The Burrow

I found the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project's 2009 Predictions Survey on Time Goes By and found myself waxing eloquent while making predictions on issues I know nothing about. Nor did I have any notion if what I was saying was true. But it was fun to rant and rave in someone else's venue... and the instructions said that they'd take you more seriously if you started the screed with your name. THAT gave me cause for pause. Was I me myself going to be answering the questions or would Ashleigh weigh in? Because this felt somewhat less public than the Burrow , and because it seemed scholarly and worldly, A/B took a back seat and I was on my way..... though with the question of identity firmly lodged in my brain. Will Google make us stupid? I giggle now when I think of it. It's a great question. It's also not an easy one, and I wanted to get it right. The pressure was on. From "how will we think" the survey moved on to ...

{ *'s are defined at the end of the post for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about} ******************************* I haven't been in a "fastest growing" sector of a demographic in a long, long time. Now, however, I am apparently quite trendy. According to Inside Facebook , women over 55 are the fastest growing sector of the Facebook " audience" . Initially, Facebook was as foreign to me as Twitter is today. The Big Cuter was amongst the first to join, back when you needed a college email account to belong. The Little Cuter borrowed my .edu address and she, too, by her senior year in high school, was publishing information about herself on-line. TBG and I didn't do a very thorough job monitoring the content; we spent more time worrying about her social life in the real world than we did with her on-line activities. Facebook seemed "classier" than MySpace, and the problems with MySpace had not reached the criti...

Explaining Twitter to TBG today over lunch, I began to think about popularity. He'd asked me how people knew about your tweets. "Depends on how popular you are, I guess." But then I wondered, if you tweet and no one cares are you really anyplace at all? Living in the fast lane, being off the grid, achieving your 15 minutes of fame -- these I understand. Assessing your social status based on the number of Facebook friends you've acquired is a little more difficult for me. Some of it is generational, I know. In my age cohort it is still acceptable to eschew social networking sites. I think I am friends with everyone in my address book who's also on Facebook, but that is nowhere near the totality of people with whom I am in contact. I wish they all used it (the birthday reminders are especially lovely!) but they don't and I understand why. The idea that everyone else would care that you'd finished exams or gone to the dentist or (my favorite) were bo...

Can someone explain to me why the SAT is advertising on Facebook? I'm really confused. Going to college - you know about the test. Live in a family that pays half an ounce of attention to the world around it - you know about the test. Attend high school - you know about the test. Have older siblings - you know about the test. You really don't need to be reminded. "The one, the only - the SAT". As if it were a fancy car - the Ferrari of tests - something to which everyone would aspire. It's cool. It's hip. It's your friend - "There are scarier things than the SAT - like having your Mom chaperone the prom" . And it's physically attractive. At least the ad is. So, I'm 15 and I'm hooked. Forget the ACT. I'll sign up. I promise. Is ETS using high school kids to pressure colleges to retain the test as an admissions tool? After all, if you've paid to take the thing, and studied for it, and stayed up nights worrying abo...