Monday Mulch
The plaintive whining of a desperate fogey.
Social My Arse
Tech Fogey is trying to wrap its nasal hairs around social media. We bought a For Dummies book (unread) and have signed up to an on-line course (not yet taken). We are on Twitter but hardly ever tweet. We’re just not that chatty. And Facebook seems like a global round robin affair whereby you get to send words and photos and videos and stuff to not-so-carefully chosen ‘friends’ or the entire Facebook alumni (1.06 billion monthly active users and 680 million mobile users). There is a Facebook button at the end of each Tech Fogey post but since you can only ‘like’ someone or something that is already on Facebook, you can’t ‘like’ TF because we’re not (well, we weren’t but we are now, although the page is very, very bare). To us this seems like a bit of a swizz and worse than being a member of some secretive society like the Freemasons or Plymouth Argyle supporters. ‘No one’s ever going to like you because you’re not one of us.’ Somehow this makes Tech Fogey even less inclined to join Facebook, no matter how effective it might be at driving people to our website.
Adieu Old Bean
While my guitar gently weeps
Only yesterday, though, we were confronted by a sombre reminder of how easy it is to let friendships slide and how social media can help fill gaping holes in personal responsibility and ameliorate outright laziness. How can it become an imposition to keep in touch with people? Christmas comes and stacks of cards are scribbled by rote and almost resentfully to supposed friends, relatives and acquaintances amidst the full realisation that said cards will be the only contact we will have with most of these people this, or any, year. Dave Robinson wasn’t on our Christmas card list but he really should have been. Perhaps he seemed the type for whom the sop of a Season’s Greetings was too trivial; almost an insult. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ we might have heard him think. And it would have been and it shouldn’t have been. Dave died in September in Dubai. Heart attack. He was 41. We found out because Mrs Fogey wanted him to get involved with some business she was going to be doing in the Gulf. People like to do business with people they like, goes the adage. And we both liked Dave. He was very easy to like, especially if eating and drinking were on your agenda. We went to his wedding, for god’s sake and spent time with him carousing in Athens when he worked there. There were occasional email exchanges. He invited us to his 40th at the place he’d bought on Andros. We didn’t go. To say Dave lived it large would be an understatement. Big guy, big appetites. And we thought we knew him but it took five months for us to discover he’d gone and when we did it was almost accidental. We feel bad and so we should, although there’s nothing our being more regular correspondents would have done to prevent, or even stave off his demise. But we should have known. How could we not have known? Why did no one think to tell us? The irony is that all the mutual friends we and Dave shared must be even more idly fickle than we are; not bothering to pick up the phone, send an email or text. Maybe they assumed we’d know, not by osmosis but by Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin, as though those media are the only way to know anything worth knowing. We’ve become nobodies by default.
Medium Not-So-Rare
Medium, not Morrisons
Reading an interview in the FT magazine with Biz Stone, one of the three founders of Twitter, none of whom is directly involved with their baby any more and are all quids in as a consequence. Biz and Co are now known as The Obvious Corporation and one of their current projects is Medium, as in Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ we presume. It’s the polar opposite of Twitter, in that Medium is a repository of long-form (but hopefully not long-winded) pieces about any number of subjects. Or are they medium-length? Compared with Twitter a shopping list is a virtual treatise. Slight irony is you need a Twitter account to access Medium. Everyone gets tired of soundbites and snacks eventually and Tech Fogey wishes them well. Find out more here
In-Box Overload
Think your inbox is getting somewhat unwieldy? TF has no idea if this is a record but Jenna Wortham, tech writer at the New York Times, has over 40,000 unread emails. Here’s her musing on that subject. Jenna! Select all and delete. It’s the only way.
Mirror Mirror
And make sure you all watch Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, Channel 4, for the next three Mondays at 10pm. That’s an order.
