Relationship Similarity Quotient

Despite all my personal research being wholly qualitative, my geeky character has always quite liked quantitative data (but I don't usually shout about this).

In a recent conversation, I was talking about the way in which couples need a certain degree of difference for their relationship to be successful. One of my interlocutors was trying to suggest percentage differences: for example, there should be 40% similarity and 60% difference for a successful relationship.

As everyone knows, statistics can be used to prove anything, and this seemed to be one of those instances in which they are used in a meaningless manner. However, I was duly reminded of something I noticed several years ago when considering my wife's and my Facebook profiles.

I have 539 Facebook friends (and obviously, for 'friends', read 'acquaintances', I know much research has gone into the number of real friendships a person can maintain). My wife has 554 friends (ditto), but out of this fairly similar number only 191 are 'mutual friends'.

Realistically, I know that 'life-similarity' cannot be measured quantitatively, but I wondered what these Facebook statistics could show. I therefore propose a relationship similarity quotient (RSQ), calculated as follows (without mathematical symbols as I do not know how to include them in Blogger):

Average number of friends = ( My total friends + Partner's total friends ) / 2

( Total mutual friends / Average number of friends ) * 100 = RSQ

Or, in figures,

546.5 = ( 539 + 554 ) / 2

( 191 / 546.5 ) * 100 = 34.9

At the time of writing, my wife and I therefore have a RSQ of 34.9 (or a little over a third of our lives).

I know there is a big difference between what I am terming 'friends' and 'acquaintances', but this difference is also the heart of where our independent lives live and the difference is therefore relevant as a part of the RSQ.

I propose this out of genuine interest, although also in the spirit of more light-hearted mathematical amusement. I would be interested to know other people's RSQ (and it can, of course, be used to measure any relationship, not just with your significant other). If you are happy to comment with your RSQ and the relationship you have measured, it might be possible to discover a relatively fixed range of RSQs for different types of relationships.

This is obviously a very simplistic measure, and the ages of the people involved can have an impact on the result, along with the way they chose to use Facebook and therefore the way in which they add friends and acquaintances. However, as a starting point, it would be interesting to see how well it works, or to hear thoughts from those qualified to comment on statistics!

The Missing Days

Having left East Midlands Airport on Monday morning to fly to Malaga and then drive to Granada, I left Internet access behind until Thursday evening. However, trying to keep my Facebook status up to date means that I regularly find myself thinking in terms of status updates. I therefore collected my thoughts about our three days in Granada:

• Richard is unsure how people with such little knowledge of Spanish driving laws can be allowed to hire cars. He is nevertheless going to get into the driver’s seat with confidence and aplomb. When he remembers which side of the car it is on.
• Richard feels that six forward gears on a hire car is at least one too many.
• Richard has a bruised left hand from hitting it against the car door every time he tried to change gear.
• Richard thinks that roadworks, an outdated satnav, and black and white copies of Google maps are not an ideal solution to navigating around Granada.
• Richard has now calmed down enough to appreciate a lovely hotel.
• Richard realises that he knows no Spanish words.
• Richard now believes what the guidebooks say about nowhere opening until 8pm to serve food.
• Richard has fallen foul of the tourist trapping terrace and is paying an additional 10% for the privilege of sitting next to a smoker and having a stray dog run around his feet.
• Richard found his dinner unsatisfactory, but has learnt the hard way what ‘raciones’ meant when he just wanted a supplementary snack.
• Richard never ceases to be amazed at the vulgarity of the decoration of Catholic cathedrals around Europe.
• Richard enjoyed watching unsuspecting people having rosemary foisted upon them outside the Cathedral as it made him feel smug for reading the back of the local map.
• Richard feels very virtuous for having walked so far up hill in the sweltering heat, but – unlike his wife – is not entirely convinced the views are worth it.
• Richard is embracing the concept of a siesta.
• Richard was impressed by the barman’s spatial ability allowing him to write the entire order upside down on the bar in order to work out the total.
• Richard feels that sitting inside at the bar of last night’s restaurant getting served free tapas with every drink is the way in which Spanish food should be enjoyed.
• Richard has been asked to record his wife’s delight at discovering Prosecco is served on the tap next to the beer pump.
• Richard has now added the word ‘cerveza’ to his collection of Spanish.
• Richard feels that getting a different tapas dish with each drink is akin to completing the levels of a computer game.
• Richard has been tricked into visiting an Arabic bath by his wife. He will report back later.
• Richard is pleased to report that warm and hot baths, a steam room, a somewhat terrifying exfoliation and massage made up a very enjoyable couple of hours.
• Richard thinks that hookahs on the table distance Moorish tea shops from English tea shops.
• Richard thinks the Moroccan tea his wife chose from would be more suited to a roast leg of lamb. He hopes she is regretting pooh-poohing his choice of Pakistani tea with milk.
• Richard has been forced to admit that Pakistani tea with milk is not really Earl Grey.
• Richard has enjoyed another siesta: only this time lying on a bench like a tramp while his wife went shopping.
• Richard feels that trying to find bars which give free tapas by ordering a beer in each one is a dangerous game when there is no free tapas.
• Richard is pleased to have found free tapas, but is a little disappointed that having no seats inside makes it a short visit.
• Richard has changed bars and is unimpressed by the claims of ‘traditional homemade tapas’ on a chalk board outside.
• Richard has fallen back on the safety of yesterday’s bar for free tapas as he’s getting hungry. He is, however, a little saddened to have started at level one again.
• Richard can now count the words of Spanish he knows on the fingers of one hand.
• Richard is pleased to have avoided the lengthy queues at the Alhambra having picked up his tickets from a cash point yesterday.
• Richard thinks the Alhambra is very pretty, but tessellation can get a little repetitive.
• Richard is pleased he remembered which side the driver’s door was when leaving the hotel car park to embark on the drive to Sotogrande after a glorious few days in Granada.

