Jack's Rant Wednesday March 25

"Bloggers and Twitters and Facebooks, Oh My!"

In 1932 Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, his futuristic novel set in 2540 AD London. It's idea of the future may not be as far off as we might believe, listening to synthetic music, human embryos raised artificially and all the while the care free population indulging in sex. Of course there's a dark side to all of this, but this isn't a book report after all.

This is a narrative on how quickly we have adapted to "sharing" our lives with others, often anonymously for anyone to look at. (Case in point, this blog.) It would be rather like our great grandparents leaving their diaries on a park bench for anyone to read.

Life's journals used to be left to the discretion of the writer, or their heirs, as to who and when might read them. Diaries were often kept under lock and key hidden in some forgotten place to be shared with only the closest of friends.

Important letters were also a way to keep a journal of one's trek through life. My maternal grandfather ran away from home at the age of 16 to ride the rails, never to return again. But what he did do was to write to his parents of his experiences. Now, as it turns out, his father thought someone else might enjoy his travels and presented them to the local paper in Duluth. They published a great many of them providing a permeate record of his early life.

This in turn allowed him to later write a book based on those letters The Winds Will and is a wonderful family record for us to have of his early life experiences.

I imagine there is some gene in us that makes us want to preserve some part of our past in some way. It's always been an important part of all cultures.

And like an adolescent going through puberty with a bad attack of ache we have seen a plethora of these new sites where we can share pretty much anything we want, as often as we want. Even this one has an option for "adult" content!

There's Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, NetCafe, Blogs, Twitter, a ton of business networking sites and my personal favorite, "Bebo" (I'm not making this up), AOL's latest attempt to enter the din of countless personal logs.

And why in the world would anyone name a site "Twitter". Did they bother to look it up? It's an old English word actually, that means to be nervously excited. "She was all a twitter when her love entered the room." Now I ask you, how does that exactly correspond to noting your daily schedule in Twitter. Were you "in a twitter" when you read how your best friend got 15% off at Macy's one day sale? Or were you twittering around the computer awaiting the next installment of my blog? OK, I can accept the last one. But you see my point, and that is, between text mailing, emailing, blogging, twittering, business networking... it's all gotten way to much!

I guess I sound like an old guy sitting on the porch of the general store, sipping on a warm sarsaparilla seeing the first horseless carriage drive by, amazed at the new contraption, pets his dog on the head and says "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore"!

Part two on this subject tomorrow (and you thought I was done with this!)