Smokey Maverick

As Lanny would say, there is nooooo doubt about it that the internet is my generations TV. It has effected almost every facet of our lives – and that fact is not anything new to any of us. What is new is the explosion in recent years of this monster now fashionably termed “Social Media.”

R$ informed me of Twitter almost a year ago, but I was underwhelmed. It was just a stripped down Facebook status – a 24/7 AIM Away Message – I didn’t get it. Then my other buddy signed up, and convinced me to give it a whirl – and I’m hooked. The true power is not found in watching thousands of random, white-noise updates streaming by – but in convincing your friends to sign up and staying abreast of their going-ons, even when thousands of miles away. Even before I signed up, I asked another friend if she was on Twitter, to which she coolly replied: “Nah – I don’t want to feel like I’m only as good as my last tweet.” Three weeks later? I’m reading about her dinner plans for the night on Twitter.

It’s not just a few of us who have caught the Twitter bug: from CNN to NPR’s Sci Friday (sweet old Ira always mispronounces it) to Shaq use it. Twitter traffic is up 700% in the past year. But techmology’s creep into our lives is going beyond a popular “mini-blogging” service.

Enter Twistori, which interestingly scans all public tweets for the strings “I love”, “I hate”, “I wish”, etc – and streams them for us to view. Upon discovering this site, I was simultaneously inspired and appalled. I’m still lost on how I ultimately feel about it. A few days later, I check xkcd’s blag, where I learned about Omegle. Omegle’s one function? It links you up with some random stranger, somewhere in the world. That’s it. Most of the conversations are short, benign and don’t hold much value. Didn’t stop me from connecting to and talking to strangers for over 20 minutes. Which begged me to think further – are we getting too immersed in techmology? I’m fully aware this is not the first time this question has been asked, but I believe the question gets a bit heavier with more and more of the general population hoping onto social media and digitizing our every breath. (So this is why 1984 is relevant…)

Will SkyNet (Microsoft) ever become self aware? Some certainly think so. Until that fateful time, I’ll just be changing my gmail status, blipping The Geeks were Right remix by DIOYY, tweeting that I just updated my blag with a post regarding my uneasy calm of techs gradual grip on my life, which will auto update my Facebook status and also send a text update to all of my Twitter followers, which they’ll all check on their iTouch and trackback on their own blags.

Update [4/15/09]: CNN posted an interesting bit regarding this topic yesterday.

Tags:   Ali G Easter Egg · Omegle · Raise the Jolly Roger · Techmology · xkcdNo Comments