Author Danah Boyd on why teens and social media are 'complicated' (podcast)
When it comes to understanding how teens use social media, there's perhaps no one more clued in than Danah Boyd, except maybe teens themselves. An ethnographer with a Ph.D. in information from the University of California at Berkeley, she has spent the last eight years speaking with and observing teens from all walks of life.Boyd's new book, "It's Complicated: The social lives of networked teens," is the culmination of this work where, as she writes, she attempts to "describe and explain the networked lives of teens to the people who worry about them -- parents, teachers, policy makers, journalists, and sometimes even other teens."To gather material for the book, she traveled through the United States from 2005 to 2012, meeting with teens from 18 states among "a wide array of socioeconomic and ethnic communities." And frankly, Boyd is one of the relatively few people in the social media space who goes out of her to way be inclusive. It really is complicatedAs the title of the book implies, understanding teens' use of social media can't be reduced to a sound bite, nor can the benefits or dangers of modern technology. As Boyd observes, "Technologies are often heralded as the solution to major world problems. When those solutions fail to transpire, people are disillusioned. That can prompt a backlash, as people focus on the terrible things that may occur because of those same technologies.""It's Complicated" focuses on teens' online lives.Full disclosure: Although Boyd and I have no business or financial relationship, we have interacted over the years as co-speakers at events and in 2008 and 2009 when we both served on the Harvard Berkman Center's Internet Safety Technology Task Force. The book covers a wide range of topics related to teens and tech, including identity, privacy, addiction, danger, bullying, inequality, literacy, and "searching for a public of their own."At the start our interview (scroll down to listen), Boyd pointed out that "young people have turned to social media because their lives have been so heavily restricted." There was a time when kids could get on their bikes on a Saturday morning and come back before dark, but those days are largely over. Teens, as Boyd said in the interview and in the book, "don't have that opportunity, so they've turned to social media to hang out and socialize with their friends."Of course, Boyd does address parental anxieties, but asks, "How much of this is based on reality and how much of this is magnified in unpredictable ways? How do we get at what's really happening?" She said that her research involved "trying to figure out what [teens are] really doing, why, and how it fits into a broader context."ContextThat context is important when looking at what teens post online. In the book, Boyd observes that "unfortunately, adults sometimes believe that they understand what they see online without considering how teens imagined the context when they originally posted a particular photograph or comment." Think of your own social lives where you might say things differently to a group of close friends than you would to your boss. What may seem incredibly inappropriate in one context may be perfectly acceptable in another.BullyingBoyd's chapter on bullying is must-reading for any adult who worries that today's youth are habitually mistreating their peers online. "During my fieldwork, I met parents who saw every act of teasing as bullying, even when their children did not. At the other extreme, news media has taken to describing serious criminal acts of aggression by teens as bullying rather than using terms like stalking, harassment, or abuse."As she points out, "interpersonal conflicts emerge and teens participate in battles over reputation, status, and popularity. Attention becomes a commodity, and at times, teens participate in drama or pranks that can be intentionally or accidentally hurtful to others. Not all drama or gossip is problematic, but some of what teens experience is quite painful." In other words, like all other topics in her book, "It's Complicated."For more of Boyd's thoughts, click below to listen to our 13-minute interview. Listen nowYour browser does not support the audio element.Subscribe now:iTunes (audio) |RSS (audio)
Oracle signals change of tone about cloud
Oracle signals change of tone about cloud
However, when it comes to cloud computing, Oracle has taken a fairly "arm's length" position. CEO Larry Ellison's famous "cloud is fashion" rant sort of set the tone for the company's perceived skepticism toward the cloud model.Apparently, that's all about to change. According to TechTarget, Oracle is preparing a public-relations onslaught, intended to change the perception of Oracle as cloud critic. According to the article, in the Webcast Oracle hosted last week to discuss its strategy for the Sun assets, Ellison explained:Said Ellison: "Everything's called cloud now. If you're in the data center, it's a private cloud. There's nothing left but cloud computing. People say I'm against cloud computing--how can I be against cloud computing when that's all there is?"He also stressed what will doubtless become another key Oracle message, which is that Oracle software (and soon hardware) powers other people's clouds.That statement says a lot about the behavior we've seen from Oracle over the last year, especially with respect to the Sun acquisition. When originally announced, I suggested to some that Oracle would shed the hardware business, and concentrate on the virtualization and cloud capabilities (as well as the customer base and channels) that they acquired. I was wrong. Instead, Oracle seems to be focusing on Sun's infrastructure portfolio, including servers, storage, and virtualization, shedding the cloud offerings altogether.Sun's chief technology officer