The Twitter Oxymoron: Isolated Connectedness

I was on assignment in Albania for 3 months at the end of 2008. I had been to Albania a number of times before, so it was not new to me. My assignment was an extension of the work I had done in neighbouring countries such as Macedonia and Montenegro related to telecommunications. While I was technically assigned to work within the Ministry of Education I was, in actuality working for the benefit of the Deputy Prime Minister and his boss. The goal was to design an approach to provide 2800 schools with Internet access, and determining the best model to accomplish this goal. Unfortunately for me, the assignment was not going well for a number of reasons most of which were out of my control. I found myself 6 time zones away from the East Coast and all alone. I decided to break my sour mood by writing stories about Albania and tweeting them to my Twitter group of about 500 people. I tried not to let on how bad things were going, but I found solace in being connected to a group of people for whom I could post stories about my everyday life in Albania -- after all, not many people get to Albania. I did not receive any return tweets so I wrote a specific tweet out of sheer desperation basically stating that tweeting was like the tree which falls in a forest when no one is there to see it fall. I felt alone in Albania and I was using Twitter as a wall against which I could throw my observations but no one responded. The following day there were at least 15 messages awaiting me letting me know that my tweets were being received and that I should continue to share my stories and pictures from Albania. While it didn't make my job any easier, it did replenish some of my optimism and spirit.

Since returning from Albania I have met some of those people with whom I share a Twitter bond. I enjoy meeting people who I either follow, or follow me. But here is an observation about Twitter and Facebook. When I was in Albania, my use of Twitter did not come at the price of not spending time with someone in the flesh -- someone with whom I have a real interactive face to face relationship. On the other hand, when I use Twitter in the United States is does mean that I am not interacting with the people around me and that is a choice that can bring with it unintended consequences. I fully admit that I love Twitter, and I use Twitter every day and worse, I feel a sense of loss when I am not posting a message, or even more, every single day. I love finding articles and sharing them within my group on Twitter and Facebook plus I love writing blogs of all lengths. The truth of the matter is that I find it difficult to reconcile the time commitment I give to all of this. I am keenly aware of how Twitter is playing a significant role in making people aware of the riots in Iran; the earthquakes in China and Italy; the improvement it brings to many businesses, NGOs and governments. I can honestly say that I get “it” but it is no doubt that unless we make a living at "selling" social media solutions or we simply have nothing more urgent in our lives then we must stipulate to the fact that Twitter isolates us just as much as it connects us.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the back of the auditorium listening to a political process at my daughter's school. The candidates for class president and vice president were making their stump speeches which shared many of the same desires. They all spoke about how they would like to have a bit more time each day to spend with their classmates. They wanted to accomplish this by extending the lunch period by 15 minutes and the end of school by 15 minutes. Each candidate also wanted students to be able to use their phones during lunch, and listen to their Ipods during lunch and the 5 minute period between each class. I was struck by the incongruity of their desires -- they want more time to be social yet, at the same time, they want to be able to use the tools which would isolate them from each other. It is fortunate that the school is unlikely to change its ways and acquiesce to the "demands" of the rising 8th graders. I don't want my daughter to be isolated from the children around her. She needs that social interaction in order to become a more mature and loving person. It is interesting to see how technology is used by young, and old, to distract both from social interaction.

I am writing this passage because I had the extreme pleasure of listening to a presentation made at the 140 Character Conference by Laura Fitton (@Pistachio), founder, oneforty inc. and co-author of Twitter for Dummies. Pistachio was one of the first people I followed and she shared with us a very compelling story about her love affair with Twitter. She recounted that she went through some very difficult times and that her Twitter friends provided comfort to her during three very difficult weeks in her life. It was then that I was struck by the incongruity of Twitter. She found solace from her Twitter mates, some who even came to her and lent her support. But what did Pistachio give up in order to develop those relationships with people near and far? I intend no slight to Pistachio at all, I am just trying to make a point about Twitter specifically, and technology in general that it creates the oxymoron of isolated connectedness. I am as guilty as anyone else who spends time on social networking sites, perhaps even more given the extensiveness of my participation. Just other day my son was sitting next to me using his laptop to access Facebook as I was using mine to access Twitter. Am I a bad influence? Am I a neglectful father? I think that the next time I find myself doing this I will close my computer and see whether the two of us can actually communicate in real time rather than through emails and IMs.

