Techophilia and Social Progress

I read this article and was really impressed Danah Boyd’s opinion in the difference of users on MySpace and Facebook. Basically, she points out that “alter I think I’ve noticed in the work I do with Aboriginal youth that the urban population uses MySpace whereas the on-reserve population uses Hi5 and Beboe. So I guess the approach to understanding why might be to look at this from an anthropological point of view of socio-economics and class. But I think class is hard to pin down, but it is an issue. But so many of the youth are in the same marginalized class it’s hard to pin down. Within a lower socio-economic class, there are differences too, and that is where I am also interested in thinking about. Anyway, I also thought Danah’s points about the ‘bling’ aesthetic very true as I also tie this a lot to the youth I work with. The love for the overkill and the flashy is very true!

An interesting new study by Pew Research to categorize people according to their technology consumption. Here’s my profile.. could you have guessed?

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.

Basic Description
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

Defining Characteristics
You might see them watching video on an iPod. They might talk about their video games or their participation in virtual worlds the way their parents talked about their favorite TV episode a generation ago. Much of this chatter will take place via instant messages, texting on a cell phone, or on personal blogs. Omnivores are particularly active in dealing with video content. Most have video or digital cameras, and most have tried watching TV on a non-television device, such as a laptop or a cell phone.

Omnivores embrace all this connectivity, feeling confident in how they manage information and their many devices. This puts information technology at the center of how they express themselves, do their jobs, and connect to their friends.

Who They Are
They are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.