If I'm Not on Facebook, Am I Really Alive?
How do you make contact with people?
If you say phone, or Heaven forbid, letter, you're - is there a delicate way to put this? - old. And not just chronologically.
We were talking about alumni events today at my office. Specifically, what was the point? How and why were they were recorded for posterity. Why, wondered a twenty-something, did a bunch of alumni from a particular city get together? Was there a speaker or something? "Just networking," I replied. "They just get together, have a drink or dinner, talk, you know."
"So what's the picture about?" he wanted to know.
"Nothing," I said. "Just showing the people who were there." The photo was in an alumni magazine. (Imagine that - a magazine!) "People like to see what their friends from school look like now, find out what they're doing."
"Why not just put it on Facebook?" he said. "Then you could tag the pictures, and people could friend each other. And you can highlight an image and have a description next to it so it's not just a picture - you can have a description of who they are and what they're doing."
Of course he's right, and this is the future of things. In a way, though, it hurts my brain.
There is a game called "Entanglement," the purpose of which is to not reach the edge of a hexagram. You turn internal hexagrams to twist a path back in on itself as often as possible, trying to keep it from reaching the edge of the main shape. The more times you can do it, the higher your score. It took me a few times to realize I was trying to reach the edge in as few moves as possible, and thinking, what a lame game this is - it's way to easy!
But today our relationships are much more... entangled... than ever before, thanks to the many ways in which we can relate to one another, most of them indirectly, and through some socially-engineered platform.
Today I'm trying to work out a get-together with a friend at a third friend's house which is halfway between the two of us most distant from one another. We have communicated via email, instant message, and text, but not one message has been via real conversation (phone), or with all three parties engaged at once.
For my twenty-something workmate, the FourSquare method of meeting friends (posted at 5:07): "I'm at XYZ, meet me here if you happen to be nearby" as opposed to the old (calling on the phone): "Hi, this is Nancy. Let's get together on Friday at 5 for a drink at XYZ, ok?" is just the way it is. A photo without an opportunity to interact with it is... boring. Pointless. What, you just look at it?? A conversation without a notation to some social network is, er, well - a dead end?
Then there's the whole idea of "working a room." Once upon a time, that meant keeping your head up and your hand out, ready to say hello and make contacts. Now one hand will be holding your cell phone, and odds are you'll be furiously texting and/or entering contact information, probably tweeting and/or posting to Facebook at least part of the time, as all of these functions are part and parcel of working a room. You have to let people know you were there, right? And how will they know you were there if you haven't posted it on Facebook? If there aren't a few photos of you and some of the people there on Instagram?
Srsly, if you don't have a post on FB, are even you sure you did it?
If you say phone, or Heaven forbid, letter, you're - is there a delicate way to put this? - old. And not just chronologically.
We were talking about alumni events today at my office. Specifically, what was the point? How and why were they were recorded for posterity. Why, wondered a twenty-something, did a bunch of alumni from a particular city get together? Was there a speaker or something? "Just networking," I replied. "They just get together, have a drink or dinner, talk, you know."
"So what's the picture about?" he wanted to know.
"Nothing," I said. "Just showing the people who were there." The photo was in an alumni magazine. (Imagine that - a magazine!) "People like to see what their friends from school look like now, find out what they're doing."
"Why not just put it on Facebook?" he said. "Then you could tag the pictures, and people could friend each other. And you can highlight an image and have a description next to it so it's not just a picture - you can have a description of who they are and what they're doing."
Of course he's right, and this is the future of things. In a way, though, it hurts my brain.
There is a game called "Entanglement," the purpose of which is to not reach the edge of a hexagram. You turn internal hexagrams to twist a path back in on itself as often as possible, trying to keep it from reaching the edge of the main shape. The more times you can do it, the higher your score. It took me a few times to realize I was trying to reach the edge in as few moves as possible, and thinking, what a lame game this is - it's way to easy!
But today our relationships are much more... entangled... than ever before, thanks to the many ways in which we can relate to one another, most of them indirectly, and through some socially-engineered platform.
Today I'm trying to work out a get-together with a friend at a third friend's house which is halfway between the two of us most distant from one another. We have communicated via email, instant message, and text, but not one message has been via real conversation (phone), or with all three parties engaged at once.
For my twenty-something workmate, the FourSquare method of meeting friends (posted at 5:07): "I'm at XYZ, meet me here if you happen to be nearby" as opposed to the old (calling on the phone): "Hi, this is Nancy. Let's get together on Friday at 5 for a drink at XYZ, ok?" is just the way it is. A photo without an opportunity to interact with it is... boring. Pointless. What, you just look at it?? A conversation without a notation to some social network is, er, well - a dead end?
Then there's the whole idea of "working a room." Once upon a time, that meant keeping your head up and your hand out, ready to say hello and make contacts. Now one hand will be holding your cell phone, and odds are you'll be furiously texting and/or entering contact information, probably tweeting and/or posting to Facebook at least part of the time, as all of these functions are part and parcel of working a room. You have to let people know you were there, right? And how will they know you were there if you haven't posted it on Facebook? If there aren't a few photos of you and some of the people there on Instagram?
Srsly, if you don't have a post on FB, are even you sure you did it?
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