The Online and Offline Self

Cyberspace is viewed by many critics as a utopian, consequence-free playground where people can experiment with their identity, and the recent case of Tom MacMaster, the male, married, mature American student at Edinburgh University who was posing as the young, lesbian, Syrian blogger, Amina Abdullah Arraf al-Omari, demonstrates this to a certain extent.

One of the earliest academics writing about technology and self identity, Sherry Turkle, published a book in 1995 in which she explored the psychology behind creating different lives online; the practice behind her ideas is perhaps best demonstrated by the interest the virtual world, Second Life, received when it was launched in 2003.

However, Turkle has now abandoned her 1995 position and she takes a far less utopian position as the boundary between the online and offline lives of the permanently connected individual has become increasingly blurred. We are no longer in a position to create the online identity we want by choosing only the best pictures or only making the wittiest comments in a public forum, and gone are the pre-digital camera and webcam days when the response to the chatroom’s opening question ‘a/s/l?’ would determine the course of the conversation.

Beyond what we chose to share, our online identity now is shaped for us by other people posting pictures of us (which do not always show our best side), and commenting on what we post; it is important to note that this is a reliable shaping as the online connections we make on social networks today are primarily with people with whom we have genuine offline relationships. The ability of our online persona to influence our offline character is reflected in a line I heard recently (and I cannot remember where) thinking about the night before the morning after: ‘If it’s not on YouTube, it didn’t happen’.

The academic and Guardian columnist Aleks Krotoski wrote recently that she adheres to Turkle’s original 1995 view; while I agree that it is still possible to create an experimental online identity, I cannot subscribe to it being consequence-free. With the quantity of publicly available personal data that exists, and is continually being generated, and the connections that are made, keeping genuine and playful online identities separate is not straightforward.

I have been reading Turkle and Krotoski’s work recently as part of my own studying, but it was made more personal for me this week when I signed up for Google+. I dutifully filled in the basic details required by profile and found a couple of friends; then standing (metaphorically) surveying the website I realised how empty it was. For a moment, I felt like an explorer coming upon a new land and standing on the shore looking around somewhat bewildered. And then I felt a shudder of fear.

The fear was not of an attack from a extended metaphorical native, but from the realisation that I have spent the past four years creating my online identity on Facebook and the prospect of starting in a new land was too onerous. Before that moment, I had not realised the time or unconscious effort that has gone into making my online Facebook presence reflect the reality of my life and suddenly the thought of the status updates which I have mentally composed but not posted made me wonder how far my online identity is shaping my offline identity.

