Web-roullete

These two articles show some of the differences that technology is having on our world.

Old Guard: You can cherry pick your preferred corporate soundbite from this article (CNN usually does its best to offer up an assortment of them): fear time over flex time, working hard is the new working dumb, etc. Either way, it's hard to argue that economic induced anxieties wouldn't cause anyone to act out of fear to try to save their jobs, and it's only natural for today's workforce to respond by putting in more hours clutching to their desks under the fluorescent light for safety.

New Guard: Compare that mentality to this website created by a 17-year old Russian high school student, Andrey Ternovskiy. Chatroulette (feel free to link to the site here, but you might want to read on first) is a site that allows users to connect randomly to other users around the world via webcam. Built over three days on an old computer in Ternovskiy's bedroom, the site launched in November of 2009, and by February had attracted 30 million unique visitors with over one million new visits each day. There's also a map showing where each unique visitor is located around the world. Going on the site is a strange exercise, and I'm not sure what sort of interaction anyone would be getting out of this other than satisfying one's curiosity. There is a "report" button on the site to deter offensive users (though the penalty for being reported three times is a 10 minute timeout from access to the site, hardly a deterrent). Chatroulette is appropriately named after the Russian roulette scene in Deerhunter, as the upside seems fairly limited given what you are exposing yourself to.

In any case, I thought this was an interesting contrast of the worlds we live in. There are those clinging to their desk jobs, and there are those who build websites in three days that attract the world's attention in just a few month's time.