Note: This is very much waffle.

The other day I began thinking about deleting my Facebook account, simply because I believe I spend too much time on it, I don’t consider myself as an excessive user, not in the slightest, although it has become what television used to be for me, a place you didn’t have to think about anything, and although you are aware of how mind numbing the whole experience is you do very little about it. In some ways Facebook is too easy, it has to be the service simply wouldn’t be used otherwise.

It got me thinking however; it is a vital form of communication for a huge percentage of people, can you ‘live’ without it?
For me; instant messaging has always been my main form of communication. Text, phone and email have always come behind that. Facebook fits into all of those categories, which I imagine is Facebook’s intention, the whole company relies solely on their users data, without it the company would be nothing, merging all of these inputs allows them to become the main source for all information, and in some respects, control all the information people read everyday, if all your friends begin to ‘like’ websites with the famous ‘thumbs up’ logo, (which is even included on the bottom of this page) why do you need to look anywhere else, when all the key information you might want to see is all on one page. Obviously this has two sides; the information consumers and the content creators, in theory both have much to gain from this approach, consumers will have a much more refined content, content in which they are more likely to be interested in. Content creators should have access to a readership that will be larger and more loyal, consumers are more likely to keep going back if the information is based on their interests.

Have you ever stop to consider how much of everyone’s lives are now accessible from the other side of the world? Stalking has become available from the comfort of ones armchair! To Facebook’s defence everyone has the ability to control the amount of information, other people have access to. These privacy settings have become more accessible over the past few months, although it still requires to delve into a few menus to find all the settings.
A large majority of users willing add new ‘friends’ without a second notice, without the full knowledge of who the person is, how long do you think it will take that person to capture the information about; Where you live? Where you work? Or even your current location? About as long as you take to read this piece that I have written on your screens?

We are creating live archives of our lives, the history of our lives will be more accessible than any other generation, what is the significance of this? Is this the innovation of modern day design, rather than creating physical objects like in the past, it is cloud based and the innovation lies in the way in which we access this information. We cannot be ignorant to the fact that all this information will be biased, but what in history isn’t? The difference will be that less interpretation will needed in relation to our current view of the past.

/end of waffle.

I’ve always found it interesting to look though the areas that people create work in; particularly those of designers and artists, I think it produces a better image of the person, and in a way, the way in which they work.

Thought I’d post a few images of where I work, someone might feel the same way as I do? Admittedly I do like to have more stuff, things that I like to believe ‘inspire’ though being a University room there is a limit on car space to actually get it all here!