the illusion of privacy and the reality of theft

All of the recent buzz about the latest phone hacking scandal has got me thinking about the internet and privacy. It seems to be common knowledge that anything posted online, or on a device that has online access, might be fair game for a hacker, yet we seem to be constantly surprised when something like this happens. And it keeps happening more and more often.

I think everyone has been looking at this situation the wrong way. Many people are sharing their unasked-for opinions that if the hacked celebrities involved didn't want their nude selfies shared with the world they never should have taken them to begin with. Thank you, Captain Obvious, but apart from that being textbook victim-shaming and blaming, it misses the point. The victims involved had items that belonged to them stolen. This argument is about as nonsensical as saying if you didn't want your car stolen, you never should have had one to begin with. Hacking is a crime, pure and simple.

There are countless know-it-all articles popping up on how to super-encrypt your email and Facebook so that this sort of thing couldn't happen to you. But after trying to double-authenticate my email I couldn't get in the next day via my phone, no matter how many times I tried the new code. How many people are going to go through all those extra steps to just check email (numerous times a day) on their phones, iPads, laptops, etc.?

Six years ago, after I had my daughter, I knew I wanted to have an expressive outlet, and toyed with starting a blog. But I was concerned about the privacy issue. A colleague who worked in the IT department told me that if anyone really wanted to get information about me, they could, blog or no blog. I decided to go for it, and I don't regret having an online presence, but I also don't kid myself that I can preserve any true sense of anonymity.

Regarding the morality of this particular situation, I can't help but feel for Jennifer Lawrence and all of the other celebrities. Not only are they going through the embarrassment of having intimate photos stolen and then shared, against their will, with the world, but they have been subject to the false morality and criticism of the same people who are eagerly viewing said photos while clutching their strands of pearls. There is nothing wrong with someone taking a nude photo of themselves, for themselves, or with the intention of sharing with a loved one. But having a bunch of them stolen and then posted on the web is another matter.

It's interesting to note that in the same week a member of a teen boy band, Calum Hood, of Five Seconds of Summer, had his own mini-scandal when he posted a video of his privates to a female fan on Snapchat, who then promptly uploaded it for the world to see. There is a big difference here, as he at least chose at first to share (if not overshare) his nude body, but the results are the same. Someone thought they were sharing an intimate photo with one person, and soon the whole world was the audience.

I have no doubt that Lawrence and others will weather this storm just fine. But it does call into question the morality of the internet and the hacker(s). This is not a Julian Assange sort of hacking. If one wants to peruse naked boobs and butts on the internet there are many, many sites that cater to those desires. But to grab photos of a famous person, against their will — there can be no other reason to do this except as a trophy or humiliation.

Related articles

• Hospital network hacked, 4.5 million records stolen
• Notes on a Scandal

blackout

Today is a good day to be a Luddite.

Will you be taking part in Internet Blackout Day to protest the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation?

p.s. I scheduled this post yesterday. See you tomorrow.

Related articles

• SOPA/PIPA Blackout Code For Your Website (eoghann.com)

the reader

I have been trying to streamline my online activity lately. I'm not sure it will result in me spending less time online, but at least maybe my time will be more organized. I basically have decided to abandon Google Reader. As useful as it once was, as a depository for interesting sites and blogs, I just don't check in there much anymore. Most of the blogs I really follow are in my blogroll. Any larger sites usually have a twitter or facebook page. So I basically went through the very long list of links and migrated them to my twitter or facebook.

Some blogs, mostly image tumblelogs, I had to let go by the wayside. As much as I love fabulous or interesting images, I have reached peak saturation. At least for the moment. And I just don't want to start a tumblr blog myself. It's a whole other "follow me" situation, and I've got enough content to follow at the moment. So that's the state of the 'net for me. Right now. In another few months, who knows, I may have had to restructure and restrategize once again.

Related articles

• RSS readers in decline? (e1evation.com)

no comment?

I find myself reading more and more blogs these days, but recently, commenting less and less. Everyone everywhere says that if you want to get more blog traffic for your own site, you should comment more, and I know it's true. But more than just racking up traffic, I like the interaction and the opportunity to acknowledge someone's post—how it may have interested or amused or even inspired me.

