The text version of hanging out

There is a place for micro-blogging (such as with Twitter), and not just for hyper-communicative youth or parents on business trips who use it to keep in constant, drive-by touch with their kids. Fascinatingly,
Clive Thompson at Wired calls it "social proprioception" - the social version of the hand knowing what the foot's doing. He writes that Twitter "gives a group of people a sense of itself.... It's almost like ESP.... You know who's overloaded ... and who's on a roll.... Twitter substitutes for the glances and conversations we had before we became a nation of satellite employees." This is in contrast to past claims that the Net isolates us from one another, and it's where the social Web is heading, Clive suggests. He also offers a good reason for why it's widely misunderstood: It's "experiential" - you can't just view it to understand, you have to do it with a group of friends or colleagues, people with shared lives or interests. Dipping into it from the outside is like walking in on the hanging-out banter of a group of close teenaged friends - you not only need to know a bit about what they're talking about, you need to know them to understand what's going on.

Retrial for music P2P case?

A woman who was ordered by a court to pay $222,000 in the US's first trial involving P2P file-sharing "may get another chance with a jury," the Associated Press reports. "The issue is whether record companies have to prove anyone else actually downloaded their copyrighted songs, or whether it's enough to argue that a defendant made copyrighted music available for copying." In the original trial, a federal judge "instructed jurors that making sound recordings available without permission violates record company copyrights 'regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.'" Last week he said "that may have been a mistake." The recording industry has sued at least 30,000 people for distributing music online, the AP adds. "Some cases have been dismissed, and many defendants settled for a few thousand dollars." Meanwhile, The Register reports that the file-sharing of free music online "soars" while "licensed music [purchasing] flatlines." But that's not the explanation for the decline in music revenue, it adds. The reasons are cost-cutting by big retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart in the US and Tesco in the UK), "people burning CDs at home, and the unbundling of the album." In timely news on the subject of how digital music gets bought in the US, DMWmedia.com reports that 82% of Americans (69% of those under 35), still buy all (62%) or most (20%) of their music on CD. The numbers are from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Here's a guide for parents and educators on P2P file-sharing from NetFamilyNews.org's London partner, Childnet International, and a report on it from the BBC.

CA teen-driver law signed

Just a quick update to last week's item about teen drivers using tech: "Signed into law Thursday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bill by Democratic state Sen. Joe Simitian bans teenagers from using an electronic device, such as cell phones, pagers, laptops, and handheld computers, while behind the wheel," Information Week reports. It adds that "violators would be fined $20 for the first offense, and $50 for each additional offense." The law goes into effect next July 1. The governor's office says that, though teens represent 6.3% of US drivers, they account for 13.6% of fatal crashes.