Facebooking Eurovision

Much against my better judgement I was compelled to watch the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday evening. I do not intend this post to be a release of my pent up annoyance at the (generally) tuneless and out of tune songs, or the lunacy of some of the costumes, or the embarrassing fact that so many countries’ songs were performed in English (notably contrasted by the French presenter’s refusal to speak any English), or the tedium of the entire results process, rather it is a reflection on the way in which I watched it.

Having had the television tuned to BBC1, I used my smartphone (an increasingly inappropriate name when it’s used more for computing than phoning) to update my Facebook status with some sarcastic remark as is my wont. Within a couple of minutes, a Facebook friend defended the event; we exchanged a couple more comments with me still using my smartphone before I had to resort to my laptop computer to type my comments and responses at a rate at which I could keep up with the other posts that were also appearing.

As I had the full size keyboard I was able to update my status and respond to other people’s comments at a far faster pace and, seeing all of this going on, my wife picked up her laptop and we sat next to each other on the sofa engaged in digital exchanges with other people and occasionally with each other. I was quickly paying more attention to Facebook than to the television and duly made a remark about my status hosting a virtual Eurovision party.

Despite teaching about the purpose of texts and considering their permanence (at A-Level, at least), I am struggling to define what we were writing. Unlike instant messaging, which can most readily be paralleled to a conversation as the most ephemeral of texts, our posts and comments have – unless I delete them – become a part of my Facebook Wall for all to see. What we were saying, or writing, was in effect a private conversation (or, more accurately, a series of personal conversations as different trains of thought were pursued in different update threads), but it was all carried out in public and a record remains for anyone to read. While I know the likelihood of it being read in the future is minimal, we have added more to our ‘external memory’ or, for want of an alliterative oxymoronic description, our personal public persona. We are generating digital content at a phenomenal rate, but to what purpose?

Google has said that their aim is to organise the world’s information, and if you Googled ‘Eurovision’ during the event, their results included a live news feed and posts from the Twittersphere; I have seen this during other live events and assume it is a regular feature. What were personal remarks and comments for friends have become part of a greater public consciousness.

But none of this really crossed my mind as I sat commenting and updating my status. It was entertaining to interact with friends in our virtual environment: arguably, the Internet has made communication the easiest thing on the planet but it is, ironically, removing a human element from the whole process. Maybe next year I should invite a group of people round so we can be rude about the songs in person.

Relationships with Facebook

In different circles I have heard the question of what we all did with our time ‘before Facebook’ raised a couple of times this week. I know that back in August 2007 Facebook quickly become part of my computer routine and, having had a smartphone for the past eight months, I now regularly take opportunities to see what my friends (and I do pride myself on the fact that I have, with only a couple of exceptions, met all the people with whom I am friends in person) are doing or have been doing.

There have been stories in the press of couples splitting up over Facebook, and by this the reports mean one half of the couple discovering they are no longer an item thanks to a status update, rather than Facebook itself being the cause of the split. To a bystander who does not know the people or details, these headlines indicate something of an abhorrent manner in which to behave, but it is surely only the logical extension of perpetually broadcasting the details of one’s life on a public forum, rather than managing the public and private spheres and informing one’s soon-to-be-ex of their impending situation privately over the telephone or (shock, horror) face to face.

Traditionally, social announcements were made in the London papers – indeed, for a small fortune they can still be made in the London papers – but now details of relationships can be precisely addressed to their target audience at no cost. Earlier this week I was saddened to see the relationship statuses of two friends change from being ‘In a relationship’ to being ‘Single’; while I have seen these changes being made by individual friends before, this is the first time when I have known both people and seen their profiles change in such a synchronised way. The touching thing that followed this was the number of messages, albeit public, of reassurance and support that each party received.

The use of Facebook also came up this week in individual tutorials (or ‘Learning Reviews’ as they are officially termed for us) with pupils at school. As the exam season is looming large, it was reassuring to be told, unprompted, by two A-Level students that they had deactivated their Facebook accounts and had no intention of using them again until the summer. I half seriously asked both students whether they were suffering withdrawal symptoms and both said that while they knew they had to deactivate their accounts for the good of their revision, they had suffered no anxiety about not logging on since deactivating them.

While I was pleased to hear about their decision and that it was not causing them additional anguish, it did make me wonder how we really view and use Facebook. Deactivating an account leaves it dormant on the system and the simple process of logging on to Facebook again will reactivate it. If it is possible to disconnect and reconnect so easily from one’s personal social network, what does that say for the nature of today’s human relationships which underpin the whole concept of social networking?

