My name is Aleksandr Kalininskiy and I'm currently a junior in CALS. I was a biochemistry major for the last two years but am now thinking of switching over to information science and this is one of the initial courses I have to take.
A little bit about myself - I was born in Minsk, Belarus ("the last dictatorship of Eastern Europe") and moved to NYC in '98. I went to Brooklyn Technical High School and was set on working my way up to a PhD in Chemistry but my interests changed and I switched to Biology here in CALS early on.
Sometime last semester I realized that the science research career path wasn't right for me either so I've been quickly working on getting my Info Sci requirements done. This happened because I was working for CIT since my freshmen year and all the IT/Information things I saw at work really got my interest.
When I'm not in class or CIT, I like to go outdoors, swim and play tennis or handball. I tend to follow tennis as much as possible - back in the good old days of HS I played in several tournaments and trained daily. Unfortunately that took a back seat to my edumacation and my skills have seriously deteriorated over the years.
I'm also a huge poetry lover. I religiously re-read T.S. Eliot poems weekly because every time I will see something new in them. If you haven't been exposed to Eliot yet, enjoy one of his most famous poems:
That's about the gist of it. I can very clearly see that Web Applications and novel uses of the Interwebs are the future. So one of the reasons why I'm taking this course is to understand what makes the web tick. I want to know why Digg, facebook, gmail, etc worked and why Friendster did not. Whatever I end up doing in the future will inevitably involve computers and the internet so hopefully after finishing this course I will be able to take advantage of the web much more than I do now.
The internet phenomenon that I am currently interested in is email addiction. I've seen this happen to myself and several of my friends - as the number of messages you receive in your inbox increases on a daily basis, you become more and more dependent on your email account. As time goes buy, you want everything to be via email and won't consider other things as legitimate unless you were CC'd on the exchange.
At that point, you have to constantly check your email because without it you are functionless. The inbox becomes something of a giant to-do list. This email addiction makes me personally quite dependent on computers and if I don't check my email every ~2 hours I become quite nervous and agitated.
What I have noticed is that Gmail in particular has built their service around that addiction. Some Gmail features that show this include: storing **all** your email by default; quick Google search which makes storing all your email actually work; conversations, which tend to group related email messages together so all comments discussing a single topic stay in one simple view.
Every person whom I've introduced to Gmail have become much more dependent on email as a means to keep track of events, contact friends, etc. I don't check facebook until Gmail tells me there is something worthwhile. I don't read news stories until I receive my daily top stories email from CNN.
Now, RSS and IM with chat logging can accomplish the same thing - but email puts some pressure off of me because I don't have to reply immediately.
In any case, I think this falls under a "life management" online space - sites and web applications that help you deal with and parse all the different events, news and discussions in your life.
Thanks for listening,
-Aleksandr
**post title is in reference to flight of the conchordes**
2 comments:
I switched over to Information Science last semester and highly recommend it.
I think the paradigm of email is in an interesting place right now. I agree with you for many people inboxes have become a giant to do list. Some people even send themselves emails to remind them of tasks to do. The asynchronous nature of email makes it easy to become overloaded with tasks if we haven’t checked email in a while. However a plus side to this is that there is a built in delay in which emails come in and when we need to reply. There is a strange etiquette when it comes to the speed in which replies are made.
Cell phone calls normally must be returned as soon as possible , unless you either have an excuse that puts you away from your phone or it’s a crazy ex girlfriend. Landline calls are another story
Text messages have up to two hours of leeway depending on urgency, it would be unreasonable to wait a day to return a text message
Instant messages need to be replied to under 5 minutes or you assume the other person is away from their keyboard
Facebook wall posts have the coolness buffer, you are uncool if you reply in under 5 minutes but everybody knows that you probably check your wall as soon as you get that email
Email automatically has a buffer of a day. Additional time can be added to this depending on how long you procrastinate. Two to three days turnaround time is not out of the question and you can go up to a week and a half if you make it seem like you have been busy. My favorite thing to do with emails when trying to whittle down my to do list is to ask for more information or clarification and use the 1-2 day buffer to my advantage.
Heyy Aleksandr. I am not going to lie, what originally drew me to your post was your amazing title. I absolutely love flight of the concords and actually mentioned them in my blog as well. I already told the class and the world in my blog already, but since you’re a fan, I’ll say it again; I can do a near perfect rendition of Jenny (specializing in Jermaine’s part). Awesome blog post. I really enjoyed your concept of email, specifically Gmail, and how it is becoming increasingly addictive. Gmail is one of the more interesting cases concerning email. I currently switched to Gmail last year and haven’t looked back. The application that really made me, like you say in your blog, email addicted was the gchat feature. It’s great because it is very discrete, more so than AIM, and it got me through many long days at work this summer. I completely identify with what you were saying about feeling dependent on your email. For the first 6 days at Cornell this year, I didn’t have internet and I felt very anxious. I had nightmares that my inbox was filling up faster than bacteria in a Petri dish. Again, great post and keep on watching flight because they are great. If you haven’t already, check out all their live performances on You Tube; they are much better than the versions of the songs on the show.
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