Perpetual Change

The age of technology

For the first time the other day, I felt a real generational divide.

I was working with a group of students on a Tuesday evening. They were aware that they would need to have another meeting in the next week - before an event on the following Tuesday. One member expressed concern in this, as she was leaving town for the weekend. The others assured her that they would make their schedules work. Then, to my amazement ...and disbelief... instead of scheduling a time, they all mutually agreed to NOT pick a time, and discuss it via a Facebook forum that they had set up.

THEY WERE ALL THERE ...they all had their calendars (I presume)... and they chose not to reach consensus in person, preferring the online medium.

I was shocked...but silent.

This and other events have made me realize that I am using electronic media all wrong. Whereas I see it as a suped up snail mail - free and fast - a way to connect intimately if not in person with other; it seems that others, with Twitter, Facebook, and email on our phones (the 'euphemistic' crackberry), are using electronic media to moderate their attention. Where I have been using my attention to moderate my social media. A colleague commented that they may not have calendars and that without the record of a meeting in the online forum, they may not remember it exists. It seems that reality is now dictated almost exclusively by the digital alternative.

The prospect of changing intimidates me. The fact of my intimidation scares me.

posted by jjs @ 10:58 PM