After two friends asked me to join Friendster, I finally gave in. It’s a well-designed site that enables friends to explore one another’s social circles and make new friends. Yet I resent it and other sites like it. I think now I know why: I don’t like it when a site assumes that what’s implicit can be made explicit without loss. Friendster asks me to do so twice over.

First, to jump into Friendster, I have to make explicit a social network that at its heart and at its best is implicit. There’s an online social network lying unearthed in my inbox and outbox. Why do I have to reassemble it, person by person, for Friendster? And if Friendster doesn’t work out, do I do it again for the next attempt? That would be a pain in the ass, but because it involves persuading my friends to sign up, it’s asking others to get pains in their asses.

Then Friendster asks me to describe myself. Gender, age, occupation all are no problem. But then there are my interests, my favorite music, favorite TV shows and “about me.” I don’t actually have an internal list of favorite music so I can’t simply make explicit what was implicit all along. I’d have to fabricate a list and do so pretty much without context. Bach? Ellington? Beck? Two measures of a Keith Jarrett improvisation that took me totally by surprise? The time I cried when listening to kd lang even though she never moved me again? The song I whistle (“Octopus’ Garden”) in the shower even though I don’t like it?

“Making explicit” rarely means simply unearthing what’s lying there unearthed. It means creating something new. That’s why the best service technicians aren’t necessarily the best teachers: there’s no such thing as humans doing a “data dump.”

I know this sounds like a rather abstract reason for not liking a well-designed site such as Friendster. But the abstraction is from a very concrete experience: facing a Web page that wants me to list my favorite friends, my favorite books, my favorite music. I can’t because I don’t really have an internal set of bookmarks I can simply externalize. And I wouldn’t if I could.

I am well aware that in another blog entry today I refered to “Art and Illusion” as one of my favorite books. But that doesn’t imply I have a list of favorites. In fact, when confronted with Friendster’s demand that I list favorites, “Art and Illusion” didn’t occur to me.

Categories: Uncategorized dw