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I want to address four key life stages that i think are relevant to folks interested in social media: 1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees)

Life stages are not simply biological - they are socially constructed, legally enforced, and architecturally bounded. Life stages are generalizations - they do not apply to everyone, but at the same time, they are constructed as "normative" by society. This is why Hollywood can make movies called "The 40-year-old Virgin" and everyone laughs. Because life stages are primarily socially constructed, they are bounded by culture.

Should we build technology to promote what we believe should be people's priorities? Or should we build technology that supports the priorities that most people have?

The spells of technology are complicating the magic of people. Architecture is getting altered. While people adapt the technologies to meet their needs, their lives have to adapt to the ways in which the technology alters reality. It's a confusing time and technology is playing a huge role in the confusion.

The reason that i bring these corporate practices up is because they really affect how systems are designed, deployed, and allowed to evolve. If you want to think about people, you need to understand how technological and corporate decisions interface with people's lives and practices. Who are the real stakeholders? The users or the stockholders?

when people engage with technology, amazing things happen. The magic isn't the technology... it's the stories and connections, the sharing and ideas. It's the way these technologies serve people's lives. More importantly, it's the way technologies serve the lives of *everyday people*, not just technologists.

This is quite different from the society that you and i were used to growing up. We were used to having walls. We assumed that the norms were set by the environment and that you behaved differently in synagogue than in the pub and that was AOK. Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls. The walls have come crumbling down. You can cross through spaces with the click of a few keystrokes and it's impossible to know what speech will spread where. The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.

So how do we cope? Most people go with the ostrich solution. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right? If you don't see the strangers staring at your virtual existence, they don't exist, right? The other proposed solution is being a luddite - avoiding all technology. Either way, we're talking avoidance.

If you want to understand the success of a social technology, you can't stare at the technology. You need to understand the social practices that make it flourish. Technologies succeed when they support what people already do, what they want to do, and what they're required to do. Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.

 I want to address four key life stages that i think are relevant to folks interested in social media: 1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth) 2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings) 3) Societal contribution (aka "adults") 4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees)

Should we build technology to promote what we believe should be people's priorities? Or should we build technology that supports the priorities that most people have?

Problem is that technology is more often the property of a corporation, not the passion of an individual. Corporations have different incentives, often umbrella-ed under the mythical "shareholders." Shareholders want monetization and growth. Monetization requires that a particular group obsess over your technology, either to willingly dish out fees to use it or to be so active that they might click on ads. Growth demands that you can't really target a niche population - you need to go for the masses.

The reason that i bring these corporate practices up is because they really affect how systems are designed, deployed, and allowed to evolve. If you want to think about people, you need to understand how technological and corporate decisions interface with people's lives and practices. Who are the real stakeholders? The users or the stockholders?

 when people engage with technology, amazing things happen. The magic isn't the technology... it's the stories and connections, the sharing and ideas. It's the way these technologies serve people's lives. More importantly, it's the way technologies serve the lives of *everyday people*, not just technologists.

This is quite different from the society that you and i were used to growing up. We were used to having walls. We assumed that the norms were set by the environment and that you behaved differently in synagogue than in the pub and that was AOK. Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls. The walls have come crumbling down. You can cross through spaces with the click of a few keystrokes and it's impossible to know what speech will spread where. The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.

This is quite different from the society that you and i were used to growing up. We were used to having walls. We assumed that the norms were set by the environment and that you behaved differently in synagogue than in the pub and that was AOK. Context was key but context depends on there being walls. Online, there are no walls. The walls have come crumbling down. You can cross through spaces with the click of a few keystrokes and it's impossible to know what speech will spread where. The moment a conversation spreads, it changes contexts.

So how do we cope? Most people go with the ostrich solution. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right? If you don't see the strangers staring at your virtual existence, they don't exist, right? The other proposed solution is being a luddite - avoiding all technology. Either way, we're talking avoidance.