post the next one or until she’s done with it. Then she’ll delete it from her profile. When she’s done reading a friend’s comment on her page, she’ll delete it. She’ll leave a Like up for a few days for her friends to see and then delete it. When I asked her why she was deleting this content, she looked at me incredulously and told me “too much drama.” Pushing further, she talked about how people were nosy and it was too easy to get into trouble for the things you wrote a while back that you couldn’t even remember posting let alone remember what it was all about. It was better to keep everything clean and in the moment. If it’s relevant now, it belongs on Facebook, but the old stuff is no longer relevant so it doesn’t belong on Facebook.

With behaviour like that, it’s no surprise that ephemeral apps like Snapchat and Poke are so successful.

Jenna Wortham makes an interesting observation about apps like Snapchat and Poke in Facebook Poke and the Tedium of Success Theater. She starts off by talking about something I’ve written about quite a bit as well — that who we pretend to be online is not even close to who we really are:

We’ve become better at choreographing ourselves and showing our best sides to the screen, capturing the most flattering angle of our faces, our homes, our evenings out, our loved ones and our trips.

It’s success theater, and we’ve mastered it. We’ve gotten better at it because it matters more. You never know who is looking or how it might affect your relationships and career down the road, and as a result, we have become more cautious about the version of ourselves that we present to each other and the world.

The example most people immediately jump to when talking about this is Instagram filters — something I’ve written about before as well. It’s fascinating to think about apps like Snapchat and Poke as deliberate backlash against fake online versions of ourselves. By encouraging ephemeral, intimate, #nofilter snapshots, these apps give a more accurate reflection of “the real you”. In Wortham’s words:

These applications are the opposite of groomed; they practically require imperfection, a sloppiness and a grittiness that conveys a sense of realness, something I’ve been craving in my communication. They transform the screen of your phone into a window into the life of your friend, wherever they are at that exact moment. […]

It is an acknowledgement that the version of ourselves we share through other social media is not the truest one, and has not been for a long time.

I’ve recently noticed a recurring theme in many articles that cover technology’s impact on our lives. It’s the idea that the move to digital technologies has taken away an essential part of being human: the accidental discovery of new things by getting lost. The fear is that what we might call “digital perfection” is removing the natural wayfinding mistakes that are essential for serendipitous discovery — like getting lost in a new city and then finding that perfect coffee shop. I’ll share a few examples first, and then comment on why I think this fear is unnecessary.

The example that’s cited most often is how Google search is enveloping each of us in the Internet’s “filter bubble” where we only find what we’re looking for, and nothing more. Here’s Maria Popova in Are We Becoming Cyborgs?:

The Web by and large is really well designed to help people find more of what they already know they’re looking for, and really poorly designed to help us discover that which we don’t yet know will interest us and hopefully even change the way we understand the world.

There are several industry-specific examples, like the lament that we don’t browse record stores just for the fun of it any more. From Spotify and the Problem of Endless Musical Choice:

We seem to have created an environment in which wonderful music, newly discovered, is difficult to treasure. For treasures, as the fugitive salesman in the flea market was implying, are hard to come by—you have to work to find them. And the function of fugitive salesmen is to slow the endless deluge, drawing our attention to one album at a time, creating demand not for what we need to survive but for what we yearn for. Because how else can you form a relationship with a record when you’re cursed with the knowledge that, just an easy click away, there might be something better, something crucial and cataclysmic? The tyranny of selection is the opposite of freedom. And the more you click, the more you enhance the disposability of your endeavor.

And then there is The End of the Map, a fascinating article about the history of cartographic errors, which includes this statement:

The uncertainty that was once an unavoidable part or our relationship with maps has been replaced by a false sense of Wi-Fi-enabled omnipotence. Digital maps are the enemies of wonder. They suppress our urge to experiment and (usually) steer us from error—but what could be more irrepressibly human than those very things?

This idea is echoed in No one likes a city that’s too smart:

A great deal of research during the last decade, in cities as different as Mumbai and Chicago, suggests that once basic services are in place people don’t value efficiency above all; they want quality of life. A hand-held GPS device won’t, for instance, provide a sense of community. More, the prospect of an orderly city has not been a lure for voluntary migration, neither to European cities in the past nor today to the sprawling cities of South America and Asia. If they have a choice, people want a more open, indeterminate city in which to make their way; this is how they can come to take ownership over their lives.

