on social networking

Twitter and Facebook and Blogger, oh my!

Last night, rather impulsively, I joined Twitter. In hindsight, it feels like I was drunk when I did it, although I'd considered joining for months.

I've decided, after a good nights sleep, to give it a shot. However, adding it to my list of social websites I'm currently on, has made me think about social networking in the twenty-first century, and whether or not our current methods are an improvement on the ones we used in the past.


Before the internet, social networking meant going to parties and talking to people, glass of wine in hand, exchanging business cards or, in some cases, writing phone numbers on napkins or the back of your hand. This would lead to more meetings, to more conversations, and if you were lucky, the betterment of your career. Now that the internet has latched onto our lives like a giant leech, social networking has mutated. It is still about conversations, but on a far smaller scale through Tweets. Contact information is exchanged, but it's e-mail addresses. Oh, the telephone is still used, but chances are people are texting instead of talking. The personal, human part of social networking seems to have been lost.

With online social networking, it is true that you are able to reach a larger audience, to meet people who you wouldn't otherwise meet if it wasn't for the internet, and make connections with people on the other side of the globe. However, what you can't do through a computer is to observe someone, to look at their body language and their speech patterns, which are key in determining if you think said person is trustworthy. Part and parcel of being on the internet now is placing our trust in people and websites. Our trust that they won't repeat the things we write in our personal blogs, that they won't give out our credit card information, and that what they're offering isn't a scam. But that is difficult to do when all you can rely on are words. Yes, there is Skype, but you aren't having a Skype conversation with the CEO of Amazon. It's an imperfect system.

I've come to the conclusion that we are losing the personalization in our lives. It's become almost too easy to do things from our desk chairs, that I think traditional networking is fading. You can still do it, but the opportunities are fewer than they were before, and if you want to get anywhere--if you want to promote yourself--you have to sign up to Facebook or Twitter or whatever other site in order to do so. Hell, you don't have to leave your chair for anything these days, let alone socializing. You can go to school online, some work online, you can even buy groceries online. It's got to the point where today's human in the first world doesn't have to leave the house in order to live their life.

And isn't that sad?

Last night, after joining the many Tweeters (or would that be Twits?) already online, I could actually feel myself becoming more tethered to my computer. I'm on my computer so much already (more when I'm not at my parents', since I don't own a TV), and I'd just given myself another reason to be in front of its screen. And I didn't like it. I felt like I was trapping myself, like I was pulling away from the external world and into something that was so internally focused as to seem more real than the things around me. It all just felt so...wrong.

I don't think I'm silly for feeling that way, or the only person who does. For all that the internet is fantastic, I think it is being overused, and starting to damage aspects of our lives. When we're walking down the street now, and we see something, our first thought is no longer how wonderful or strange it is, but rather, how we would form what we saw into a Tweet or Facebook status update. We don't stop to smell the roses anymore, we stop to turn on our phones and comment on them. We are a society who lives in the moment, but in a limited moment, in the superficial moment that we can write in under 140 characters and share, and then read and comment on other people's superficial moments. We don't absorb what's seeing and happening to us, at least not the everyday things. But it's the everyday things that make life life, and if we continue walking with our heads buried in our iPhones then I guarentee that we will become a society that has difficulty enjoying--or caring--about life outside our own heads.

I saw a film in October called Summer Wars. In that film, everything from students to banks were connected to one giant network called Oz, and when that network was hacked, the entire world was thrown into chaos. It's a beautiful film, and now one of my favourites.

And I wonder how soon that will be our future.

(Image borrowed from here.)

on floods

All of this weekend, the news has been drenched (sorry) with stories about two environmental disasters: the flooding in Brisbane, Australia; and the flooding in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state. Both instances of flooding have nigh-devestated the affected areas, forcing people from homes and destroying property and even taking lives. These are things no one wants to happen, and while each can be explained by natural seasonal weather patterns (La Niña and a Humidity Convergence Zone, respectively), however, I couldn't help but think that global warming may have played a part.

It's no secret that polar ice is melting. All of those images of poor polar bears stranded on tiny ice flows attests to that. However, besides rising sea levels, what else would this excess mean? I give you the water cycle:


We all know it. We all get the photocopy in elementary school science class. We all know that water evaporates and condences, forms clouds and then falls back onto us in either rain or snow. But more water in the oceans means more water is being evaporated. More water evaporating means that more will fall on us than it has in the past. La Niña is a natural event, but the reason for its severity could be global warming-induced. As much rain falls in 24 hours as falls in a month in Brazil is likely global warming. And the harsh winter and heavy snow fall experienced in Europe, the UK, Canada, and the USA is, again, global warming, presented in a slightly different form.

The kind of weather being experienced globally is not natural. Yes, some of it occurs during natural phenomena, however, the severity of these occurences clearly indicates that something else is at work here. There is a clear--and almost stupidly simple--explanation, one that we humans cannot afford to ignore anymore. We can't let these sorts of things keep happening. We can't let people keep dying. Because this is just the start. If we don't do something, weather will only get worse, and from there crops are destroyed, fresh water ruined, animals perish, and more people die.

Is that really worth living happily ignorant a little while longer?

(Images borrowed from here and here.)

on freelancing

In admist the holiday travel, the botched New Years plans, the lost luggage, and the parental pampering, I've been looking into becoming a freelancer.

Which is more difficult than one would think.
I know of a number of people who do freelance work, be it editing or writing, and as someone who is realistic enough to know that making a living with a Creative Writing degree only happens to the very lucky, I decided to follow in their footsteps. First came lots of Google-ing. Followed, by more Google-ing. There are a plethora of websites dedicated to freelancing, some as handily labelled as www.online-writing-jobs.com and freelancer.co.uk. However, for all the websites available, finding a website you feel you can trust seems nigh impossible.

As with all things on the internet, and all things that involve money, you have to be very conscious of whether or not the website you're looking at is actually a scam. Reading website and company reviews is helpful in this area. It's also helpful in determining whether or not the website you sign up to has your best interests at heart. A site like Suite101 looks good on the surface, however, some of my research has told me that it "favor[s] the company and deprive[s] writers of revenue". It is not there to help you as a writer or editor to establish yourself within the industry in such a way that you recieve proper compensation for the amount of work you put in. After all, writing and editing is an exhausting, time-consuming process, and no one wants to be short changed for the hard work they produced.

But as with all things, nothing is perfect, and some sites haven't been reviewed and as such I've been wary of signing up with them. Many sites, like freelancer.co.uk, also contain a system which does not appeal to me: the biding system. After signing up, writers and editors wait for jobs to be posted and then they bid on them, directing employers to their profiles in the hopes that they are chosen to do the job. It strikes me that waiting for opportunities to bid is a full-time job in and of itself, and I do not have the patience for it. Say whatever you want, but sitting there pressing the Refresh button all day is not exactly what I want to do with my time.

Thus, I have decided that the internet, for all that it is the best thing since sliced bread and the internal combustion engine, is not the way I want to go. I'm going old school.

I'm going to talk to people.

Wish me luck.

(Image borrowed from here.)