The enemy to commenting is of course, shyness—it's so much easier to lurk—and then, most importantly, time. If I had endless amounts of time and energy I would be writing more, reading more, commenting more. taking piano lessons—you name it. My only excuse for not leaving a comment is that I'm doing the best that I can, trying to hold up my blogging end as well as all the other ends in my life. A real conundrum towards leaving a comment came up recently when I was catching up with some older posts on a blog I like and I was suddenly struck by something in a post that made me want to comment. But how useful is it to comment on a weeks-old post? I know the internet never really expires. There are some old posts on my blog that still get a perplexing amount of traffic, mostly due to images and pop culture subject matter, I guess. But should I be polite, still drop a line, to say I've stopped by? Late as it is? Or will the blogger's traffic-meter tell them that story? I know that for me, sometimes a quick check of my stats is enough, to know that I am not just a voice crying out in the wilderness. What is the proper blog comment etiquette in this situation?

Being an artist, a writer, is first and foremost, a solitary activity. When all is said in done you are basically doing it for yourself, because even if no one else, not even your mom, reads it, you'd still be drawn to do it anyway. That's what being an artist is for me. Being compelled. BUT ... the other side of this is the need to communicate. So when you find that folks have seen or read your work it is extremely gratifying. Even if at first it is just a handful of loyal or coerced friends and the googlebots. It still helps.

So you steam on, inspired by that teeniest bit of encouragement, as well as your racing mind, which inevitably jumps from one topic to the next—"if they liked that, then they'll love this"—or just the desire and ability to share. I have often wondered, in my new, internet life, at the plethora of forums available to me and whether I should expand or contract, or to concentrate. I don't have any definitive answers. I think with " new" media there really aren't any limits—anything goes as to where you should post or connect. But the same questions have come up regarding my content, too. Different forums require different types of sharing. Some folks have counseled me that I should make my blog about something quite specific. I have thought long and hard about that. Is it a diary? A platform for pop-culture review? A way to keep friends and family up-to-date on my family's doings? Yes, yes, and yes. Sometimes it's just a photoblog, sometimes it's a rant. Sometimes a nostalgia piece, sometimes a critical review or opinion piece. Just like me. Like others in my jack-of-all-trades family, I just can't and won't be limited to one style. And I'm OK with that. Anyone who just wants to check in for some recent photos can get that. If those bore them and they prefer a critical take on a book recently read or a movie recently seen, they can skip ahead.

But back to the commenting. A work colleague told me that she attended some web 2.0 conference last year where one of the speakers was saying that comments were "over" and that most blogs would be disabling them in future. I'm not sure what future that speaker was talking about, because I haven't really run across any blogs where you can't post a comment, or this non-trend. If anything, the ability to comment is what is driving blogging and social media. The comments section is the new letter to the editor. If you know the person, and are commenting on their blog or their facebook page, you are replacing email. Lots of the blogs I read, I read expressly for the comments—to gauge if other folks think like me about what the writer is saying. Many blogs I used to check out I have also ceased to read for the same reason—the comments. Blogs mainly centered on celebrity, like tmz or dListed, I once considered entertaining, but now I no longer visit, because their comments are just an excuse for anonymous folks to get nasty or stupid. Salon, which used to have interesting articles, now seems to have stupid articles with interesting comments.

I guess this is a long way of saying that I am going to try to take the time to comment as much as I can in the future. If I can read, I can comment. Again, I think I should be commenting for myself first, because I think that's the right thing to do. If someone comments back on my comment, or clicks my name to check out my blog, my writing, then that's just icing on the cake. In fact, I think I am going to take it a step further and when I find a blog or a post I like, I'm going to not only comment, but feature that post or blogger on my blog. Blog it forward.

Related articles

• Blog and Forum Comments: Unethical Means of Building Links? (zdnet.com)
• Important Features All Blogs Should Really Have (sixrevisions.com)

grandpa's hairdo hits the web

A website is using one of my family photos to illustrate 1920s hair? In this one you can't even see his hair.

Hmmm . . .

They gave me a credit and all, but it's a little weird to see . . .