Now, I’ll admit that I largely agree with the consequences that are pointed out in these articles. I’ll even admit to feeling the same sense of loss that these authors do. But I don’t agree that accidental discovery is a thing of the past. I believe that digital perfection opens up amazing possibilities, and combined with the fact that humans will always be explorers and flâneur no matter what technology we use, we’re starting to see some great products to help us replace what we’ve lost in the analog world.

Here are some examples of the types of discovery products and services we now have access to.

• Stellar.io collects tweets, articles, photos, and videos that the people you follow have favorited, and presents that in an aggregated stream. I always find something interesting and surprising in my Stellar feed, because it’s based not on explicit recommendations from the people I follow (i.e., what they think their followers might like), but on the things they really like themselves, without the social media personal brand/engagement filter.
• This is my Jam has become my favorite way to discover new music. You choose one song that you really like, and this song becomes your “jam”. It then shows up in your followers’ streams. By only allowing users to choose one favorite song at a time the service doesn’t become overwhelming. I suspect we’re going to see many new social networks like this — sites that are focused on a specific vertical, that build on the trust we place in people we know in real life, and that are designed for quality of content, not quantity.
• While the big guys are fighting over photo filters and who shouldn’t show up in whose stream, Foursquare is adding some amazing features with every release. We really shouldn’t underestimate this company’s potential. Foursquare has become an incredibly good way to discover not just new cities, but one’s own city as well. As users continue to add tips, lists, ratings, and photos of their favorite (and not so favorite) places, Foursquare will slowly resurface some of the “getting lost” moments that have been buried by digitally perfect maps.

My point is simply this. Sure, there are things we used to do in an analog era that we don’t do any more. We don’t get lost in encyclopedias, record stores, and cities any more. And that has some negative consequences. But we shouldn’t grieve about it too much.

Our insatiable spirit to discover new things haven’t gone away just because we’ve moved to a digital world. We just need to meet those needs in different ways — ways that better utilize the benefits of digital media. In fact, it’s not that we won’t get lost any more. It’s just that we need to invent ways to get lost differently.

Being More Human is a fascinating article written by Brian David Johnson, Intel’s resident futurist. He explains how steampunk culture offers clues to building a better future:

Steampunk has emotion and passion; it has an opinion and a point of view. It is sassy and thoughtful and optimistic about what could be built. It is convinced we can build a better future by envisioning a different past. Steampunk shows us that people want the devices and the technology in their lives to have a sense of humor, history, and humanity. This desire has radical implications for the type of future we could build.

He then discusses how steampunk reveals three relationships that people want with their technology, and concludes as follows:

When I tell people I’m a futurist and an optimist, they seem surprised and amused. People expect all futurists to be pessimistic prophets of doom. I’m not like that. The future is going to be awesome because we are going to build it. The future is not some fixed point on the horizon that we are all helplessly hurtling toward. Quite the opposite: the future is made every day by people’s actions. We all, on some level, create the future. From the family we raise, to the community we live in, to the business we do, we build the future. We all need to be active participants in imagining the future: the one we want and the one we want to avoid. Then we need to do something about it.

I try hard to stay away from the word “must-read” in these posts, but I’m going to relax my guard on this one, being holiday and all. So, really — read it!

Ian Leslie’s In search of serendipity is a very interesting article on how the Internet is narrowing our horizons by only giving us what we’re looking for, and nothing more:

Today’s world wide web has developed to organise, and make sense of, the exponential increase in information made available to everyone by the digital revolution, and it is amazingly good at doing so. If you are searching for something, you can find it online, and quickly. But a side-effect of this awesome efficiency may be a shrinking, rather than an expansion, of our horizons, because we are less likely to come across things we are not in quest of.

I especially like this metaphor for the Internet as modern city:

In 1952 a French sociologist called Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe asked a student to keep a journal of her daily movements. When he mapped her paths onto a map of Paris he saw the emergence of a triangle, with vertices at her apartment, her university and the home of her piano teacher. Her movements, he said, illustrated “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives”.

To some degree, the hopes of the internet’s pioneers have been fulfilled. You type “squid” into a search engine, you land on the Wikipedia page about squid, and in no time you are reading about Jules Verne and Pliny. But most of us use the web in the manner of that Parisian student. We have our paths, our bookmarks and our feeds, and we stick closely to them. We no longer “surf” the information superhighway, as it has become too vast to cruise without a map. And as it has evolved, it has become better and better at ensuring we need never stray from our virtual triangles.

As much as everyone seems to hate the word “curation”, it seems obvious to me that it’s important for all of us to seek out people who can lead us to things we didn’t know we’re interested in. As Callum J Hacket advises, make it a habit to follow reliable people rather than rigid topics.

