Sunday 3 October 2010

Modern Times

All is well this Sunday. The music's on in the living room, the son's just finished some grand creation in the kitchen, and the other half's doing something complicated with paperwork. I'm sitting in the kitchen, looking very business-like, tapping away at the laptop. I've checked my e-mails, done a quick round up of the various forums to which I contribute, and had a look at Facebook.

Since when did this become how I spend a Sunday? I know that I'm behind the times and I understand I have a somewhat warped view of my role in society. In my mind, I'm wearing a gingham apron, I have a dusting of flour on my hands and maybe a touch on my nose, and I've already made 3 jars of jam from the damsons in the garden. I'll be getting ready for a WI meeting this afternoon and gathering up my quilting to show the other ladies. It doesn't really bear very much relation to reality, although there is some flour in the cupboard. Somewhere.

Do you ever stop and wonder how different life is now from the last generation? And how much of our lives revolve around one (or more) of the various social networking platforms? Good heavens, I've even been known to tweet occasionally when the mood takes me.

So much of our lives is now shared with people we barely know, and I include blogging firmly within that. With blogging, we reach out to a whole group of people who may not even share the same interests but have stumbled on us through some quirk of the internet. We become part of online communities, we get virtual friends and we spend hours reading what other people have said. At least however we choose to share with people who may be unknown to us though, unlike Facebook with its privacy rules becoming more confusing than the instructions for setting up a Playstation 3.

Facebook's becoming a bit of an issue for me. I still like it, I've got in touch with people I haven't seen for years and I get to nosey around at what other people are doing. But I'm starting to wonder if it isn't all one big scam. I read an article in the Daily Mail yesterday about Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, internet nerd, and apparently, all round dysfunctional geek. I can well imagine that he uses one of the Facebook applications to count his millions, probably in Pirate pounds or something. He came up with the revolutionary idea of setting up a website where people would reveal all their secrets, their personal details and their photos. If we received an e-mail from a stranger asking us to do just that, his e-mail would have disappeared into the Spam Box and he'd be hounded on Watchdog. Apparently Facebook stores every message we've ever sent, every status update we've ever made, every single one of our personal details. Facebook's virtual spare room must be enormous. Zuckerberg believes he's setting the new social norm, that this will become our new way of staying in touch and receiving information. Do you think one day he'll commit the largest identity theft ever known, steal all our money and take over the world?

I can't help but wonder if we really know what we're doing. Although I do enjoy a game of Scrabble.

5 comments:

  1. I read the same article - it does make you wonder...
    But, like you, it's good for a game of Scrabble, and to procrastinate for a while...
    Nice blog - popped over from BMB. Would be lovely if you would check out my blog(s) too :)
    Hannah

    http://www.metalmummy.co.uk
    http://morticalzombie.blogspot.com

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  2. Great post, esp the bit about flour in the cupboard, somewhere! It's something I have thought alot about recently. This was a very random blog while on holiday that touches on the difference in the generations: http://thealexanderresidence.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-21T13%3A29%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=
    Read the facebook article too, can't wait to see the film!
    Found you via BMB

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  3. Still sounds like a good Sunday to me, even if the flour stayed in the cupboard. Waundered over from BMB, looks like you're getting the hang of things again!

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  4. It's all becoming a necessary evil, isn,t it? We give so much info to fb - it must go somewhere and it will come back to haunt us someday but for now, too good to stop - I have found such long lost friends there I cannot stop now - need super self control and perhaps too late anyway!

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  5. Hanzor, thanks for visiting, there's all sorts of places to procrastinate...
    Penny, thanks for visiting, and the flour remains exactly where it was...
    Amy, thanks for visiting, it was better for the fact that it did I think!
    Mum to Kit Kat, I'm exactly the same, what am I going to do now - write them a letter? Sounds like hard work...

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