Wow

The Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement was a wonderful read. I learnt a few interesting concepts; the concept of a visitor and a resident. Visitors and Residents is a simple way of describing a wide range, or continuum of, modes of online engagement. It has proved to be a useful way to come to an understanding of individuals’ motivations when they use the web in differing contexts. For example, if I had to order my medication online, I’m publicly letting the web know of my health status which is private information. We are not proposing that one mode of engagement is better than the other, simply that different modes are employed depending on the individual’s motivation and context at the time.

Wonder

There was one thought that stood out to me. Visitor mode is where individuals do not leave any social trace online and Resident mode is about social presence. Is there possibly a mode where we are ‘off the grid’ where we are neither visiting or resident, just simply not there? I would be interested to look into that idea. Another far fetched thought I had was, do these same principles take place on the new and improved Web 3.0? Will we ever be allowed to surf the internet without leaving a digital trace?

Self-reflection

It’s interesting that we are sometimes ready to provide our digital information right away in some cases and hesitant in other cases. These decisions are purely based on the context, security and the purpose of what we intend to do. It’s crazy how we think we know so much about something to then know nothing about the future because the past is left in the past. For example, we know Web 2.0 very well. When Web 3.0 is introduced and starts replacing Web 2.0, we need to learn about all the new possibilities that can be opened up to users.

Here is my Visitor and Resident map: