Well, I am an old person and yes it was hot in 1976, no hotter than now, but as I remember it did go on for a very very very long time. Let’s hope this heatwave continues because I for one am enjoying it.
How times have changed, back in 1976 we didn’t have the Internet, we didn’t have mobile phones, satellite television or Brext! I’m sure we had something equally (allegedly) catastrophic looming on the horizon, on the other hand we didn’t have social media to keep reminding us about it.
It seems that social media, or Facebook in particular is currently vying the position of the world’s greatest evil alongside plastic bags, what a strange world we live in?
I remember the birth of the Internet, people talking about being “connected” and how cool it was going to be, now, we bemoan too many emails and masses of spam offering us combinations of cash, growth and pleasure in every conceivable combination and yet, I remember when we didn’t have any email. If you wanted to put something in writing you had to type it out, print it, envelope it, stamp it and then walk, yes I said walk to a post box and post it!
Now you just type and click and they get it straight away.. unless of course it’s gone into their spam folder.
So the Internet came and gave us websites and Google and the ability to send email from one machine to another but then something else happened.
Something called Web v2 came along and said that it was going to connect “people” not machines. It became known as social media.. and wow did it connect people!
How many of us re-connected with old friends that we’d barely been in touch with for years, through social media. People that we had shared experiences with, shared values, shared life.
In real life people drift apart, go their own separate ways but social media allowed us to reconnect, it’s broadened our life’s connections, our ability to share, our ability to “be” with people that we want to “be” with. True, those connections are sometimes loose they’re not the same as “being” with someone, but it’s a type of connection that in all of our history has never been possible before.
No wonder it’s so popular.
Now people are scared that there are too many eavesdroppers and observers seeing who we connect to, what we like, what we share, what habits we have, what our hobbies are and now they are using this information to do the unspeakable act of… wait for it, sell us things … Agghhhh ! So yes, don’t be surprised that Facebook monitor what you do and target advertisements based on what you see, what you like and what you share.
Another thing about Facebook, it’s great for spying on your kids. Number two son went to Peru on a school gap year, being a boy he wasn’t too bothered about keeping in touch with home on a day-to-day basis, but thank God for Facebook. We were able to keep track in real time by observing which posts he been tagged in. We had the comfort of knowing that he was still alive, due to social media.
On the other hand, number one son attended a fancy dress party dressed in full drag as Amy Winehouse, which is why I don’t share my Facebook account with business associates.
So social media is great, it’s unbelievable, it’s allowed us to be connected as a species as we’ve never been connected before. What we do with those connections is up to us. If we allow corporations and schemers, spies and spam merchants to monopolise it, then we will suffer. But I prefer to believe that if that happens we will simply reject it, as many kids have done now. The market will decide whether Facebook should live or die.
Incidentally, spare a thought for Mark Zuckerberg, anyone who loses 17 billion in a day deserves a moment’s sympathy in my book.
So, can we please find something more evil than social media and plastic bags.. I’m afraid they’re just not doing it for me.
While I’m on the subject, how many bags for life do I have to buy, before I save the planet.? Because I’ve got loads of them, I’ve got drawers full, I’ve got bags within bags within bags.
Now that is evil!
I Want it All and I Want it Now
Email is Not Secure
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