Yesterday, I read an article by Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Business Week, titled, "12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office." It was a list of words and "phrases that you shouldn't be using at work anymore because they will make you seem old." Terms like: Intranet, Web Surfing, Push Technology, Long-Distance Call, World Wide Web, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), or Internet Telephony. Among them was the word "weblog" with the following explanation...
A blog is a shortened version of "Weblog," a term that emerged in the late 1990s to describe commentary that an individual publishes online. It spawned many words still in use such as "blogger" and "blogosphere." Nowadays, few people have time to blog so they are "microblogging," which is another word that's heading out the door as people turn Twitter into a generic term for blasting out 140-character observations or opinions.I'll admit, I gave in to the whole Twitter thing last December. While I recognize (and have even exercised) some of its unique benefits, on the whole, I find it extremely tedious. If anyone is actually that interested in what I'm doing every waking minute of the day, they really need to get out more (either that, or I need to look into getting that restraining order). The truth is, I find it difficult to really sink my teeth into a statement like "working on a Sunday! ... story of my life." or "Just watched first 2 Hours of transformers 2. Didn't download all i missed the ending." I read one tweet recently that simply said, "trying to think of what I'm doing so i can post a twitter about it." I understand his sentiment.
I often find myself staring blankly at standing prompts like Twitter's "what are you doing?" or Facebook's "what's on your mind?" I could waste a lot of time trying to come up with something, ANYTHING remotely pithy with which to fill the box-- congeniality and intrigue in 140 characters or less. Contrary to popular belief, I don't always have something to say. In fact, I spend the largest portion of each day working entirely alone not saying anything at all. I don't usually mind it one bit. I draw energy from solitude. Yesterday, for lunch, I drove up to a generally deserted hiking trail in the national forest and just sat on a rock reading and taking photos. But, when I do speak or write or, in some other way, communicate, it generally has the full force of all my alone time behind it. Sometimes conversation, for me, is a release of that pent up raw energy. (One more reason never to ask me a question.) Writing is a refocusing of that energy and, often, my preferred outlet. But writing, though cathartic, is not communication without a reader. [Enter: the blogosphere]
So, bloggers, let's refocus some of that summer energy. I love our silent conversations. I love discovering life with and learning from you. Let the rest of the world "tweet" away. We both know we've more substance than that.
1 comment:
I really appreciate this blog entry. It is interesting the transformation from Myspace, to Facebook, to Twitter... each format requiring less and less... thought (ironic for the question: what's on your mind?).
I find myself perusing the Facebook statuses (stati?), and I latch onto those that are thought provoking, subtle, yet revealing, or ballsy... I think this is because those categories still send a message: I'm human - not just a line of text on the screen. I don't really care much what someone has done in their virtual world (YoVille or the farm, for instance).
Interesting how these formats also lead to a sense of voyerism into each others' lives, especially as many choose to relate to others through an impersonal screen - yet people have such a difficult time actually interacting with all the people they associate with online.
Like you, I also revel in my solitude - time away from the computer or from people or from "computer people." I was once asked how I could work 8 hours in an office all by myself without anything to "do." Admittedly, the office is not the most exciting place, but it is exactly for that reason that I could reflect, contemplate, absorb... My mind is buzzing constantly - and like you, when I have the opportunity to finally interact, I usually bring to my interactions those thoughts I contemplated in solitude.
I am disturbed by the microblogging trend - but understand why it exists. People long to be heard. The strange thing is, as you alluded to, those microblogs seem more prone to dismissal (because they lead one to microblog about only the mundane - people have the opportunity to be heard/seen in ten seconds - with people actually willing to read their 140 character blurb and the best they can come up with is: I had mac and cheese for dinner. Wow.
What seems like such a grand idea and such a wide space (the Internet) seems to result in everything small: little time, little space, little thought, less read, less important, less meaning...
How much further will we condense our thoughts, words, and selves while at the same time overly inflating or exposing ourselves? I see it leading to solitude, but not the reflective, contemplative kind... rather, the confining kind. Ironic.
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