We Don't Talk Anymore

Today I got a voice mail to remind me that I should check my Email for an important message. The Email said to confirm receipt of the important message by text. A return text suggested that I check my messages on FaceBook which contained a website link to something. (I can't remember what and I cant find it again) I think that important stuff rolls off the bottom of the page just as you need to see it. I have spent considerable editing time deleting the Farm Game Application which keeps piling up like manure which has sticky stinky properties. Voice mail from 4 hours ago just now showed up and must have come in whilst I was out of towers in a steel building with antenna jamming sophistication. The message said, "Call me" so I texted back and asked if I was still needed so I got an Instant Message saying the the messenger could not remember what they wanted. Another text sent a link to some great music and earlier I played Pandora collection of alison strauss for lunch background music.

Facebook has a poke feature that simulates unspoken interest and establishes a connection but allows only a metaphor for contact.

Voice mail allows a rehearsed summary of some thought lineage and is usually used because the wrong option was selected on the originating phone. Since a message was left inviting a message back if you leave your name and time and reason for the call you are bound to say something like "Text me"

But after all this, I am resigned to high approval of all these devices for they allow and encourage reaching out and receiving back thought-flights from friends who would not otherwise have even blinked at me. So pokes, and winks, and text, and IM, and voice mail and email and blogspot (You're on it) are grand substitutes for conversation because we just don't talk anymore.

So keep it up. Knowledge is power. There are no stupid questions. I will accept your communication in any form it comes and thank you for recognizing the excesses and addictions inherent in these methods.

Facebook and Networking Upstages Blog

Blog clog is the dynamic in cyber social circles that occupies so much of the available creative space like "Brink Think Link" that fewer postings happen. Updates and postings to Facebook and other sites are superseding public comment like this. The immediacy and addiction of open public opinion has us spellbound and time compromised. Facebook is linked to mobile publishing and n'ary a thought gets formed but we all see it for comment or judgement or dismissal or deletion. The power of the blog-hit has been overwhelmed by the poke and Blog Publishing is even link-attached to Facebook entry for thumbs up but not down peer review. Facebook thinks that you either approve or support or "like" a communication but dislike means delete or a comment explaining why the dislike. There is a bias for the positive. Naysayers must explain their disdain; the yaytrain gets a neat little thumb icon that serves to numb communication about what is disliked or why. I have been sucked into the whirlpool of immediate gratification and now recognize how a presidential campaign gained such parochial feel from internet savvy that a junior legislator with community organizing credentials was able to ipad the election. The pencil is a noble instrument but way too slow. The writer's callous has been replaced by carpal thumb. Even now, I am plotting to post this on my Facebook Profile so it can be seen by more readers. Shamelessly, I hope the Blog Clog is snaked out by a Drano-like reaction that says No with as much aplomb as the Yayhoos who need not explain what they like but like Jack Horner, they hide in a corner and pull out a plum. Thumbs Up Nay Sayers: "No" is responsible and accountable. Persist in explaining yourselves and avoid the error of using the wrong finger.