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Want to know what I'm doing now?

Look out -- social networking is leaving the confines of the computer. MySpace is boring enough. But now the craze of self-broadcasting is colonizing mobile devices. Life is about to become really really boring. Want to know what I'm doing now?
Written by Andrew Keen, Contributor

Want to know what I'm doing now?

I'm typing on my computer using both of my hands and all ten of my fingers. I just made a rocking cup of PG Tips tea in my new LA Times Festival of Books mug. My tongue still tastes a bit garlicky because I gorged myself on humous in the press room of the San Francisco Film Festival (where I just saw Niki Karimi's captivating A Few Days Later). Next to me is my laundry basket stacked with dirty clothes including socks, underpants and t-shirts. Cool, eh?

Interested? Of course you're not. And, quite frankly, I'm not interested in what you are doing either. I couldn't care less whether you are picking your guitar strings or picking your nose. We -- you, me and almost everyone who reads this -- lead dull lives. In contrast, for example, with A Few Days Later, Karimi's carefully sculpted cinematic essay of the life of a young Iranian woman, our non-fictional lives aren't movies and they aren't interesting to either watch, read or listen to.

And yet some of us think we, in our non-fictional glory, are worth broadcasting on our mobile devices. According to today's New York Times, there's a 26-year old fellow in San Francisco called Chris Messina who takes shameless pleasure in broadcasting his life in all its most irrelevant details. We learn that, on Web 2.0 services such as Kyte and Twitter, people are narcissistically broadcasting their everyday lives. Here are a couple of world historical news flashes from Messina, announced, via Twitter, on everybody's cell phone:

 “About to head out to the gym. Sweet!” 

“Wow, totally rocking out to Led Zeppelin.”

So what will 21st century media be? Do we want to be watching or listening to Chris Messina on our handheld device as he tells us that he's going to the gym? Or would it better to sit in a movie theater and watch a work of art by a professional film maker like Niki Karimi?

And now I'm making another cup of tea. And i'm pouring the 2% organic milk into the tea. It's a rocking cup of tea. Sweet!

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