Life on the web . . .

scrapping over scrapple

My friend Mario shared this link on facebook a while ago (and was re-sharing, so undoubtedly it is making the rounds), but I have been thinking about commenting, and facebook, and the "death" of print recently and wanted to re-re share, with a twist.

The short article recounts how in 1872, a hot letters-to-the-editor debate broke out in the pages of the New York Times over the delights (or horrors, depending on your position) of Scrapple. If you sign up for a free subscription you can read the referenced Times articles, but I also include the original letter from "Epicure" here:

I'm from New Jersey, but I'm not sure I have ever eaten Scrapple, and have probably confused it with head cheese, which seems equally disgusting, but eminently practical and old-world, in its desire to use just about every part of the animal for food, wasting nothing. Epicure not only extolled the economical aspects of making Scrapple, but its delicious taste.

After Epicure wrote his article, the pseudonymous responses flooded in, from readers Porcupine, Physician, and A Good Liver, to name a few. How different is this from blogs or facebook, where folks share an article, an idea, a song, a video and then their friends or audience weighs in, re-shares, flames, or endorses the original digital missive? Humans like to engage in debate, and verbal debates can range from the sublimely witty to the crass and ridiculous. A trend being discussed in blogs lately is whether to ditch the comments option altogether, with the blogger including an email address if a reader has something to say. This idea seems to be promoted by folks who still don't understand what social media or human interaction is about. If you take away the possibility of conversation, why are you bothering to blog at all?

A few years ago you might have heard the lament that email was killing good old-fashioned letter writing. Maybe temporarily, email reigned supreme. But the past few years it has become clear that email is functional and necessary as a tool at work, but for social communication email is a dinosaur, much like the yearly "letter" that people send around the holidays, updating their friends and family on all their exciting accomplishments throughout the year. Who is going to bother to read that? If you really wanted your friends and family to know what your life is like, you'd friend them on facebook or follow them on twitter or update your blog.

But back to the great Scrapple debate of 1872. The letters were written at a time when letter-writing was the primary mode of communication for public debate, apart from the neighborhood soapbox. The world is changing and newsprint is becoming a less-viable medium. But the debate is still raging, and always will. On the internet, on talk shows, through company websites. Everyone has an opinion, and modern-day Porcupines, Physicians, and Epicures can share and open and re-open the debate. Dive in everyone. And to take a twist on McLuhan, it doesn't matter which medium you choose to use. It's the message you want to share. But I'll pass on the Scrapple. Thanks.

a hard habit to break: NaBloPoMo

November is NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting month. The month is rapidly winding to a close, so I thought I should write about writing. I first heard about NaBloPoMo last year, on my friend KellyO's blog. I took the challenge seriously, and started posting daily. I later extended the challenge to the blog I began to manage at work, Smithsonian Libraries.

Blogging and writing has become a big part of my life. Some days all I can summon up is the energy to post a snapshot. Other times I stay up late, full of ideas, writing posts to get me through the next few days or rest of the week. Sometimes I read something on a friend's or stranger's blog that inspires me. Sometimes I carry around a pet peeve or the germ of an idea for weeks before it gets translated into a post. A lot of the time I compose a post while taking a shower at night and then try to get it all down before I go to sleep.

Blogging keeps me busy, makes me think, makes me more open, more creative, hopefully makes a reader laugh or respond in some way from time to time. It keeps me in touch with far away friends and with what's going on in the world, or at least the internet. It's a brain dump, a sounding board, sometimes just a cry in the wilderness. It could be a springboard to longer pieces, or just a daily note to myself. I highly recommend it.

mean girls and boys

Recently posted by a facebook friend was a link to a website only in existence since August, 2009, People of Walmart.

I started flipping through the photos of bad fashion, etc. and then flipped away. I can't argue with the fact that some people wear some pretty short shorts or see-through outfits that most folks would be afraid to sport in public. But to write a nasty caption below each picture just seemed juvenile and nasty. And posting someone's unflattering photo online without their consent, while not strictly illegal, definitely is not a positive human action.

Sorry, not a "LOL" as advertised.


Lolcats

I kept thinking about the crappy site, considering a caveat on facebook, and then flipped back and looked at the "About Us" section, to see what was the justification for this exercise in humiliation. What a bunch of cowards. "AJK," "ADK," and "LDW" could have included photos of themselves in some horrible outfits in the superstore's aisles and then it might have been a little less depressing, or at the very least a lame attempt to get in on the joke.

I recently read a comment on a website that pointed out a link to obesity and lower-incomes. Poorer folks don't have the money to spend on a lot of the other distractions - nights out at the theater, expensive clothes, jewelry, etc., etc. that make some folks who have the money to spend on such entertainments feel like they are treating themselves. But a poor person can surely super-size their meal or buy some Krispy Kremes for a snack. In its posting of pictures of folks shopping, this website was pointing out mostly fat people. And ridiculing them. Sigh.

I hate to be ageist, but I truly think that the crew of idiots who put this together and others who might think that it's LOL-worthy must be, frankly, twenty-somethings. Being twice as old as these jokers I just don't find it worthwhile to hide behind a veil of superiority to make myself seem "cool." That is a pose sought by the young. At least I hope they are just young and stupid. Only someone who hasn't lived, hasn't struggled, has been so far in their lives cosseted from depression, loss, or bad luck could put something like this together.

They at least are featuring their critics along with their fans. My fear is that link on their site is just some smart-ass cocky badge of courage. But there is no courage here. Only meanness.

make mine tab

I was just thinking the other day how small changes can happen so rapidly that you're not even aware of a whole new way of doing things until after you've been doing them for quite a while.

Tabs, for instance. I'm not sure exactly when I started using tabs on my browser to keep a number of web pages going at the same time, but I know that I couldn't work (or play) any other way.

A small innovation to how we use the internet, but completely reflective of the desire to multi-task, multi-browse, multi-surf.

Was it just a few years ago when I was just relying on the back button or history to take me from one web page to another? Now I can have many different worlds open at my fingertips.

Invention, Innovation, Inno-vention.

flickr is a many splendored thing

The internet never ceases to amaze me. There is so much helpful information out there, if you do a little digging. And sometimes you don't have to dig at all - the information comes to you.

I have been uploading old family photos to flickr and tagging them or labeling them with what little I know or can remember being told by my grandmother, who died over fifteen years ago. One of our family stories is about a young man from Wisconsin, who was a drummer boy in the Civil War. I posted photos from a Civil War-era photo album to the site and one of the unlabeled photos was immediately selected for a flickr group, where two members, Civil War buffs for sure, were able in a few days to help confirm the suspicion that this photo was indeed of my great-great grandfather, William Beverige Cassels, as the stick he is holding was identified as a special baton used in the music corps. Matched with genealogical information via ancestry, and I had his discharge information and confirmation that he was in the fife and drum corps. Cool.

newsprint memories

Boy, did it stink. All that ink and paper, which would always shred at the edges. I remember sitting in the back seat of my dad's car, rolling up the Hometown News, and rubber-banding them, and then tossing them in the front seat. We would cruise the neighborhood developments, him tossing the papers out the car window. We were canvassing, trying to pick up new subscribers. If it was raining, I had to fold the weekly into a plastic bag first. I also had to package up a quantity of 25 or so to drop off at the houses of our local paper boys or girls. Sometimes we dropped off stacks at a local convenience store. By the end of the day my hands would be black from the ink and my hair full of dust. I reeked of newsprint.

I "escaped" this chore when I went to art school, but I hadn't escaped newsprint. My first year I was instructed to buy newsprint pads for life drawing class. I couldn't believe that artists wanted to draw on the horrible stuff. But it was soon clear that the paper, and the drawings on them, were considered disposable by teachers and students alike.

That's why I can't get too choked up by the "death of newsprint." I haven't read a newspaper in its newsprint form in over a decade. As soon as the New York Times headlines went online, so did I. Apart from the sudoku craze of a year or so ago, there seems little reason for anyone to purchase a paper. They are annoying on public transportation. They are handy lining the litter box, I suppose.