of cloud computing, Lew Tucker, has already left Oracle, and this week, there are reports that Oracle executives have confirmed the demise of Sun's reborn Network.com offering. The service, once hosted in the Las Vegas-based SuperNAP data center, was taken off the market soon after it went to beta testing, as Oracle announced its intent to acquire Sun.The now-defunct cloud infrastructure service was a replacement for Sun's earlier failed grid offering of $1 per CPU-hour, and it was targeted at developers looking to create new applications and businesses expressly for the cloud. The service was acclaimed by a number of developers that had a chance to use it, and it is reported to have hosted 13 customers and 48 applications before its demise.Without an infrastructure service of its own, Oracle seems to be taking a tack with which I'm quite familiar, given my role at Cisco Systems: being an arms dealer to the stars of cloud computing. Ellison mentioned Oracle's role in Salesforce.com and iTunes during last week's Webcast, and it has been offering its database software on Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service for well more than a year.What remains to be seen is what, exactly, Oracle will offer the cloud world. Based on Ellison's tone, it may be playing a "business as usual" game, with the obvious addition of data center hardware to its portfolio. In fact, some evidence supports this direction, as Oracle recently presented a cloud vision in a Webinar that claims, among other things, that Oracle already has a "private PaaS," or platform as a service, portfolio based on its existing application server, database, Linux, and virtualization products.However, with the Sun acquisition, Oracle received one of the best open-source virtualization offerings out there, as well as a variety of cloud computing-related software (including the Q-Layer automation platform). Will it offer a private cloud user experience of its own?In the end, Ellison's love-hate relationship with the term "cloud computing" may provide a short-term PR challenge, but it will likely do little to damage the impact of Oracle's products on the cloud-computing landscape.
However, when it comes to cloud computing, Oracle has taken a fairly "arm's length" position. CEO Larry Ellison's famous "cloud is fashion" rant sort of set the tone for the company's perceived skepticism toward the cloud model.Apparently, that's all about to change. According to TechTarget, Oracle is preparing a public-relations onslaught, intended to change the perception of Oracle as cloud critic. According to the article, in the Webcast Oracle hosted last week to discuss its strategy for the Sun assets, Ellison explained:Said Ellison: "Everything's called cloud now. If you're in the data center, it's a private cloud. There's nothing left but cloud computing. People say I'm against cloud computing--how can I be against cloud computing when that's all there is?"He also stressed what will doubtless become another key Oracle message, which is that Oracle software (and soon hardware) powers other people's clouds.That statement says a lot about the behavior we've seen from Oracle over the last year, especially with respect to the Sun acquisition. When originally announced, I suggested to some that Oracle would shed the hardware business, and concentrate on the virtualization and cloud capabilities (as well as the customer base and channels) that they acquired. I was wrong. Instead, Oracle seems to be focusing on Sun's infrastructure portfolio, including servers, storage, and virtualization, shedding the cloud offerings altogether.Sun's chief technology officer of cloud computing, Lew Tucker, has already left Oracle, and this week, there are reports that Oracle executives have confirmed the demise of Sun's reborn Network.com offering. The service, once hosted in the Las Vegas-based SuperNAP data center, was taken off the market soon after it went to beta testing, as Oracle announced its intent to acquire Sun.The now-defunct cloud infrastructure service was a replacement for Sun's earlier failed grid offering of $1 per CPU-hour, and it was targeted at developers looking to create new applications and businesses expressly for the cloud. The service was acclaimed by a number of developers that had a chance to use it, and it is reported to have hosted 13 customers and 48 applications before its demise.Without an infrastructure service of its own, Oracle seems to be taking a tack with which I'm quite familiar, given my role at Cisco Systems: being an arms dealer to the stars of cloud computing. Ellison mentioned Oracle's role in Salesforce.com and iTunes during last week's Webcast, and it has been offering its database software on Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service for well more than a year.What remains to be seen is what, exactly, Oracle will offer the cloud world. Based on Ellison's tone, it may be playing a "business as usual" game, with the obvious addition of data center hardware to its portfolio. In fact, some evidence supports this direction, as Oracle recently presented a cloud vision in a Webinar that claims, among other things, that Oracle already has a "private PaaS," or platform as a service, portfolio based on its existing application server, database, Linux, and virtualization products.However, with the Sun acquisition, Oracle received one of the best open-source virtualization offerings out there, as well as a variety of cloud computing-related software (including the Q-Layer automation platform). Will it offer a private cloud user experience of its own?In the end, Ellison's love-hate relationship with the term "cloud computing" may provide a short-term PR challenge, but it will likely do little to damage the impact of Oracle's products on the cloud-computing landscape.
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