Jack's Rant Thursday, March 26

"Bloggers and Twitters and Facebooks, Oh My!" Part Dux

Yesterday I mentioned Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World briefly, but didn't really get around to making the point as to why. The point is that in Huxley's idealistic novel in order for the general populous to have this wonderful society, they sacrifice, unknowingly, other rights that they don't discover until it's too late. And moreover the antithesis of their society develops outside of their realm. The ying and the yang.

We can draw countless other literary examples that use this plot structure, but I won't bore you with them. The simple point is that anytime we accept or bring into our scope a new piece of technology to make our lives simpler, we are really sacrificing some other part of our rights in order to do so.

I remember my very first real job. Our main contact with the outside world was the telephone, a land line with a rotary dial and a couple of blinking buttons on it to access another trunk. That was it. If we needed something in a rush, we called a runner. If we needed something sent to somewhere else, we used air mail.

There wasn't any other way to send or communicate something. No answering machines, no faxes, no pagers, except the office secretary who would shout out your name, nada. If you didn't get it in the mail, oh well, maybe tomorrow.

This gave us several things. First, we had to plan ahead and anticipate that the mail may not get there on time, so we always gave ourselves some wiggle room so if it didn't get there when we thought, it was no big deal. The check's in the mail.

Second, it gave us time to focus on other things and be in a proactive mode, not a reactive one.

Then one day a rep from FedEx showed up to the office, and the rest is history.

Every time a new piece of communication technology has entered our lives it has allowed others to be more intrusive on ours. Forgot to arrange for some photos to be taken - that's ok, I'll call in the morning and have them take some and email them for my 11 AM meeting. Reactive, not proactive.

And the list goes on.

When I was in college I took a class, Mass Communications in Modern Society. One of the required readings was The Medium is the Message an insightful book by Marshall McLuhan. In sum it discussed the relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

For example, if you read a story in the National Enquirer you might not believe it at all, where as if you had read the same story in The Washington Post you would probably take it to heart.

Now we have all these very personal ways people can report on events around them. How true are they? We don't have the staff of the Post fact checking any of this. Is much of this hearsay and innuendo?

I believe that one of the dangers that all these new communications present, is that we might take them as fact.

A police officer taking statements from witnesses of a crime scene might hear many variations of the facts, which one is the most honest? And I believe that the same is true of the bloggers and twitters and facebooks, OH MY!

My advice, take anything you read in one of these blogs with a grain or two of salt. Except for mine, of course. I fact check everything!

Check again on Saturday, for my next rant!