Our country's newspapers need a shock to their system. The quality of journalism has been tanking for years, but certainly reached it's nadir with the so-called reporting, or more accurately, reprinting, of press releases from the last administration. If newspapers want to attract readers, online or elsewhere, then they better bring it up a notch. It's time for a little integrity again and a lot of reporting, backed up by some good old-fashioned research. They all need to rent All the President's Men or Deadline U.S.A. And a decent crossword or sudoku wouldn't hurt, either.

bewitched

"The internets" is an amazing place. I recently discovered through ancestry.com that one of my ancestors was one of the first women executed at what would come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, Sarah Averill Wildes. I wonder what my maternal grandmother would think. She did extensive family research many years ago to prove a connection to a Revolution-era ancestor in order to become a member of the Colonial Dames. But this bit of history goes back farther than that. Sarah, at age 65, was hanged on July 19, 1692.

I remember having to read something about the trials in English class and being pretty bored with all the"Goody this" and "Goody that" characters. It must have been The Crucible, unless it was another popular fictional account. As interesting as the subject matter was, the Salem witch trials came most alive for me in two fantasy shows from my childhood.

In a two- or three-part episode of Bewitched, Samantha goes back to Salem. I always loved that show and Elizabeth Montgomery, but especially liked how they took what had been a fun, fluffy, fantasy and special-effects show and combined it with some real history.
In one of my favorite episodes of The Avengers, "Murdersville," Mrs. Peel goes to visit a friend in his new home and runs into a village full of twisted, crooked individuals. In an extended scene she is hunted and then imprisoned in a chastity belt, and then later placed in the dunking stool, which is a torture device that was also used to ferret out "witches." What human beings will do to one another is astounding. And in the name of religion, too. This scene of public humiliation and torture to a modern, athletic, kick-ass woman brought the horror of how a crowd can be deadly and how a strong woman can be perceived as very threatening.

I have some more research to do, but various accounts of Sarah and her fate suggest that she may have been difficult to get along with, and her disputes with a neighbor woman over something as mundane as the borrowing of a scythe may have contributed to the accusation and her execution. It's difficult being a strong woman in any era, but terrifying to contemplate how a weak-minded herd could result in this sad chapter of history.

glory daze

I grew up in New Jersey. The Shore, to be exact. I was born a stone's throw from the Stone Pony but I was never much of a Springsteen fan. Just the rebel in me, I guess. I've never bought one of his albums or even downloaded a song, but I do like a few of them. Born to Run is of course the quintessential Boss tune and so very Jersey, but the one I like from that era is 10th Avenue Freeze Out. Please don't make me sit through Pink Cadillac ever again.

But I have to say that Glory Days has been running through my head lately - partly because someone at the local radio station must like it, because it turns up fairly frequently in their rotation, and partly because it seems to sum up the facebook experience. The song paints a picture of a guy in a bar with a buddy ruefully reminiscing about their glory days. Pretty simple. But there is something that Bruce is able to capture, both in the words and the music - the mixture of shame and delight - which is so much a part of the memory-laning I (and I suspect a lot of my friends) have been doing lately.

Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days

Facebook, as their tagline states, does help you connect and reconnect, with people in your life. In a matter of moments you can be back in touch with someone you haven't seen or heard from in over a decade and see pictures and hear what they are saying and sharing and what their friends are saying and sharing back. A back-and-forth begins by posting old videos, pictures, memories. Your new friends and acquaintances can discover how cool or geeky you really were way back when.

Some people are justifiably terrified at the prospect of looking back. But if you look at these reconnects as a virtual gab session a la Bruce, in a bar, it's not so bad. It's possibly even a microcosm of growing old gracefully. Honoring the past while living in the present.

da da da

When I was at art school my dear friend Sibylle introduced me to this incredibly silly and delightful song by the band Trio. I had my own copy of their album once upon a time. Thanks to the internet and iTunes it's possible to recapture the sounds of my not-always-misspent youth. Plus, it's just also damn fun to listen to. I dare you not to smile.

Trio - Da Da Da (1982)

blog, blog, blog

I am really trying hard to keep up with the daily posting. A friend told me the other day that I am a professional blogger since I have ads on my site. Yet to see any $$$ from those, but that's not why I'm doing it.

At work I have taken over the helm of the blog as well. We folks of a certain age are not just getting into facebook and twitter, we're taking over the internet. Or at least finally understanding some of the internet's potential beyond porn and Wikipedia.

I have a lot of thoughts about what all this means and will be posting more as they develop. For now, I am just happy to be participating and sharing what I'm up to and checking out what everyone else is up to, too.

