Your own piece of internet

I have two Twitters, three email addresses, two RSS feeds (through my two Google accounts) and two blogs. If I could get away with having more than one Facebook, I probably would. Our class has discussed these communication tools at length, and more times than not, conclude that these are great ways to reach a large number of people in a relatively small amount of time. Instead of calling a dozen friends for a movie, I can send a single email (or Facebook message). Instead of spending half an hour on the phone with each of my friends from home, I can send out short messages on Twitter.

But sometimes reaching a large number of people is a problem. I've had a Twitter for about a month now, but I recently set up a second account to stay in touch with my parents. Why? Well, the first Twitter is for a few close friends, and sometimes has updates like "I think I failed that test" or "That was a great concert" (posted at 3 am) -- both things I don't want my parents to see. The same goes for my email addresses: one is for school/professional contacts, one is for websites and acquaintances, and one is for close friends. And while the blog I'm updating right now is for my HONR229F seminar, "New Media Frontiers;" I have an entirely different one for writing about music. ...So even though I started out with one Twitter, one email address, and one blog, I've found that I have to add different versions of the same tools depending on my "audience."

The necessity of creating multiple online personas is no more clearly demonstrated than in the case of Facebook. Time and time again, we college students hear, "Be careful what you put on Facebook, employers can and will find your profile." While I don't have any innappropriate photos up, I've deleted several wall comments because a well-meaning friend hinted at something I'd rather keep private. Creating one internet profile that all the world can see solves a lot of the old problems, but also creates new ones.

Likewise, communicating through multiple Twitters, emails, and blogs can get confusing. It's a hassle to constantly sign in and out of Twitter, and when I feel like procrastinating, it's pretty tempting to rotate through my various email inboxes. And I'm not the only one; most of my good friends (you know, the ones I write to from email address #3) do the same thing.

What I find really interesting: even though all these communication tools aim to reconcile our contacts into one all-inclusive, "convenient" social network, we still naturally separate people into categories.

New nostalgia

My mom is not the most technologically-literate person. She bought an iPod, but had trouble understanding the click-and-drop concept for transferring files to it. She's owned a cell phone for about three years now, but no matter how many times I show her how to check her voicemail, she never gets my messages. So you can imagine my surprise when, this past winter break, she called me over to the computer: "Anna, come here! It's Seville!"

I looked at the screen. And she was right; the streets of Seville were there, albeit in pixelated, two-dimensional form. My mom had discovered Google Maps, and instead of searching for her office or our house, her first instinct led her to the city where she studied abroad in college. I sat down next to her as she "led" me past her old apartment, the bar where she and her friends would get drinks, the corner grocery store... I had heard my mom speak nostalgically of Seville many times, and actually seeing images of these fabled places was almost as moving for me as it was for her.

But emotions aside, I was particularly interested in my mom's use of technology. I didn't teach her how to use Google Maps, and unlike an iPod or cell phone, she wasn't using it to simplify her life. It did, however, give her a good hour or so of enjoyment and cathartic nostalgia. I would compare it to any of the number of the other means we have for reliving events in our lives: photos, souvenirs, rereading diaries or letters, calling up an old friend. Yes, Google Maps is far more interactive than a photograph; but in my opinion, both serve the same purpose. Google Maps is just my mom's new way of living an old feeling: nostalgia.

The Radio Star

I'm currently sitting at my desk, painstakingly filling out an application to intern at NPR this summer. (This is my third try; I used a funny shade of ink on the first one, and accidentally bent page three of the second one. In other words? I really really want this internship.) I was inspired to apply after I got my first show at WMUC 88.1, our college radio station. While I had always worked behind the scenes, reviewing CDs and attending meetings sporadically, it wasn't until this past winter I decided to get my own show.

Needless to say, I love it. So much so that I decided to forgo the summer-music-program-in-the-mountains route that every music major takes (and the one I have taken since I was eleven), and apply for this internship. Long hours spent recording audition tapes have been replaced by late nights sweating over the resume I just slapped together this weekend.

These internships are competitive; everyone knows who NPR is, and I'm sure legions of other similarly-qualified college sophomores are filling out their own applications at this very minute (10:55 pm).

But my question is, why radio? There are plenty of media out there that do what radio does, only better. What's the point of listening to music chosen by a stranger (or worse, a computer) when you could build your very own playlist? Why listen to deadpan news reports when Stephen Colbert can shout about the news from your TV? With so many more "advanced" choices, radio shouldn't still have the hold that it does. And yet, here I am: filling out an application for what is somehow a competitive internship.

I think this has a lot to do with the "Traditional Media Renaissance" discussion our class has going on on Blackboard. For all practical purposes, radio is dead. We can get our entertainment elsewhere, and it's generally far more realistic, interactive entertainment. TV and the internet provide us with music and news, and our array of networking systems provide us with all the person-to-person contact we need.

But this explanation is too rational. It ignores our natural tendency towards nostalgia. This past summer, I spent seven weeks at a music school in upstate New York called Meadowmount. It was unbelievably isolated -- never mind no cell phone reception or air conditioning, this place didn't have a zip code. But one of the things I missed the most was the background noise of the radio. When I was growing up, it was always on -- eating meals, getting ready for school, reading in the other room. It's almost as if radio was a real person in the room, the fourth family member. I may have not listened to everything that was said, but knowing that someone several miles away was saying it in real time was somehow comforting. I can't get that from a playlist or TV show.

Radio still exists because of its inherent value as a media, not simply because of its content. I've assigned my own romanticized role to radio, and millions of others have assigned theirs. This is why a seemingly outdated technology still exists (albeit on a smaller scale), and probably won't be replaced by newer technologies any time soon. We listen to radio because it is old-fashioned, not in spite of it.