It's been a while since I added to my unblog. But that's the freedom of not having a blog. You don't have to share if you don't feel like it.
Lately I have been hearing the term "living socially" a lot. Basically it gets back to the blogging phenomenon. When I maintained this web site a lot in the 90's, I used to write about where I am and sometimes post pictures of my surroundings. It was a way to inform my family and friends who frequently lost track of me and always greeted me with "How was your flight?". Call me a pioneer of blogging, but at the time I had no idea that i was engaged in such activity.
Then blogging really took off. First as a way for select well informed people to comment on the subject they were well informed on. Then, the great unwashed masses followed. Since most of them were not experts on anything and were not particularly well informed all the way around, their blogging resembled that of a diary made public. It used to be that a diary was kept under lock and key so that strangers would not be informed of your half baked ideas, fears, and personal information. Blogging turned that concept upside down. Share everything with the world. As if the world is supposed to CARE.
Facebook picked up on the phenomenon and created an orgy of non stop blogging. No longer was it one person "sharing" with the world. Now it was many people sharing their ideas, activities, thoughts, and fears with the COMMUNITY. And "living socially" was born. People became addicted and removed themselves from large stretches of their REAL life to participate in sharing information for what remains of their real lives with virtual friends.
Things got kicked into the next (and what appears to be the frothy stage with the arrival of Tweeter. Its an abbreviated version of blogging which takes blogging on the road and shortens the message to less than 140 characters. Now you can let your friends know of your indigestion or other bodily functions while you are on the move. How exciting. Now EVERYONE gets to hear your half baked incomplete sentences. And all to what end? How does it enrich our lives? Ummmmm....well....that appears to be less certain.
I am, however, fairly certain that 10 years from now we will look back and blogging, facebooking, and tweetering will seem seem as passe as 70's leisure suits. No one will admit to having ever used it, everyone will claim that they opposed it. Very similar to the fabled french resistance of world war II.
For now, living socially is all the rage. No more secrets, nothing private, not even dirty laundry to air. Regular information paradise which in my book falls under TMI (Too Much Infromation).