User:Chelseastrubbe/sandbox

Intro Bullets

Familiar strangers are people we form real relationships with, however we have never interacted with them. They are seen frequently yet you never approach them, only observe them. Regardless of the fact that you have never interacted with them you both have formed a relationship in which you equally acknowledge each other and choose to ignore the other person. An example would be a student in class, most class rooms average at about 25 students per class; people tend to form their own little groups in classes and not interact with people outside their circle. Even though there is no interaction with some of the other people in class they've become apart of you daily routine so if they were to not show up you would notice the absence. 

Studies

In 1972 Stanley Milgram's and some of his students conducted an experiment to test the phenomenon of familiar strangers. His students took photos of 30 some people waiting at a subway platform; they then proceeded to develop these photographs. They came back to the same place a week later around the same time and distributed the photos; they asked the people to label anyone they either recognize or have spoken too. Eighty nine percent of the people recognized at least one of the individuals shown in the photos. However, circumstances surrounding Familiar Strangers have slightly changed since the 70's.

In 2004 Berkeley, Intel Research Laboratory decided to revisit Milgram's study. Their goal was to observe changes in Familiar Strangers relationships since Milgram's study 30 years ago, they wanted to study how familiarity can affect an individuals recognition of their surroundings. Societies way of communication has changed since 1972 and due to that change today nearly everyone carries a cellphone around with them; the question is how much has that impacted the familiar strangers relationship. This study took place at Constitution Plaza located in downtown Berkeley. Constitution Plaza in the shape of a rectangle with one end being Berkeley's primary underground light-rail station and the other the central bus transfer point. There is a continuous flow of people walking in and out of the plaza, however there are individuals who stop to make a call, eat, smoke or rest on the benches. Based off of what they were seeing they separated their test subjects into potential familiar strangers groups; one being workers and students who stop to rest and the others commuters waiting for transportation. They took photographs of the groups during their busiest hours; noon for the workers and students and 5pm for commuters. A week later they returned at the same times and distributed each group the same photos and asked them to identify anyone, they also handed out a questionnaire. The questionnaire focused on questions such as, what affiliations do they have to the plaza and their general stance on public areas. The participants were offered a chance to win a hundred dollar gift certificate to their local bookstores if they completed the questionnaire. As a results of their study they found less familiarity than Milgram's study. In Milgram's study eighty nine percent of the participants recognized some of the individuals in the photos and for Berkeley seventy eight percent recognized someone.

Urban Strangers

Every individual has a routine for him or herself and within these daily routines contains all of their familiar strangers. In Milgram’s studies he photographed people waiting for the train, these individuals were there because waiting for the subway at that particular time is a part of their daily routine. In the Berkley’s studies they photographed people in a public plaza at two specific times because odds were they would see most of those same individuals. Both of these studies were conducted in Urban and Public places. Public urban spaces can stimulate conversation and happiness, however they can also manifest anxiety and fear; the murder of Kitty Genovese is a perfect example of this. In 1964 Kitty Genovese was walking in the streets of New York when she was murder, her screams were within hearing distance to her neighbors and community of familiar strangers; none of them called the police or came to her rescue instead they seat in their homes and listened. Due to their fear and anxiety of the same incident occurring to them they were psychologically paralyzed.

Typically the first thought about strangers is that they are disconnected from us. Georg Simmel reminds us that he who is far is actually close by. A specific portion and shared worry to nearness and farness forms the urban relationship to the stranger. In order to figure our way around in a public urban place we use familiar landmarks. In Milgram’s studies of the familiar stranger he wanted to understand how changes in a specific urban setting would cause individual to reroute their ways in it. In the process of mentally remapping an urban setting, navigational cues, landmarks and people are used. He found it interesting how individuals were used as markers in rerouting and that the presence of that individual can impact a person enough to feel a sense of belonging. Some believe that in communities people are forced to be polite to one another, in cities this is not the case. Urbanites keep a civil attitude towards others; familiar strangers make the city feel smaller.

