So there I am sitting in the Commons lobby at Texas A&M in 1989. My friend Lynn, a computer major, says “come on bill, let’s go check out the new VAX terminals”. They had just installed a new computing center in the commons lobby for students to use the shared VAX terminals on campus.
Being a freshman I had no clue what to do but Lynn set up my account and pointed me to the talk function. Soon I was chatting away with strangers from other universities around the country and around the world. This was my first exposure to the social side of the internet.
This was quickly followed up by the USENET newsgroups. Basically forums on the early internet where people talked about particular subjects. Over time I developed friends and enemies on these groups. Discussions became quite heated and on more than one occasion I would get carried away. These were the legendary flame wars of the 1990s. The passion of youth I suppose.
Years passed and the World Wide Web arose. Social media got more sophisticated with the advent of the chat room. Dozens and sometimes hundreds of people chatting at once, making little cliques, building friendships, just hanging out together. In time advertisers learned about these and over time began to infiltrate bots into the rooms. These were automated programs posing as real humans meant to advertise and sell things. These along with the ever-present cyber bullies spelled the end of the chat rooms.
Along came the MMO. the Massively Multiplayer Online game. Now you not only had a name tag you had a body as well and a shared activity. We lived lifetimes online. We also died together and we built up close bonds. But over time people drifted off and my time on those came to an end.
And now comes social media fully matured and developed in the form of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
A few things I’ve noticed during all my travels online:
- All of these communities have a beginning, middle, and end.
- While we are in those communities we can’t fathom ever leaving
- The end comes abruptly and almost unexpectedly
- When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.
I don’t know if it’s time to leave these current communities. I will be totally honest. I don’t get Twitter. I’ve tried for a year and it just doesn’t click with me. To me it’s a technology that’s at least 5 years old and very limiting. Facebook I understand and enjoy more. It’s pretty well-developed and has many features. Google+….. I looked at once and left. I don’t doubt it’s well done but it came too late to the party. The others rule the social media roost.
Yet, more and more often I am coming down with social media fatigue and a feeling of deja vu as if I’m just repeating the same things over and over again. I’ve explored all aspects of these sites and I don’t see anything new to capture my attention.
It’s gotten to the point that on a whim I looked up the steps for erasing my profiles on these social media sites. So far I don’t have any plans to carry this out but I do think that it’s telling that I looked into this.
I don’t yet see the next big thing on the net, though I don’t doubt that it’s coming. I will probably hop on when it does arrive. Or maybe I will go totally offline and go back to living a life without the net.
I am part of the last generation that started life in the analog world and had to adapt to life in the digital age. The Millennials that came after me have no clue about life without the video monitor or the computer. This is their world and it’s the world of the generations to come.
Maybe it’s time to go back to the old analog world. After all, I lived there once before and I can do it again.
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