This young lady is the latest to "Follow" me and my tweets:
"Self-help, holistic magazine publisher. Inspirational Author. Winner of the 30 day marketing challenge. Prosperity Poet. Follow me for insights and inspirations"
Um yeah, exactly the kind of person I want to follow and read. Not.
(Or is it passé to say "Not" after some obvious statement? Seems so 90's to me)
Anyway, I don't do facebook, really, and I microblog less and less.
A case of more noise and less being said I suppose.
Randall, people will find new ways to deliver spam to you. But all you have to do I block and remove them. That's what I do for the real spammy followers.
ReplyDeleteI've been rethinking Twitter for a long time, and Facebook, too. Haven't been able to bring myself to quit either. But I wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing. Let go of some of the noise and clutter...
ReplyDeleteSomething Marva Dawn said in "The Unnecessary Pastor" really struck me. I wish I had the book with me, so I could quote it, but she suggested that much of our digital communication is an excuse (or a means to avoid) to avoid the vulnerability of real, face to face relationship. That might not be true for everyone or in all cases, but it hit home for me...
Marc, even though she maybe right, we are now and forever more will be in a digital age where using technology as a means to communicate and have relationships are going to be standard. Not everybody is going to be in a distance close to you to have a real personal relationship.
ReplyDeleteThe Internet and cellphones have also become standard in reaching your demographic or customers. Sure mail is still used, but a lot of businesses are going paperless and soon paper copies of whatever are going to be a thing of the past.
I'm pretty sure Marva Dawn isn't a luddite. Neither am I. However, even if our age is a digital one, it isn't necessarily a more relational one. Cell phones, email and chat clients are handy, but cannot replace face-to-face relationship.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Marva Dawns book quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteHer verbal presentation was considerably stronger and the language she used was very very cautious, if not outright against the dependancy on technology.
I remember being surprised at her strong opposition.
Wow. That comment was twice the length of the original post! Yikes!
ReplyDeleteDawn argues that technology is "terribly (and subtly) disruptive of the communal fabric...to a great extent because the very tools we work with and the toys with which we play pull us away from each other" (The Unnecessary Pastor, 209-210)
ReplyDeleteThen she gives a couple of examples and says, "I am grateful for technological tools. (I am not a Luddite!) The problem is that we become to enthralled with their advantages and don't ask good questions about how much they take away from us." (210)
She gives a couple of examples of ways in which specifically digital and telecommunication technology have taken away from our ability to relate.
Then she says, "Our culture is starved for community. It is hungry for genuine intimacy since we no longer have the basic social texture, the skills, or the time to learn how how to develop it. One of the major reasons for the frantic genital idolatry of our environment is that people are so ravenous for social intimacy, but do know know how to create it." (211)
Interesting, convincing stuff. I don't think she's writing off technology as fundamentally evil, but you're right in saying that she might be against the dependency on technology, at least as far as we depend on it for "relationship".
I think what probably gave me most pause in what she said was that "we don't ask good questions about how much [technology] takes away from us." Our tendency is to jump on every new technological bandwagon, to sign up for every new service, as if driven by fear of falling behind in the march of progress, but we (I) rarely, if ever, stop to ask why or what else I could be doing. In our minds, technology is, for all intents and purposes, an unquestioned (and possibly unquestionable) good.
I'm speaking to myself here. I'm not sure, for example, if I've gained much of anything from either Twitter or Facebook, aside from renewed, but shallow and limited, contact with people from my past.
Sorry. I didn't mean to get preachy or argumentative. But this post is now off the main page, so maybe nobody will notice! :)
That last one was me, too.
ReplyDelete