When "Friends" are Forever

I was driving my car running some things through my head, one of which was an informational dump from someone I knew 35 years ago. I was so intent on parsing it through my brain that I turned off the radio, closed the windows, turned on the AC and just thought about what she had done, in a single message, and what it made me realise. We live in a moment in time when it is possible for us, those who are over 40 to reconnect with anyone we ever knew if they have left some type of cyber-trail. What makes this so unique, is that our children will not have an issue with this because they leave bread crumbs everywhere they go and it is not an oddity for them to be fully connected to people around them be they friends, foes or otherwise. I located an old friend just today who used to fly me around the San Francisco region in a Cessna 150 as long as we split the cost of aviation fuel which was all of $3.50 at the time per flight. I asked her to friend me and the jury is still out on whether she will friend me back. So I live with the anxiousness of whether she will, and then wonder what I do next. How does one go about bridging a 33 year gap and then add to it that we were more than just friendly acquaintances – I am left totally discombobulated. Will she wonder whether I am trying to reconnect with her? What will her husband think if she has a husband? Will my first message be "So Anthea, what's been happening since the last time we flew to Monterey Bay?

I pity people who have accounts on all the various social media sites because they are in constant discovery of "new" old friends who may, or may not connect with them. So as I was driving, I was thinking about the note from Joanne detailing what has happened to her life since we last saw each other and said our seemingly last goodbye. She was able to distill her life into four very neatly ordered paragraphs covering her parents, marriage, children and professional life. Oh, and a final note saying "I am an obnoxious know-it-all, but I think I was like that even when you knew me." So now what? Once you open yourself up to another person online, do you simply dump your life details and move on to the next person? Do you meet them somewhere for lunch or dinner? Do you aggregate the demand and set up a reunion type event for multiple people? Who writes the playbook about this kind of stuff? What is proper etiquette?

Back to my children who will, of course make non-cyber based friends, but it is more likely than not that they will remain cyber-connected with no end in sight as long as Facebook et al remains a vital application. What happens if Facebook suddenly dies, and with it we lose all those cyber-based connections? While that seems unimaginable, old technology is constantly displaced by new killer apps. Someday the IPhone will seem as crude as those cell phones we see in movies from the 1980s. When I graduated high school during ancient times relationships ended, that was it! We went off to college, at least I did, and made new friends, and when college was over, I went to graduate school and made new friends leaving behind the old. I left graduate school and moved overseas and made new friends. Along the way there were people I really missed, but life was, at least to me, a process of moving forward and never looking back. Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Google, and an entire cacophony of cyber-tools make it so one never ever really has to leave anyone behind. It used to be expensive to make a telephone call and reconnect but now we have Skype and you can reach anyone anywhere for virtually no cost at all. We live in a connected world except for those who eshew technology - the luddites.

The fact is that our children, let's say people 30 and under, have lived in a world where computers and connectivity and the Internet have been as ubiquitous as bicycles, walking to school and writing letters and mailing them were to us. Remember what we thought of someone whose family didn't own a TV set? They were odd and more than likely shunned, or at the least considered strange. No child today between the age of 10 and 30 can really be without a computer because without the requisite technological skills, they will be held back professionally. So my generation is the last one which is able to use the excuse that we didn't grow up with a computer and society takes pity on us. I honestly hear the following within IT circles - "just wait 10 years and they will all be gone." When we are all gone, and out of the game, everyone will know how to use a computer, understand social media, be able to remain connected with every single person they have met throughout their lives but will they be able to communicate on a human level? I can see the future, "Have my bot contact your bot and schedule a date for when we can meet."

In closing this discussion, let me make something perfectly clear. I love the ability to reconnect with people from my past. I have been very fortunate in reconnecting with people who really played a significant role in the past. My concern is what happens to the 90 percent of people who friend you and did not play a significant role in your past. What do you say to those people, the ones who played a minor walk on role in your life so many years ago? Do you not accept their offer of "friending" on Facebook? Do you simply leave them hanging? As someone who was an outsider way back then I tend to accept every invite because one can never have too many friends in a cyber world.