About fifteen years ago I told Brenda at the office that I wanted to speak to her son Brandon, then about ten years old. Why, she asked, would I want to speak with him? I needed an expert opinion on a major purchase and he was the expert I needed. I was in the market for a video gaming system and thought, who better to ask than a ten-year-old boy? Bingo, he steered me to the Sony PlayStation2, and off I went to spend countless hours playing golf, hockey, football and other games. I knew then what I still know: Those younger than I will be much more in tune with the latest technology.
I turn forty-six in about twenty-five days (July 5th for those of you on your way to Hallmark or Roger Dunn), and in surveying the landscape of my peer group realize that, with the exception of those paid to be so, I am pretty technologically savvy. I am a gadget guy and like spending time figuring out how they work. I am the go-to guy at the office for programs that do not work, setting up others’ new gadgets and other issues that my co-workers cannot figure out. I understand that technology is expanding exponentially and that I need to keep pace; ergo I know I probably need to replace and update my laptop every two to three years. I was one of the early “regular” consumers to get an e-mail account and jumped right into the Palm Pilot. My dream for years was having my Palm and my phone become one gadget—I was frustrated reading that they had such devices in Europe but had to wait to get one in the United States. I have the Blackberry to keep up with e-mails on my way to my laptop, I have the iPod so I can listen to “Waterloo” or “Copacabana” almost anywhere, I have the Bluetooth thing for my ear so I look like I am in a Star Trek episode hunting Tribbles, I have the blogs to tell others what I am thinking; I am firmly in the 21st Century.
In summary, while not a technological geek—drop the adjective and you may be on target—I am somewhat savvy as to what is happening in the technological market, and devices and gadgets being manufactured to make my life “easier.” Sure, many of those in my generation have these things, it just seems most of them know little about how to work the gadgets or how to figure out how to work them—not a problem I experience. Several of my friends and co-workers still use Day Timers, some still say, “Send the e-mail to my home,” as if the message knows where it will be read. While not the most adept and proficient almost forty-six-year-old when it comes to consumer technology, I think I am certainly in or near the top tiers. So while on top of the technology hardware and software, increasingly I am becoming more and more culturally naïve as these gadgets become integral to our culture. I came to this reality earlier this week when I got an e-mail from Robert Garcia entitled, “Checkout my Facebook profile.” Facebook, hmmmm, heard of this—probably should check it out.
And there went the next hour as I signed up, created my own Facebook profile and surfed. Facebook was not foreign to me, I had heard of the site, or “community,” but had never checked it out. My preconception of the site was that it was for the younger folk and older fuddy-duddies like myself were not quite the target audience. Wrong. I quickly realized the Facebook crowd is anyone and everyone with a computer—okay, maybe not my mother in-law, but a member of City Council has a Facebook page, so does a Presidential Campaign, as do many of the people that read the Long Beach Post. For those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, it is sort of like a perpetual high school yearbook, except you get to be the editor. Post pictures, music, comments, links, almost anything you like and enjoy—including who you like and enjoy—can go on your Facebook profile. You can leave messages for your friends on their “wall”—sort of like on-line graffiti without the social stigma of being a tagger. “You’re a swell guy, have a great summer!” “Even though geometry sucked you made it cool!” Sign my (yearbook) wall! Boyfriends and girlfriends, and boyfriends and boyfriends, communicate using the walls. Friends link to friends of friends to see if they have any mutual friends, or at least people they also know, or someone who knows someone who is linked to someone’s Facebook as a “friend” although they may never meet but they each have friends who know the same person as a friend. Facebook takes one degree off Kevin Bacon’s connectedness. Remember that girl who wouldn’t dance with you in ninth grade? She is writing OMG on your friend’s wall that she used to know you… what’s he like now? We are all connected and sharing and meeting new people. Or are we?