Personal pricing

This week, Facebook was valued at approximately £32,000,000,000. Initially, this may seem a phenomenal sum of money for a website that people merely use to keep in touch with friends, make witty remarks on status updates and peer voyeuristically into others’ lives.

When we remember we pay nothing to use Facebook, the question of what makes the company worth anything surfaces. Is it the hardware infrastructure running the site? Is it the programmers who make it all work? While these might form the tiniest part of the valuation, the £32 billion is what the information about its users is worth.

Think about it. In signing up for Facebook you entered, inter alia, your age, gender, location, schools and universities attended, courses taken, employers, personal beliefs and the interests you have. You then made virtual friends with people who you have encountered because they – usually – have something in common with you. Therefore, when one of your friends finds something new they enjoy or they are interested in, Facebook can recommend it to you as there is a good chance of you being interested in it too. In short, having shared your life with it, Facebook knows what will interest you before you do. Think about that from the marketing point of view.

Before you dismiss this as unrealistic, consider the last purchase you made on Amazon. Did you notice the list of recommended books or DVDs ‘that you may like’ which had been bought by other people who also bought the item you have just paid for? All you told Amazon was that you liked a certain book or DVD by purchasing it. The information you have chosen to give to Facebook covers far more of your life.

We would all like to believe that you cannot put a price on human life but this is what Facebook’s valuation has done. According to its own statistics, Facebook has more than 500,000,000 active users. This means that each of its users’ lives is worth around £64. For less than the price of a tank of petrol, you have been sold to the marketing executives of any forward thinking company which looks to Facebook for access to their target market. Unlike a traditional survey which might identify consumers at a single point in time, your profile on Facebook changes as your interests change and with this the forward thinking company either knows it is no longer worth chasing you or that they need to double their efforts in appealing to you.

Does this mean that I am going to delete my Facebook profile and stop posting online? No. I, like so many others, find the free service that Facebook provides both useful and fun. I am willing to tolerate the advertisements dotted throughout the site, but I would like think that I understand some of the implications – both for now and the future – of the privacy agreement saying what our data can be used for which we are obliged to accept when joining.

Tabula rasa

When faced with a blank piece of paper, a blank canvas, a blank sheet of manuscript paper or, most likely in the twenty-first century, a blank space with a cursor flashing expectantly at the left hand side of the screen, the prospect of all the emptiness to be filled is – to me, at least – frightening. I said this to a friend recently who suggested that I should, instead, see it as an opportunity.

I can understand that it is the opportunity to write, draw or compose and the possibilities are therefore endless – and for that we should be pleased – but the question of what to write, draw or compose worries me. Choosing words to fill in blanks, or colouring in a paint-by-numbers or reharmonising a tune all appeal to me as there is a structure in which to work or at least to provide a starting point for my own attempts.

But, when faced with a blank page, I panic.

I admire the discipline of columnists and diarists who have to write a certain number of words each week for publication and this has spurred me to decide to endeavour to write a regular blog post of a fixed length. A ‘blog post’ is a somewhat nebulous term as blogs can – and often do – contain many things, but in the age of the internet it is one which we must use. In using the term I want to see it as an electronic equivalent of a diary or a column which thereby satisfies the part of Wikipedia’s definition of a blog post which includes writing commentaries or descriptions of events.

Having decided I wanted to blog (on the internet word classes seem to be interchangeable) I tried to decide what I should focus on as a subject. I have previously never successfully kept a diary – or blog – or done any regular writing on any topic; however, I realised that I do enjoy using my status updates on Facebook and the ability to post links to newspaper articles as a form of ‘micro-’ (or even ‘nano-’) blogging’. Having been doing this for some three years now, and regularly receiving comments and ‘Likes’ in the process, I feel that the wide range of topics on which I ‘microblog’ are all legitimate topics to include.

It is therefore my intention to write about things I know about and understand: this means that I would hope to write about English (both the language and literature), technology, cathedral music, and food and drink at a bare minimum. However, I do not want to prevent myself from writing about those things which I appreciate and attempt to fathom such as science, or fine art amongst many others. In order to make the whole endeavour manageable both in terms of writing and reading, I have imposed upon myself a limit of 500 carefully selected and judiciously edited words.

And with that, my screen is no longer blank and I look forward to the opportunity to try writing.