Posts Tagged ‘social’

Putting Your Online Life In its Place

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

In our recent survey, more than 50% of respondents said they had not disconnected from the web for more than a week in the last year. And more than one quarter of respondents reported being late for work, school, an appointment or some other activity because of being online.

I’ve been talking with a lot of newbies lately- many people are on the fence about the role of social networks in their lives, and confused about how and why to jump in.

After seeing this data, it’s easy to see that they are right about one thing: there’s a risk of the social web creeping in and impinging on your real world life.    We need to put the Social Web is put in its rightful place, and stop it from becoming something that controls us or is a big time sink.

So, the social web has a rightful place- it comes AFTER the following:
1. After real life interactions with people you care about
2. After deep, thoughtful consideration and communication- Tweets are not a substitute for real listening and real expression!
3. After taking care of your embodied self (exercise, sleep, food, sex- don’t laugh, there are internet addicts who turn away from their real life partners in favor of the screen, and miss the start of their exercise class because they are online.)
4. After creating and expressing and working and feeling and knowing what you value (all best done undistracted, enhanced by being deeply present, to engage in inquiry, tapping into source, flowing)

Your social network participation should have intention behind it- know why you want to be part of the social web- so that you control it, and it doesn’t control you. There are a lot of good reasons, of course- and a lot of bad ones, too. Then, decide how much you want to engage and put some process in place around that. Decide where to engage so you’re not scattered all over the place.

We’ve all heard that the medium changes the message; this new medium changes much more than the message- it is changing the fabric of our culture- more than TV, more than the prior 15 years of the web. It can be addictive, and even overwhelming. No matter how much technology changes, and how helpful it can be, we need to still start with intention- and be human first.


Digital Natives Think Differently/ Social Media is Changing our Minds

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

if you’re a digital native- that is, generally speaking, 25 or younger- you already take this social web/social network stuff for granted. The social web can be the hard drive of humanity- recording the thoughts and actions of all. But in the process, it’s forcing the acceptance of transparency, and changing how we, or at least the younger “we”, think about our role in society.

There’s a lot of noise about privacy and safety on the web, but we see it in a slightly different way. The idea that your information/your story will always be out there will ultimately result in more acceptance of the full range of experiences that are inherent in being human- for example, if you’re 22 now and look back when you’re 40- the record will reflect that we all try things, do stupid stuff, make mistakes, learn, grow and change- that you cannot deny your past, your present- but it doesn’t define your future. But it will do that for everyone else in your age cohort, so the stigma will be gone.

This force will also dissipate the idea of adopting disparate masks to fool or present yourself as a collection of personae that show up depending on the context you are appearing in (CEO me versus Burner me). This managed/compartmentalized self is a very 80′s idea, or probably older than that- stands in direct opposition to the the reality of you as an integrated and complex being- it will remove secrets, shames, other wastes of energy and preoccupations with packaging the self. That’s already happening.

It ultimately creates more transparency and helps truth get out faster- if you have a lot of friends validating you, and I know your friends, it’s like a mass better business bureau for people. That’s what works about LinkedIn, and Facebook. Who’s vouching for you? In the end, it will be hard to be a fake entitity. The whole social web is the snitch, the betrayer of imposters. People and things alike.

Finally, the social we will be a great integrator of the story of being human- it will show the incredible lie of demographics- illustrating how complex and overlapping our relationships are, how we hold sometimes contradictory opinions, and how our communities, which on the surface would never meet at all, are really very interactive.