The Secret Network
It’s hard to deny that our generation is becoming increasingly connected through a variety of technological outlets. All of the technological outlets have a unique network of communications at their core, and connections in different technological outlets do not necessarily indicate the same type of relationship. Texting somebody doesn’t necessarily mean you would call him or her, and friending somebody on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean you would want to carry a conversation with him or her in real life. The unique nature of each connection we create, and its corresponding technological infrastructure, can help explain why people today seem to belong to an unnecessary amount of networks. While many people (read: parents) refuse to accept the overwhelming presence of these networking outlets in our life, the majority of people today embrace them. The result is an era of unprecedented connectedness in which the often-mentioned “6 degrees of separation” is more applicable than ever.
And yet with connectedness no doubt comes certain consequences that are either initially unseen, unfavorable or both. If you are anything like me, you are connected to the people closest to you in a flurry of ways. I know I can reach my best friends by texting them, BBMing them, by calling them, by emailing them, on Facebook, on Google+, on Skype, on Oovoo, on iChat, on Gchat, on Twitter, and on LinkedIn. And while this interconnectedness with the people I care about is invaluable when compared to the alternative, it can easily lead to problems. Not answering a text message from your best friend is borderline unacceptable. Ignoring an email from a group mate or professor can lead to poor performance in your classes. Reading a BBM (thereby notifying your friend you have read their message but have not yet responded) and forgetting to BBM back? Utterly taboo.
So it seems that privacy has become a thing of the past, because although these technological outlets provide us with powerful networking capabilities, with great power comes great responsibility. How can you escape from your connections when you belong to 5 different social networks? Not many of the networks allow its members to remain completely anonymous, as the resulting connections would not be very meaningful. Could you imagine having anonymous friends on Facebook? Or secretly following somebody on Twitter? The point of these social networks is to expose yourself to new relationships, so what’s the point if nobody knows who you are?
PostSecret has created a network based upon this principal of anonymity. PostSecret consists entirely of anonymous posts all sent to the creator of the network, Frank Warren. Warren receives secrets from anonymous sources and posts them on the Internet for the world to see. It’s a simple concept, and one that has been wildly successful, spawning “a book series, speaking engagements, and a new mobile app”, and yet it is fundamentally different than the social networks that we are so used to.
To define the PostSecret network in terms we have been discussing in class illuminates the unusual structure of the network. At the center of the network is Frank Warren, the creator and the recipient of the secrets. The secrets act as the edges between different nodes, with Warren always serving as one of the two nodes on an edge. Finally all the other nodes are those users who have anonymously submitted their secrets to Warren. And so the result is one giant component with one node (Warren) connected directly to every other node in the network. This structure reveals just how interesting PostSecret becomes when analyzed as a network.
If we consider a user of the network, John Doe, we would most likely consider his connection with Warren a strong one. For although John’s true identity is unknown even to Warren himself, the information that comprises the fabric of their connection is undoubtedly personal information about John’s life. One could argue that for the connection to made at all, that is, for John to take the opportunity to anonymously reveal his secret to Warren, John’s secret must indeed be an important one. Furthermore, if we take every connection in the network to be a strong one, then the network clearly violates the property of strong triadic closure. John is not blatantly connected to anybody else in the network, despite Warren’s connection to everyone. While on different social networks John might more easily become connected to the other users, the very function of PostSecret discourages such connections from existing. To take this one step further, we can again think of “6 degrees of separation”. In the PostSecret network, because every user shares a connection with warren, every user is only “2 degrees of separation” away from everyone else. This “physical” proximity on the network however, does not necessarily imply their closeness in real life. In fact, quite the contrary is true. Because two people are users of the PostSecret network, they are effectively insuring that some aspect of their life remains a secret.
In an age where true privacy is a thing of the past, PostSecret has attempted to fill the void. It is the secrecy and anonymity that PostSecret is founded upon that has made it such a unique and powerful social network. None of the users know who any of the other users are, and yet as users of such a specifically oriented network, they are profoundly connected. Each of the users has chosen to share some piece of secret information, and yet the network means different things to each user. The “confessions range from everyday exasperations with humorous twists — like a coffee barista threatening to serve demanding customers decaf — to disclosures of life-threatening problems such as eating disorders or suicidal thoughts”, and thus the impact of this network, at least to each individual user, is irrefutable.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/08/technology/post_secret_app/index.htm
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