Happy blogging, everyone!

coolio

When did I stop caring about being "cool?" Did I ever? I guess I have felt hip, cool or happening at brief, random moments in my life. But overall, not consistently. Not really. Or is that just the too-cool-for-school attitude of "I'm so cool I don't have to worry about it?"

Sigh. Bear with me. I'm looking at my five-year-old and wondering what the teenage years might hold. Apparently my fourteen-year-old niece thinks that leg warmers, specifically neon ones, and other hideous items from the Eighties are cool. I'm not faulting her for wanting to wear things I wouldn't have worn the first time around. And I was there. Every generation has its retreading and redefining, I guess. How else can we explain Happy Days? I'm just wondering why there is so much pressure in our society to be cool. Can't we just all relax and enjoy what we like, no matter how geeky, without looking over our shoulder to see what the other guy thinks?

In a way, blogs are the ultimate discarding or celebration of cool. You can finally put your Star Wars action figure collection or other crazy enthusiasm up there for the world to see in all its glory. You might even find some other enthusiasts. Or you can write witheringly about everyone else's dreadful pursuits. I'd rather be the former than the latter, most of the time.

Boxed DVD sets seem to be another outlet for the expression of inner geekdom and devotion. No, you cannot borrow my Angel DVDs unless you sign a release, thank you.

The iPod let's us celebrate all the wacky music from our past, picking and choosing some songs that we would never in a million years have forked over the dough for a whole cd by that particular artist, but have no shame in paying 99 cents for a got-to-have song like Jive Talkin'. Or maybe that's just me...

Maybe what I'm really writing about here is the inner nerd that never leaves one, but as an adult, gets refined and honed until it becomes a "collector" or "specialist." All I know is that as I get older, I am more and more likely to buy what I like and not what's considered "cool." Coldplay? Radiohead? No, thanks very much. I may trip over the random cool thing from time to time, mostly by accident, I'm sure.



These are things we used to call guilty pleasures. But this is a guilt-free enterprise and what I want to do is enjoy the things that I like, cool or no.

p.s. my latest got-to-have song is probably cool to some, awful to others, but just won't quit...

the bad apple

I read an article recently about how the most negative person in a group often determines the group's dynamic. This can range from kvetching, to passive/aggressive non-participation, to outright mind games. Why is that? Are humans so easily influenced? Like all studies, it was an interesting, posed question, but it was only looking in one direction - trying to sort out the bad apples.

A larger question occurs to me. Maybe the problem isn't with the assumed bad apple. Maybe it's with the concept of the group dynamic still being effective. Let's face it, the way we work has changed radically, just in the past few years. Most of us who work in an office environment are lone wolves. Emailing and other computer activity is done in a state of solitude, even if you are interacting "socially" on twitter or facebook you are alone, typing out pithy observations to the other lone wolves in cyberspace.

So how could any group meeting succeed? Most of the standing meetings where I work have dissolved. If a person can't get out of attending, they are unlikely to leave the iPhone or similar lifeline behind. Of course some folks of a certain age still love to hold and attend meetings. But they have also had to attempt to master the speaker phone, as many of the folks who may have regularly attended a few years ago now are only able or willing to attend via phone. I imagine that in just a few year's time meeting spaces will be almost exclusively virtual, barring the yearly shareholder or other VIP-necessary meeting.

Maybe the bad apple is calling out with a glimpse of the future. Maybe our time would be better spent not in a dead-color-schemed corporate conference space but in a brief face-to-face as we pass each other's desk. That's where most of my best project planning is done these days. See you in the hallway..

home again, home again

Continuing yesterday's train of thought, if what I suspect about facebook and its effect on how we form and maintain friendships is true, than what will this mean for my daughter's generation?

She is in preschool with kids she has known since she was seven months old, already very remote from my childhood experience, barring growing up with my baby brother. Some friends have already moved on, attending kindergarten earlier, based on their birthday or school policies. So far she has been able to keep up with them. via the occasional playdate. Next year it will splinter off even more, with kids attending kindergarten based on where they live, rather than where their parents work. If this was my childhood, of oh so many years ago, that would be that. But with tools like facebook, she could theoretically keep in touch with babyhood pals throughout her life. I already am a facebook friend with parents of some of the kids that moved on last year, so the connections have been forged.

