How much do people want to know?

Back to the LiveCurt.net project concepts again. How much do people want to know about me and how do they want to know it?

My status page is fairly basic information that is just putting stuff commonly available in one easy to access place, but LiveCurt is supposed to be more, it’s more than just my status, it is putting all parts of myself together, in both a public (not very exposed) and more private (probably TMI) way, depending upon access level.

I was just thinking about the fact I have an outstanding order for DVDs, which upon arrival will be registered in GITI Library, which is a public-facing module. The DVDs will just simply get registered in GITI and the library system will silently update, giving no one a clue of what has changed. Perhaps that is the type of information that people might want to see on LiveCurt.net?

Oscar brought up a point the other day, mentioning that he thought the whole idea of recording what one is doing at any moment in an electronic form seems a little strange. Wouldn’t all of the Twits be disappointed to hear that? I look to Oscar’s opinion as a more traditional value aspect of things, and I am starting to think he is right, being that connected is a little strange. I ignore the opinion as it relates to my personal status system because my actual status message thing is more of a self-analysis psychological experiment than anything else. I find the process of recording the statuses to be very difficult, just because when I am at home and not working on something academic, my status changes from minute to minute, and my level of conscious involvement in it changes about as often. Identifying my emotions (an aspect that Twitter does not include) is even more challenging, first because there is no standard list of emotions beyond basic emotions (look for another post on that later), and second, because it is hard to really identify how I feel, which I suppose is the reason why I set up the little experiment in the first place.  For the Internet accessible portion of my status message, no one I know really wants to pop in to my website to check to see what I am doing, they would prefer to hear it from me. I agree with the concept of getting it from me, but there are times when the status message can be useful, such as when I need to leave the electronic world suddenly, it is just easier if my status is available like that, so no one is wondering where I am (since I am usually reliably within 10 feet of a computer).

I have been having so much of a problem getting things together for LiveCurt.net because I have several concepts of what it COULD be, but no ideas as to what it SHOULD be. Thinking about the site, I wonder if things like the last time I logged into GITI should be present, but then I think about the reason it is on status, it is like my pulse, it indicates that I am at least awake and alert, even if I have not bookmarked anything, stated a status or posted a blog entry. I am almost always logged into GITI, so when I first wake up, I check e-mail and log into GITI, those are predictable events, even though I may not get immediately dressed or immediately do anything (a status of “?” with an emotion of “comatose” doens’t seem helpful).

I am learning to be a more expressive person through having status running, and I feel like I keep less things to myself since it has been operational. The pressure to get LiveCurt running is based on several factors, including the status page becoming too verbose and overshadowing the future role of the LC system.