hippytowiki

Seduced, un-plugged, and abandoned

I survived 48 hours without e-mail...

and lived to tell!  Due to a storm (some say a tornado), my server went down on Wednesday afternoon and didn't come back to life until Friday evening.  "Oh I'm so sorry!" my friends and colleagues said.  "I would die without e-mail!"  they exclaimed.  (I wondered if I should start wearing black and wailing.)  My Blackberry screen contained only a smattering of personal missives and AOL SPAM.  I eventually stopped peeking at the screen all together.

My team and I immediately set up our "emergency" e-mail addresses and work and called our clients to alert them.  Oddly, life went on without e-mail.  We got a lot accomplished and had personal interactions over the phone.  It was actually sort of fun.  Like when New York had its blackout in 1965 and my brothers and I (nerds that we were) did our homework by candlelight.

Yes, we all experienced a huge amount of anxiety, sadness, and frustration during these last two days without e-mail.  But I kept reminding myself that a mere three decades ago, I didn't even have a computer, a cell phone or a Blackberry.  And things happened that year.  New ideas were launched (like the first flight of the Concorde and the release of Talking Heads' first album). 

Yes, the business world moved slower and was limited to 9 to 5.  People had to "talk" to each other using primitive means of communications (like their mouths).  But a little taste of the '60s and '70s isn't a bad thing on occasion.  That said, I am switching to a new host.  They promise my e-mail will be up more than 99% of the time.  But I'll always remember the "Blackout of 2007."

Communal Living

I'm moving "off the farm.  " I decided to stop getting Twitter alerts on my cell.  The reasons behind it paralleled my decision in 1975 to leave Xanadu, my commune-like co-op residence at the University of Michigan and move into my own "pad."

I truly love social contact, group experiences, shared information, observations and emotions.  But too much human contact can be tiring and (dare I say it) annoying at times.

After leaving my phone off for several hours one day this week, I turned it back on to find 18 new "tweets," mostly related to people's food consumption, local driving/walking patterns, and other day-to-day routines.  Devoid of visual images, facial expressions, voice inflection, or vivid descriptions, these "shared experiences" were distilled to just a handful of characters (140 to be exact).

Post-Xanadu, I continued to attend parties, entertain late night guests, and indulge in long stretches of music, drinking, eating, sharing stories, and mindless conversation. 

Post-Twitterphone, I'll continue to read about my friends' lives on the web, through their blogs, via e-mail and maybe I'll even see some of them "in the real world" from time to time.  But, for right now, I need my space.

Oh yes, and tonight I'm probably going to have a salad and chicken for dinner.

My Mother Invented Twitter

  (No, she didn't really.) 

But my mother used to always ask me when I left the house, "Where are you going and can you leave a phone number?"  She then would wait up for me to come home (usually at some ridiculous hour of the night) and ask me what I did, who I was with, what I ate, and a myriad of other well-meaning but often annoying questions.  She would knock on my door when it was closed and ask me "what are you doing?"  She still calls me every Sunday night, with similar queries about my activities.

Twitter (which I discovered via Howard Greenstein at Podcamp NYC) is an updated version of my mother's system.  It enables friends, wanna-be friends, acquaintances, and loved ones to share the answer to the simple question, "What are you doing right now?"  I've been a member of the "Twitterati" for about a week now, and the jury's still out.  Unlike my mother's interrogations, Twitter does enable you to easily decide when and what you want to share.  It can be as intrusive as you allow it to be.  It's somewhat addictive.  I don't really care what my new "friends" eat for breakfast, yet I find myself reading...and twittering back with my own mundane activities.

Is this all just a manifestation of the overpowering human need to connect?  Is it a form of voyeurism?  Or is my mother REALLY the force behind Twitter? 

Do you Twitter?  Why?

follow theonswitch at http://twitter.com