What will it mean for her to never be out of touch? Will she be living in an "internet small town" that functions like the sorts of towns you see in the movies where everyone knows everyone else? How ironic that some "communities" will be so closely knit, when the family in the next apartment might be total strangers.

I can't know any of this for sure, but it seems a logical progression. Some might be put off by the prospect, but it occurs to me that when we form friendships as children, they are tight, loyal, and full of love and other intense feelings. It might not be so bad to carry on such relationships virtually, even as a person moves on geographically. Maybe holding on to the loves and friendships of childhood will create a more loving, less anxious generation. I hope so.

you CAN go home again

I been thinking lately that facebook is really affecting our lives (at least the bazillion or so who are using it.) If we don't all get bored and replace it with virtual sky-diving or whatever, the patterns of our lives will continue to change. We know that we are more mobile than our grandparents' generation, but the Internet is facilitating a more subtle change from our parents'. We used to be able to think of our lives as phases, or stages, mostly broken up by school, family, etc.

For instance, my life can be divided into: childhood, spent mostly with Mom, elementary school, high school, college, the drifting you do after college, adulthood, job1, job2, job3, etc. My parents moved quite a bit when we were kids, so these divisions are even geographical in some cases. With each "stage" there was also a new group of friends. As I moved on (or was moved) most likely those friendships petered out or were forgotten. This is a sad, but typical part of growing up, which I had to get used to. But I am on facebook now, and miraculously have been put back in touch with people from my past that I had lost track of or who had lost track of me.

So what will this do to my sense of the past being the past?

If I am nostalgic for college, I don't have to try and root out some old photos and notebooks and sigh and think, whatever became of...all I have to do is check my updates and see that one friend is making chili for dinner, another is feeling frustrated about something, and another is making travel plans. They can look at my status and see that I just had a hot chocolate. I can even compartmentalize my friends by each period of my life or by location. And what about that one cool person from the not-so-cool job you both left years ago? Never going to see her again - but no, there she is, living in Florida. We can have a virtual Margarita together. With salt, if you please.

Facebook is even infiltrating into my family history. My Uncle John was always talking about his grandfather's brother, and how they both left Italy. Apparently his grandfather got on one boat, which landed in New York and that's where our branch of the family settled, and the other brother took a boat which headed for South America, possibly Argentina, and was never heard from again. A big family mystery that no one could ever solve, until...I don't have the full story yet, but I have been, through facebook, in contact with a whole new, young generation of folks with my same last name in Argentina, Chile, Spain and Italy. Pretty amazing.

What will this all mean? Will our lives become just one big blur, with past, present, and future all smushed together? Well, they probably already were, but facebook facilitates the blurring. I can't see anything really bad about any of this, but it is a little freaky sometimes to post an update and generate comments from a co-worker, a cousin, in Spanish, someone I haven't seen since high school, and an old college chum. But this is my blurry, modern, life.

mime versus meme

There's been quite a bit of meme-bashing lately, specifically facebook's viral "25 things" meme, where the narrator lists 25 random facts or self observations. Narcissistic? Perhaps. Revealing? Depends on the narrator. Too much information? Interestingly enough, rarely.

No one really "reads" a computer screen. We scan (which is why I'm a little dubious of "reading" on a Kindle, but to each his own.) Anyone who is tagged with this or other memes, such as the "initial letter" list can choose to skip around, picking random facts randomly, read religiously and answer with a list of one's own, or skip entirely. They're flying fast and furiously on facebook, being pasted into blogs or sent via email, but facebook seems the source and best home for this "getting to know you" activity. My favorite meme of the past few days is the "15 favorite albums" meme. Not only was it difficult for me to think in terms of albums - iTunes has made me even more song-centered than I was already - but it forced me to really think about what albums were on repeat in my head and in my life. My daughter will probably only have a similar sort of experience with DVDs of her favorite movies.

Reading other folk's lists as they post them is proving fascinating. Not only giving me a slice of their life, but also nudging me towards checking out some new or not-heard-in-a-long-time music. That sort of information sharing can only lead to good things. So give memes a chance. You never know what you might find out.