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Distributed Communication, or: Stalking Celeste

Submitted by Aileen Derieg on Sun, 2007-07-29 22:46.

Flickr says Celeste considers me a friend
Twitter says Celeste left her didgeridu in Vienna
Flickr says Celeste likes my picture
irc says the didgeridu was found in Vienna

How many bits and pieces of communication have to be collected, how many moments of a day and stray thoughts need to be exchanged for two people who just met to become friends?

Crabgrass says Celeste left the chatroom just before I entered
del.icio.us says Celeste tagged my blog post
Drupal says Celeste uploaded a piece
del.icio.us says I wanted to remember to the piece
Blogger says Celeste read Harry Potter yesterday
rss feed says Celeste is reading something else today
Yahoo says Celeste just uploaded pictures of her dog
Yahoo says Celeste just uploaded more pictures

All these free online services that make it possible for Celeste and me to be peers, mutual followers, contacts, friends, are free as in beer, not as in speech. In other words, someone somewhere is somehow making money through these exchanges. Has stalking become such a lucrative business?

del.icio.us. says Celeste is in my network
Crabgrass says Celeste and I are peers
Flickr says Celeste and I are contacts
Twitter says Celeste and I follow one another
irc says Celeste and I have joined the same channel
Facebook says Celeste and I belong to the same group
Flickr says Celeste and I belong to the same group
Facebook says Celeste and I have two friends in common
Facebook says Celeste and I are friends ...

Will all these scattered fragments of accounts of lives tempt us to forget that the accounts we give of ourselves are never complete, or will they help us to remember that?

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second generation stalking Celeste

Submitted by ruthcatlow on Mon, 2007-08-20 14:42.

You see...now I am a newbee to Facebook I can go and find Celeste for myself and post her image here.

Is this an invasion of Celeste's privacy?... I don't know...and if someone asked me to remove her image, I would. But it is a question.

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Celeste is currently on a bicycle somewhere in Denmark

Submitted by Aileen Derieg on Mon, 2007-08-20 19:43.

She is on a bike tour that makes me feel exhausted just reading about. Shall we turn this into a game? Can you find the log of Celeste's bike tour by following my links?
Is this likely to tell us anything interesting?

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low-effort, the lollipop and low-gain

Submitted by ruthcatlow on Tue, 2007-08-21 15:06.

Well this stalking thing sounded like fun so I started my search within your del.icio.us page (even that wasn't so easy to find- you sent me the link a while back but I couldn't find the email and my bookmarks weren't tagged properly). I couldn't figure out a way to tell who Celeste was within your networks-I lamely, so lamely looked for a cycling reference - and then I gave up. I would rate the extent of my effort at 2/10. It was late and so like a child I was distracted by the lollipop of instant gratification on yesterday's fad, Facebook. Must try harder. Will let you know how I get on.

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