Rating: Be the first to rate this Blog! | Votes: 0 | Views: 1515 | Comments: 3 | Favorited: 0
Channels: Living - Lifelong Learning
Tags: know people - social life - relationships people - social media - brain tumor
Growing Bolder Community
Just another WordPress site
About This Blog
Twitter
facebook
Google
Linkedin
Pinterest
digg
del.ici.ous
redditChannels
The internet is the greatest bridge ever built. If only we will cross it.
Views: 1,515Added: Sun. Mar 01, 2009 11:12am
Posted in: Lifelong Learning
I can no longer imagine my life without the internet, but many people in my age group plus the generation below and many generations above, are utterly clueless online. I know very few people older than 40 who fully embrace the web and all its possibilities.
I have an active social life online. It's difficult for me to find friends, so it makes sense. I work from home and on a daily basis, see only my family and my kid's friends, plus assorted maintenance guys. Not that they could not become friends; my pool guy, Tim, is really thoughtful and interesting, and I frequently hold conversations with some of my kid's friends about…well, everything, movies, books, politics, the future. Fortunately for me, my kids like intelligent friends.
But I digress. My point is that if I limited my social life to only those people I come in contact with daily I would be bored to death and potentially depressed. I need to interact with people I have something in common with. It's not about age or gender or color or nationality or religion or politics. I have forged many relationships with unlikely people. The web strips away all the social pretensions, leaving only personality and intellect. I try to keep arguments good-natured, and if people irritate me, I just don't talk to them anymore.
I wish I could get my mom to listen. Her computer is a box containing jigsaw puzzles and card games, not a method of communication. She is afraid she will become addicted, a valid scenario considering how much we are alike. She lives 3 hours away from me and spends too much time alone. I've tried to get her involved, but she just doesn't get it. She doesn't have to make friends with strangers. She and her sisters, scattered all over the globe, can have a private forum…and invite people they grew up with in Honduras, or friends they knew 40 years ago. Or even friends that live 5 miles away that they don't get too see very often.
Aside from the social issue, I use the web for nearly everything. In the last week, I have ordered books, followed politics, caught up on TV shows I missed, re-watched Lost because you never get all the nuance the first time, plotted a vacation route and found places to stay along the route, paid my bills, researched new eyeglasses, and voice chatted in real time via Skype with a web client who lives in France. For free.
I also gave some thought to my personal career situation. As I move more into to freelance writing and farther from web design (which is often more hassle than it's worth) I recognize that I need to build the most valuable commodity that a web writer can offer to a potential sponsor: an audience. So I spent some time expanding my contacts. I re-established my facebook account and joined some chats on Twitter. #ageop is by far the most intellectually stimulating, and has resulted in meeting some of the most interesting people I've ever spoken to. It's Thursday nights at 9, and truly…worthy.
No matter what kind of business you're in, the social media market is useful. It's free advertising and all you have to do is establish relationships. People are inclined to spend their money on businesses they have a personal relationship with. I don't advise direct advertising using social media, that's missing the point. Offer expertise if asked, but in general, just get to know people.
One more note about the usefulness of the web. News. Many programs claim to have no spin, no bias…but they all do. I research assertions that sound questionable. News and quasi-news programs have to attract viewers and sensationalism is a traditional way to do that. As a result, both sides of the argument wind up handing out imagined worst-case scenarios as fact. If it hasn't happened, it is not fact. Anyone who says "This is what will happen" is offering opinion as fact…and it's often akin to "if you have a headache, it is probably indicative of a brain tumor, which will grow into a golf ball sized mass in your head, which will turn out to be inoperable. If you die from the brain tumor, your children won't have anyone to care for them and they will be put in foster care where they will be sexually abused and run away, turning to drugs and prostitution to survive…" You know, maybe you're just a little dehydrated. Take an aspirin and have a big glass of water. It doesn't have to be a brain tumor.
The web offers brain fertilizer. Research, explore, verify, connect, advertise, entertain…it's all out there. We're getting older, but we do not have to become obsolete or out of touch as we age. Staying young, and I intend to, is about embracing change and exploding stereotypes.
And thanks to Marc Middleton for such a great topic! I know this is really long…but I'm pretty sure I cut out more than I posted
Bolder Broadcasting, Inc. ©2006-2012 Bolder Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Marc Middleton
GB Staff
- » view
- » report
Posted 10:30am March 5th, 2009Way to go Sheri, you knocked it out of the park! There is so much noise on the Internet that you have to work a little to find the voices of reason, the voices that resonate, the "brain Fertilizer" you write about. But the effort is worth it! Sometimes it turns out the person you meet lives or works only blocks away (as is our case) and you would never know they existed if it weren't for the Internet.
sherisaid
- » view
- » report
Posted 2:57pm March 2nd, 2009Ann, I think that's great! I know there are lots of people out there online, I just can't seem to get my mom on
Ann
- » view
- » report
Posted 11:33pm March 1st, 2009Great story. I enjoyed it very much. But, there are a lot of older citizens out on the internet highway. Being in my sixties, I've made contact with lots of my classmates online through Classmates and Facebook. We're having a ball. My sister in law is 76 and she is having fun with emails. I know because she forwards me all the funny stuff she gets. Most all my cousins are online at one time or another. You may not hear about it but we are out here online just surfing away. Oh, and I almost forgot, shopping.