"Neither need you tell me," said Candide, "that we must take care of our garden."
"You are in the right," said Pangloss; "for when man was put into the Garden of Eden, it was with an intent to dress it; and this proves that man was not born to be idle."
Voltaire’s Candide
Perhaps the appropriate metaphor is that of a garden.
Relationships – maintained online or in person, with family, classmates, neighbors or professional colleagues – must be nurtured. Granted, social networking tools like Facebook and LinkedIn lower the transaction costs of relationship maintenance. (Less watering, less weeding – if you will.) And anecdotes abound about how these tools reinvigorate flagging friendships, uncover hidden knowledge, resurrect forgotten connections.
But there is a tradeoff: These tools require time, energy and technical knowledge to make them valuable.
Only eight days into this experiment, I've already stepped away for a few days. During the inaugural weekend, competing family engagements and professional pressures meant that I simply didn't post. More importantly, I didn't read or comment on others’ online activity.
On a personal note, I'm back. There are 32 more days of our Radical Immersion experiment.
On a professional note, I realize that contingency planning is no longer a concern only for work that takes place in the traditional media. To get engaged, an organization must go all in, which includes a plan for staying involved all the time.
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Lass:
ReplyDeleteYou are spot on! I have just returned from a brief technological hiatus as family commitments were too many to find time to participate in this experiment/experience. However, I am genuinely interested in how our culture is evolving around social technologies and I hope to contribute to your efforts here in this space.
I have stories to tell but am careful to not detract from your experiment. They range from how my job responsibilities call on me to engineer intranet/extranet space for hundreds of users to how I am administrating a youth recreational league using the web as my communication platform. Not to mention dealing with the emotion around questionable posts on facebook by my daughter's network of friends and the new email reminders about my children's lunch account balance...followed by the ability to access their grades with a click of the mouse.
As you have alluded to in several posts, all of this stuff is intertwined...it's tough to 'debundle' it. It is what it is.
So I will participate to the best of my Midwestern ability both by listening and providing some color where I can. I'm looking forward to the remainder of the experiment.