Leveraging Technology

I recently posted the following as my Facebook status:

To all my FB friends: My green patch is growing weeds. The candy shop went out of business. The farm is being sold at auction. The cove and sea garden turned white. Blame it on Corporations and the rest of the 3L course load - it won, they lost.

I got a few comments from this, but only a few. The status post has stemmed the tide of goodies and game invites into my status and notification area. It has also stemmed the guilty feeling from looking at 100+ notifications that always seemed to need my attention.

In a tech meeting yesterday, my co-worker Stephen admitted that he loathed Facebook. (I am paraphrasing, mostly because he used a string of long words that all added up to the more pithy word loath, so I used it here for brevity) This is almost blasphemy in blogging and social media circles, but I admired him for his honesty, and silently admitted that his stance on Facebook was pretty close to my own.

Don't get me wrong - Facebook has served me well in areas where I used to feel I was woefully unorganized. I now acknowledge friend's birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates much more readily and easily than I used to, becoming in real-life closer to the person that I wish I were inside my head. This is not because I am any better at remembering these dates, but because I have leveraged Facebook to act in a way that my date planner and my calendar could not. My calendar could not put a cute little icon next to people's names and list them in ascending order according to when their birthdays were beginning a week before it started. My handheld did slightly better, but I still had to program it to start sending me notifications a week before. I also had to remember to go to the store ( or my email program), find a card, send a card, hope that I had their address/email address right, and wonder if it got to them. With Facebook, I see the birthday icon and note if it says "today." For the ones that say "today" I can click on the person's name, taking me straight to their wall where I can write a birthday greeting. No question about if I got the address or email right - I can see right there that I have the right person. No question about whether or not they got my greeting - I post it right on their wall, along with all the other people who have posted greetings on the wall. I don't have to wonder if they received it - I know that as soon as they log into Facebook, and click on their profile, they will see my greeting on their wall along with all the other greetings that are sitting there.

However, I have also found that FB has started to serve as a substitute for real, meaningful interaction. If I want to connect with someone, I send them a message or superpoke them or send them a widget for their farm, garden, sea-garden, etc. I also have a certain amount of admiration for the way that charitable organizations have leveraged the popularity of these games by monitoring use and making donations based upon the amount of traffic to their sponsored games. I rarely pick up the phone any more. I rarely email people. Write a letter - an actual, mail-through-the-post-office letter? Are you new? That would take time. Time for me to write the letter. Time to find a stamp (assuming that I have a stamp). Time to go to the post office (because it is likely that I don't have a stamp, so I would have to buy one). Time for the letter to travel to its intended recipient. Time for them to open read it and respond to it (assuming that they do respond to it - in the advancing age of technology, it is more likely that I would receive an email thanking me for the letter and that they would get back to me soon).

So Stephen, if you are reading this, yes, I do blog - like I do anything else that requires time, thought, and energy - rarely and in the precious moments of time stolen from the "more important" things in my life: family, studying for law school, and the occasional Friday night out with friends.

However, I do Facebook, Tweet, and occasionally email. So if you need to get in touch with me about something that can't wait, text me or message me - I'll probably get it. If, however, you would like to discuss the intrusion of Facebook and other social media into more meaningful and connected types of communication, send me a letter, or meet me on Friday evening when I'm out with my friends.