As the world around us continues to grow people start to feel smaller. Individuals begin to see themselves as a stranger in society and everyone around them strangers to them. Milgram’s believes that Kitty Genovese she did not die because she was alone rather that she isolated herself from others and as a result no one felt accountable for her. Strangers have an unusual presence in society; children are brought up being told never to interact with a stranger yet those same parents are not share to begin a conversation with a familiar stranger on the subway. A familiar stranger does not necessarily have to be someone that is of a lower social class and goes unnoticed; someone that is known by many people such as a celebrity can be a familiar stranger as well. These types of familiar strangers are known as "socio-metric stars". If you were to go away on vacation and ran into one of your familiar strangers you both would most likely establish direct contact with each other, an example of this would be if you went to Greece and you bump into your familiar stranger from the subway in New York odds are you both would begin to interact as close friends.

The Stranger

Georg Simmel wrote an article discussing the stranger in society. He states that the phenomenon of the “stranger” is the unity of liberation and the fixation of space; physical conditions are the condition and the symbol for human relationships. He wanted to talk about the stranger form the perspective of them being someone who comes today and stays tomorrow rather than a person who comes today and is gone tomorrow. In the organization of the human relations Simmel says that the unison of nearness and remoteness is an important factor. It all comes down to distance, someone who is close to you is really far way and someone who is far from you is actually close by. Simmel feels that the stranger is close to us to an extent; we share a connection with each other. Our human nature brings us together so to say, it holds similar national social and occupational features.

Social Identity Theory

Social Identity theory is a social psychological phenomenon that discusses the individual’s perception of himself or herself in-group relations. This phenomenon tackles topics, such as, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice, group cohesiveness, conformity, crowd behavior, etc.  The idea is that two people in the same place and time can be apart of a group as long as they share a social identity. An example would be, two Americans named Allison and Javi are in Paris; they feel act American, therefore they belong to the “American” group not “Allison and Javi”. In a social identity model it is stated that if an individual is aggressive and angry it is a result of the group they are apart of, all group share attributes. Self-enhancement and self-esteem are human motives in creating a social identity.

Conformity is a factor in the group being formed, people self categorize themselves and believe that each group is drastically different from the other.. Therefore as mentioned before in previous paragraphs, familiar strangers exist in all these groups. Regardless of the fact that we have never interacted with them we do share attributes with them, as a result these groups separated by attributes contains familiar strangers. Moreover, the expansion of the social network world has made search ability easy; you can find anyone with just the click of a button. Social identity theory assists with search ability with social networking.

Familiar Strangers in the Social Network

The social network is an overpowering and dominant factor in today's society. People are unaware of all the familiar strangers they have in their virtual life. Connections that are formed between people online can vary between a few individuals to a mass quantity and in most cases they are all unknown to each other. The social network is a world all in itself that is immensely intricate and contains various sets of human relations. Human interaction through social media occurs in numerous ways such as blogs, online friendship networks, wikis, instagram, twitter, yik yak, social media websites and tags on any given website. As the technological age continues to grow more familiar strangers will be found on social networks.

Blogosphere

Blogs are have become very popular in today's society; many individuals have their own blogs. Blogosphere is a more commonly used blogging website that allows bloggers to post in single or community blog sites. Most blogs are linked to smaller blogger group however each group is separate to one another. Familiar strangers do not have any affiliations these particular groups however they may share the same patterns and have similar blogging activities. As a result of this comes a new problem, the aggregation of familiar strangers. Aggregating Familiar strangers means personalized services, targeted marketing and exploration of new business opportunities. Due to their disconnectedness they are very hard to detect on Blogosphere.

The introduction to web 2.0 opened the door to open sourced intelligence for users. People now had the power to edit post and articles as well as contribute to them. On blogs and wikis people could now input more information into existing posts and articles, elaborating on its content. This action made the former consumers the new producers; collaboration between people increased immensely. Blogosphere has two different types of blogging sites, one is for single authored sites known as individual blog sites and the other is multi-authored known as community blog sites. In individual sites a single author posts blogs and readers can only comment. In community blog sites multiple authors can generate post blogs where readers can comment however only registered members of that community have the ability to edit blog posts. In Blogosphere two terms to separate the highly authoritative blogs from the less commanding ones. These Terms are known as the Short Head and the Long Tail, the Short Head being more authoritative in comparison to the Long Tail. In the Short Head you are less likely to find familiar strangers. Two types of familiar strangers exist on Blogosphere: groups and individuals. Mostly both of these types of familiar strangers take place in the Long Tail rather than the Short tail. Familiar strangers are the calling of business opportunities on Blogosphere. They are spread out across blogosphere in isolated and small groups, due to this zoom-in-studies are over looked. However zoom-in-studies can become significant with the assistance of aggregating familiar strangers, the can open the door new opportunities.

