On-line vs. non-line

The shape of things to come -- an online meeting through the computer with Vancouver, Toronto and some city in Poland ...


A friend of mine told me today how much he likes my blog. And I got to thinking how little I've paid attention to my blog since Facebook came along. Oh, the seductiveness of these new little sirens on the Internet makes us all faithless lovers.

I'm rather culture shocked by all these new gadgets. I consider it important to keep up with all the new trends and ways that people are using the internet. Partly out of interest but mostly because I don't think you can do participatory media work without keeping up.

And there's so much to learn. Life was simple when there were blogs. Blogs are now so ten-minutes-ago. Know how I can tell? When people who were positively internet phobic are showing up on blogs, you know they're becoming pretty standard fare.

Same is becoming true with Facebook. I just got a friend invitation from somebody I hadn't heard from in a long time who accepted my invitation to be a Facebook friend. (I sent the invitation about three months ago, so it took a bit of thought on his part). So then I went to his listing and hit "view friends" and there were no friends there. So he still doesn't quite get it ... a Facebook page with no friends. But at least he's there. It's a start, pretty good for a person who has never shown up in a Google search. That's how internet-absent he is. Geez, even my grandmother shows up in Google searches and she's been dead for 15 years.

I am getting quite boggled (bloggled?) by it all. I just signed up with Ning, on the advice of the Exalted One Wayne MacPhail (knower of all things in the new generation Web ... you can bow down to him in homage at www.w8nc.com). I look at his Facebook site every day to find out what the latest is .. and there's always something new.

It takes a long time to figure out how to integrate a lot of those new apps in communications projects and daily life. I still don't understand all of the implications. I recommend to people that they try out some of these new things ... only by using them can you really start to understand the impact they're having on society. And your kids.

Had a discussion yesterday with someone who refuses to be a presence on the internet because he doesn't want it to replace his personal relationships face-to-face. He told me "I've only got five people I consider to be my friends. And I want to see them in person, not on the internet". And that's fair enough .. one of the things I've heard said about friendships these days is that many people's pool of friends is wide, but shallow. He prefers narrow and deep.

I'm pretty picky about to whom I attach the word "friend" as well. Even so, I would describe my pool as deep and wide. I enjoy having easy access to my friends through the internet. If I could sit down with a friend for a beer, I'd rather do that. But I can't do that with most of them because they're all over the place.

That's the point, I think. I don't want to see people live all their lives in virtual reality. But using virtual reality to augment life on non-line is valid.

It's all a question of balance. And using new tools to enhance your life. Not take over it.

I still love being a geek-girl ...