This morning I spent some time at ProBlogger, run by Darren Rowse. ( you can check out my comment there). He had a very interesting article entitled: Bloggers Withouth Boundaries: Are The Lines Getting Too Blurred? In it I read:
“No doubt, the line between social media and socializing has become hopelessly blurred for many. I’m sure I am not alone in counting a number of twitter and blogging relationships among my “real” friends. In fact, I speak with certain online friends far more often than I speak with other face-to-face friends.”
“What’s the net effect on our humanity and ability to maintain intelligent boundaries between work, play, family and friends?”
This is very interesting stuff. I have always been fascinated with media and Marshall McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message. It is not so much the ‘content’ of the media that changes us but the media itself.
No doubt we are being changed. It is not so much all of the information that we have access too but the media that we use to accumulate and multiply that information with, that is affecting us.
I feel the impact of that media when I go into chat rooms or get on Twitter. All I see is a stream of information and I wonder who is it directed to?
When I watch my children in that environment they seem to have an innate sense of what is going on and what text is relevant to them. Not so with me. I must still be a part of the more ‘literate’ society that McLuhan refers to, as being more linear and detached. But my kids are right in the thick of it.
Current Social media with its underlying electric energy is changing our nervous system and way of perceiving. I think McLuhan was right… we are moving into an era of “total” involvement where the job dissapears and each person is called to live a ROLE in depth and with total involvement and not the old JOB.
What do you think about all of this?
If your interested in McLuhan views, spoken by himself check out U Tube:
Peace.
Norm