Robin Sloan laments that because there are so many different browsers and devices to support these days, it’s no fun to make personal websites any more. He proceeds to make the case that maybe we don’t need to do it ourselves, and that it’s more practical to rely instead on near-perfect “machines” created by professionals (such as Medium, Svbtle, etc.). From The end of history and the last website:

Today, I don’t think—and I’m almost afraid to write this, because it’s like the tolling of some great bell—today I don’t think the amateur’s best effort is good enough. We as internet users have less patience and less charity for janky, half-broken experiences. (Which is quite an evolution, because the whole internet used to be a janky, half-broken experience.) That’s unfortunate for me, and other amateurs of my approximate skill level, because that’s really the only kind we can muster. […]

Don’t get me wrong; the amateur web isn’t going anywhere. It’s just that, if it used to be the internet’s Main Street, it’s starting to feel more like the forest on the edge of town. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Sure, it’s a little spooky out there, but it’s also where all the adventures start, obviously. You know, like: I hear there’s an old guy out there who makes robots out of car parts. Let’s go find him. The amateur web will always have that: the old guy, the robots, the car parts.

I get what he’s saying, and it’s a logical argument to make. But personal websites are rarely based on logic, they’re based on a fairly impractical but passionate desire to “own your corner of the web.” This site might not render perfectly on all devices, and having your own domain is a very difficult way to build an audience these days. But damn, it’s gratifying to play around in a sandpit of your own.

I loved Marco Tabini’s essay in The Magazine about his experiences growing up in his Mother’s coffee shop in Italy. From Majestic Espresso:

A professional espresso machine — in my mind, always the Machine — is intimidating in function and involved to use. I used to liken the Machine to the star beast of a mythical circus of the kind you would find in the pages of a fantasy book by Hickman and Weis. Manhandled, it would defend itself by spewing dangerously hot liquid, billowing clouds of steam rising from it like smoke from the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon; but it could also be capable of extreme gentleness, pushing out a shot of espresso one drop at a time while growling quietly in the background.

This bit about Starbucks made me laugh out loud:

A good espresso blend has been processed to a medium roast; the beans should have the color of bittersweet chocolate, with a slight sheen of essential oils on their surface. Dark-roasted beans produce a bitter taste because of the excessive caramelization of the sugars in them; contrary to popular opinion, a dark coffee doesn’t produce a “stronger” espresso, but only one that tastes like burnt earth. As my mom once exclaimed after trying Starbucks for the first time, you might as well grab a handful of dirt from your garden, drop it in a cup of hot water, and save some money.

The Magazine just gets better and better with every issue. And since you’re probably looking for some quality holiday reading this week, now is a great time to subscribe.

I recently started reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (thanks to J.D. Bentley for the recommendation). It’s great so far, and I’m sure I’ll have lots more to say once I’ve made my way through it.

Postman juxtaposes George Orwell’s “Big Brother” prophecy from Nineteen Eighty-Four with Aldous Huxley’s very different view of the future as set out in his 1931 book Brave New World. With that as backdrop, it’s amazing to think that this section from Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985:

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Sounds like it was written yesterday, doesn’t it…

Derek Powazek pulls apart the saying “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” in his post I’m Not The Product, But I Play One On The Internet. His conclusion:

We can and should support the companies we love with our money. Companies can and should have balanced streams of income so that they’re not solely dependent on just one. We all should consider the business models of the companies we trust with our data.

But we should not assume that, just because we pay a company they’ll treat us better, or that if we’re not paying that the company is allowed to treat us like shit. Reality is just more complicated than that. What matters is how companies demonstrate their respect for their customers. We should hold their feet to the fire when they demonstrate a lack of respect.

This is, of course, in response to the Instagram TOS debacle, which resulted in an update from Instagram to clarify their terms in a post with the “please stop shouting at us!” title Thank you, and we’re listening. But as Faruk Ateş points out in What Instagram did wrong:

Bad language is merely a symptom of the bigger mistake they made. Their failure lies in not acknowledging—or understanding—the change in expectations that took place amongst their users when they sold themselves to Facebook for a billion dollars. […]

Once you sell to a frequently-criticized juggernaut like Facebook, users’ expectations change from supportive to skeptic, and, especially because of Facebook’s long history of privacy-related mishaps, you may very well lose all benefit of the doubt amongst some of your users.

Oh, how many PR disasters could be avoided if companies would learn to respect their users, and be more in touch with their needs and goals…