Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Technorati

When learning about the vast (unknown to me until now) world of blogging, and those who care passionately about it, I am mostly struck by one thing. People are LONGING to connect with others, to form a community, as their parents generation did with bowling leagues, social organizations like the Elks, and Church affiliations. To me it seems a shame, however, that face-to-face contact, and community involvement, have been cast aside for the lure of sitting alone in front of a computer screen, and reading the very often boring and banal opinions of others. I know I am, by far, not the first to observe this - but I can sense the very real desire for personal connection in many people I know, including myself. I do not denigrate the possibilities of Technorati and other sources for good, useful applications - and I do not intend to be negative - but a whole lot of wading through "stuff" is necessary to find anything useful. People long to matter, and to see their names and opinions in print, and certainly Web 2.0 at least gives them the latter.

1 comment:

Dances With Keyboards said...

I liked your entry, Cathy. I've struggled with social networking. As a computer user from waaay back, I prefer to see it as more of a tool than anything else. I do like reading and writing fiction for fun, though, so it's a great tool for sharing my work with others and vice-versa. But it is kind of a sterile environment.

It's liberating in a way, because I don't really care about what anonymous readers think of me. But since I don't know these people, I find I don't really have to particularly care all that much about what they have to say, either. In person, people MATTER more.

Annette