I recently shared with someone my view that I would like to turn back the population clock to when I was growing up. The world seemed more accessible or manageable somehow when there were fewer authors, fewer politicians, fewer consumer choices, fewer claims on our attention in, say, 1950. Click here to see how population has grown in the state and in the nation.
Obviously this is the musing of a fuddy-duddy one step from senility, a person who doesn't "get" Twitter and other modern phenomena. But yesterday I picked up a copy of "Curation Nation," in which author Steven Rosenbaum posits the need for and value of "curators" who will wrangle all the onslaught of information, marketing and communication for us. I started jotting notes of concepts and links I never heard of and then decided I just have to buy this book so I can mark up the pages and make notes (does Kindle let you do such a thing?).
The book mentions a job title, content strategist, that I never heard of until it turned up on a business card of my firstborn. Indeed, I need to read this book if for nothing else than to chat knowledgeably about SEO and such with Audrey.
I know the days of neighborly dialog over the backyard fence or on the front porch settee are probably gone forever in favor of texting, and one no longer has to wait for Sunday evening to hear (not see) the best in family entertainment. The world is not going to roll back to simpler times. Maybe this book will serve as my field guide to the overcrowded, overloaded, overstimulating world in which we all live today. Just think, sixty years from now, for 12-year-olds in 2011 this will be the "good old days" and they may find their new world just as perplexing.
--Bernice
Well, for one thing the Kindle does indeed allow users to do just that. I absolutely love my new contraption and have loaded it up with about 15 books I wouldn't have been able to afford in their dead-tree form (not to mention the fact that they're quite a bit more portable this way!)
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, the first thing that came to mind when reading this post, which I very much enjoyed, was the inherent irony in expressing the sentiments you do using a medium that didn't even exist even 20 years ago. I for one am so thankful of being part of the first adult generation that essentially has the world at its fingertips thanks to technology - although on the other hand I certainly understand the appeal of the simpler times that seemed to end the day I was born (thus also unfortunately resulting in a pronounced decline in newspaper circulations).
This one-panel comment probably sums up my point better than any of my ramblings could. So I'll end with it:
http://i.imgur.com/re3NW.jpg
Regards, Mark
Bernice you are by no means a fuddy-duddy. Something as simple as previously thought of as impersonal - "phone call" - is now deemed to inconvenient much less a conversation over the fence. I have and still am fighting it every step of the way. Many a friend has been annoyed at my simple reply to a text message - Call Me If You Want To Talk - due to the lack of context and tone from texting. I remind all the techno geeks and freaks - "You are one electromagnetic pulse ( EMP ) away from being irrelevant."
ReplyDeleteAs our dear friend Rick Springfield sang back in the day ( the 80's )..."We all need...The Human Touch, I....Need..The Human Touch."
You again have added a bit of whimsy to my day...
I hope you enjoyed the brisk air and bright sun today Bernice!
Rob