Feeding My Ignorance

Social media is an evolving beast - I think that I have expressed previously my thoughts that we are all still very much in the learning curve when it comes to understanding the effect that it has on all parts of our lives. This means that there is no deep seated set of behaviours that everyone would agree as "acceptable" and that, in turn, leads to many making mistakes.

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Given that technology is moving forward so quickly, it is inevitable that many people will fail to understand the implications of the changes. It never ceases to amaze me, for instance, that now that major football matches are covered by dozens of high definition cameras that see every detail of every minute of the game players still believe they can "get away with" things that "won't be noticed". Doing something "on the blind side" of the referee might have been successful fifty years ago - but now - the "blind side" may still exist for the individual who is the referee - but for millions of others watching on TV there is no blind side.

Similarly, there are some folks who seemingly fail to understand the extremely public nature of the www - in particular the way in which everyone has become more connected which, in turn, means that we are all much closer to "knowing" things. These might be things that are good to know - but it is also much easier to stumble over things that you really wish you hadn't!!!

The big change is in how we communicate - and how we are communicated to (if that is a proper phrase). Even within my lifetime this has changed in ways that were simply not foreseeable. The dawn of "personal" computing happened in the 1970's and it was many years later that the www came into existence. We now almost take it for granted that we can, using applications like skype, see and hear immediately what is happening on the opposite side of the world.

Sure, there is so much happening that we can never know it all - but - "it all" is just a few mouse clicks away - and "it all" includes things we would want to know as well as things we would rather remain ignorant of. It is a marvellous resource - allowing me to publish this blog - I don't know whether this is read by one or one million - although I supect that the former might even be an over-estimate for some of the posts!! The point is that it is "out there" - freely available to anyone who happens to stumble over it. I am keen that it always contains material that I am "happy" that the world will associate with me.

For some others, you wonder whether they have actually grasped the fact that if one person can see it - then everyone can see it......

For a small number of people this is, of course, precisely why they put online the material that they do - they NEED people to see it - they WANT to get their opinion noticed - they INTEND to provoke a response - and so on.... For these people the www is a vehicle to advance their "brand" (in the widest sense of that word) and some, at least, take the line that "any news is good for publicity" with scant regard for whether the publicity is good or bad.

That may work for the so-called celebrities - those who, effectively, are famous for being famous!!

For 'normal' people bad publicity should really be avoided - unfortunately many seem incapable of coming to any rational judgement about what bad publicity actually is!! (or perhaps more to the point they are incapable of judging whether it is "sensible" to share particular things.

One particular thing that most must have noticed is "collecting" friends on social media. It would seem that, for some people, being "friended" or "connected" or "liked" is the pinnacle of achievement - I even saw someone celebrating 10000 (yes - ten thousand) friends - and doing so in a way that suggested that every one of that number was a "personal" friend. Now, perhaps its me that is weird, but it would seem impossible to actually 'know' that many people in any meaningful way. I can understand folks having tens of thousands of "followers" - but I somehow suspect that the people who 'cultivate' followers will rarely regard them as friends.

It is going to take a while for the 'rules' to settle down into some form of "acceptable behaviour" when it comes to online activity. I will come back to this subject in the future - if only to talk about the fact that many of the issues are because communication "at a distance" is fraught with difficulties when compared with face-to-face communication.