As mentioned before, familiar strangers are disconnected from each other yet they share patterns with other bloggers. If these strangers were to be connected they can form critical masses that can increase blogger’s social network; eventually moving participation from the Long Tail to the Short Head.

Finding familiar strangers on Blogosphere can expand the customer base and make interaction between peers possible, as well as encourage participation from other bloggers. Bloggers have created social relationships with their peer bloggers and roughly about ninety seven percent of them are connect to local groups in the Long Tail. Social networking sites, such as, MySpace and Facebook exist on Blogosphere; each of these sites can have blogging communities. Familiar strangers are separated into three levels, the community level, networking site level and blogosphere level. In the community level its two bloggers in the same community post on a similar topic, however they are not involved in each other’s social network. Networking site level is when bloggers in two different communities post and communicate on the same blog despite not being in each other’s social network. Familiar strangers in the Blogosphere level are bloggers in similar communities that are on different social networking sites.

Digital Devices

Mobile devices, such as, cell phones and bluetooth have taken over society completely; they are changing the relationships between individuals and places in public urban setting. Cell phones are apart of the first wave of portable and personal digital communication devices that will lead to people's perceptions of themselves and the world to change. Mobile devices has become intertwined societies daily routines. Now people have the power to instantly connect themselves to friends, families and acquaintances. We are able to connect people we know, however what the individuals around us. A Jabberwocky, named after Lewis Carroll's famous poem; is designed to capture the essence of the familiar strangers around us. Although it has not been created yet it could transform our relationships with familiar strangers. This device can be attached to a bus stop platform and worn be people.

A metaphorical way of describing a Jabberwocky can be a digital scent and tagging. As people go about their day walking in and out of urban landscapes they are emitting a unique a digital scent that is being tagged in the location, these tags are sent to low power radios and bluetooth. It is the idea that an individual can create a unique scent that identifies them and send it to a fixed place broadcasting a low power radio signal. As two people walk towards each other the jabberwocky would detect the other persons unique digital scent and accumulate a log of individuals you have encountered more than once. You would now be able to measure how long as well as how many times you have crossed paths with your familiar strangers. Today's Bluetooth would make an ideal platform for the creation of a mobile Jabberwocky.

Instagram

In todays society everyone’s personal information is online for others to see. People want others to know what is going on in their lives and how fabulously they are living. Familiar strangers exist on instagram as well. A majority people do not know half the people who are following them. The idea behind the familiar stranger is that you form some sort of relationship with people that you have never spoken with; you have only seen them around. In some instances individuals do not even know they real names of some of the people they follow, instead they know them as their instagram name. If you were to walk around and ask strangers walking by if they know everyone they follow and the people who follow them on instagram, chances are they only have a real verbal relationship with a hand few of them. It is quite interesting they way our social media works, the same people that will be commenting on your post could be the same people that will walk right by you without a single word being spoken between the two of you. Familiar strangers exist all over instagram.

Twitter

Lets face it not only do people post photos of their lives on instagram they also tweet their lives away on twiiter. Have you ever heard the term “twitter famous”; twitter famous people are the socio metric stars of twitter. Socio metric stars are basically the higher profile familiar stranger, these are the people everyone has heard of and knows everything about them. Everyone has that one couple or individual that they follow around religiously to found out what is going on in their lives. The same individuals that are following these socio metric stars around on twitter are the same people that have never meet these strangers; there is the possibility these people went to school together, however they have never interacted which in reality makes them strangers. As a result of twitter someone that is friends with a person not affiliated with their school may still know the twitter famous person who attends school with them. Twitter connects thousands maybe even millions of familiar strangers together.

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