As I played around on Facebook and surfed friends and friends of friends and high school classmates, I began to wonder about the degree of my cultural naïveté about the on-line community and our national culture. Social networking and interaction is incredibly electronic for the generations below mine. At Garcia’s thirtieth birthday party (where I realized I was 50% older than my friend and much of the crowd), I commented to my wife that half the crowd at the bar was with a friend holding a conversation while simultaneously text messaging another friend. Or maybe they have signed on to their Facebook profile to let everyone know they are “chillin’ at Smooth’s with Robert.” For Garcia’s generation, and probably a lot of my generation, multi-tasking is texting one friend while speaking to another (using the Bluetooth of course), while sitting with a third. I have a hard time remembering what Leslie told me at lunch about what one of the teachers at school said about our daughter, much less trying to remember not only what she said but also my client on the phone and my golf buddy texting me all at the same time. How can they keep up much less participate in so many concurrent interactions?
Facebook, eHarmony, MySpace, LinkedIn, J-Date, flickr, Blogspot, groups, spaces, communities, boards; this is where people meet, communicate and share of themselves. Most of the people on these sites have unlisted phone numbers but reveal quite a bit of personal information on their personal pages in community networks. Back in the day… if you were dating someone, it took time to get to know them. What do you like and dislike, what are your opinions and views on religion, politics, movies? Now you can check out a person’s personal page and find out they are a Scientologist with left-center politics that enjoys movies with Harrison Ford but not Kevin Costner. Oh, and loves sushi. Great your first date is set: Indiana Jones and then off to Sunset Beach and Daimon; where you can both text your friends about how your date is going and send them pictures. Has anyone ever proposed marriage on a Facebook wall?
Before a meeting we Google someone and run their name through one or more of the on-line communities. Find out where they have worked, where they belong, what they like. Either this is great for breaking the ice, or it could put a real chill on the relationship before it even starts. Have I lost potential clients because they do not like what I write on the Long Beach Post, ignoring my experience and wisdom in my field? Would I not go to a new dentist or chiropractor because I found out they gave money to Nancy Pelosi’s campaign, or Google turned up their MySpace page that is Goth-themed? Or would I shrug and say, To each his own, I hear he/she is a great doctor? Are we finding out too much about someone before we meet them, thus leading to some prejudgments before we have a chance to shake hands? He seems like a nice guy but he did write that thing about that school board guy….
There appears to be little reserve for the Facebook generation. They are not shy about putting much of their private lives on the internet and sharing it with their friends, and often strangers. Why is this? Is it because sharing yourself through a keyboard and mouse is somehow less personal and revealing than looking me in the eye and telling me the same thing? Why do I search your page and Google your name to find out about you before meeting you? Are we becoming less personal as a society and culture and this allows us some form of intimacy we may otherwise shy away from? Or is it because we can learn so much more, so much faster? Our ever-speeding culture has evolved to being able to determine compatibility in a few seconds reviewing a personal page—we get the content without the depth. We make you LOL through our Blackberries instead of seeing tears form in the corner of your eyes as you really do laugh.
I like the technology and the gadgets, the ability to have fun with the pages and spaces; but I like even more the naïveté that comes with having a real conversation instead of a text message, seeing you in person to feel your emotions, and getting a group of friends together for a cold beverage to share, while we laugh and enjoy our lives. I like being naïve, I like shaking your hand or giving you a hug instead of writing on your wall—maybe if I write on your wall enough we will have that hug. I like meeting people, interacting, sharing opinions and ideas; and while I like it more in person, my Outlook calendar is having a hard time scheduling when we can sit down and talk. We know more about more people in less time and should have more time to learn even more but for some reason we are too busy to have the time to stop, take time out, meet and get to know each other. What if we spent less time updating our profiles for others to read and enjoy and instead spent that time with them in person?
Instead of reading your text that you are LMAOROTFL at my joke I would rather see it happen in person over a cup of coffee or cold pint of beer…then one of us could take a picture with our Blackberry and post it on our Facebook before we leave… TTFN DCS.
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