My hone number growing up (US) was Idlewood 2-35xx (last 2 digits x’ed out to protect the phone number’s current owner).
Some years later, my phone company in England was kind of archaic (=poor), and still had wooden mechanical switches that failed regularly. Numbers had various numbers of digits, I had professional colleagues advocating standardizing at 7 or 8 so that you could build in error-correcting codes but nobody was willing to listen.
Most so-called “social media” seems to be devoted to gossip rather than anything of formal social relevance. We need a public service which takes over what the Secretary of State used to do: “We are now a company!”, “We are now a family!”, “We are now a town!” That is how you do “social”, giving people the means to create and dismantle institutions.
Ugh, video calls are even worse than voice calls… Not only do you have to worry about avoiding awkward silences and accidentally speaking over people, but also not looking like a weirdo. It’s not for me!
For good or ill, nearly all of the recent protests on both sides of the equation were formed and organized entirely via social media – both the many mass gatherings to protest various things about Trump’s administration and the violent responses to protests.
I’m not sure if that’s what you mean about social media taking the place of the Secretary of State, but as a tool to empower, embolden, and organize people, it’s certainly a powerful one.
Oh, you and your narrow-minded definition of “Secretary of State.” Next you’ll be saying that a tree can’t hold that office, you speciest!
What I mean is that it is talk, and it is talk facilitated/mediated by business - and it exists more or less separate from formal social activity, in an institutional sense. People talking about what they think and how they feel is certainly powerful, but the “medium” as a communications technology is incidental to people organizing.
When you can officially start and run a government with it, register births, marriages, and deaths with it, that is when it becomes formally social.
Secretary of State isn’t Secretary of all states. Mainly just colloidal suspensions of solid in liquid, and only a minuscule subset of those.
Oh, got it, you’ve decided to redefine “social media”. Understood. Over and out.
I don’t mind email but I have big problems with phones because of developmental hearing problems (otitis media with effusion probably caused by air travel when I was 2). My hearing itself is fine, but the brain processing of sound is a bit screwed up, a minor example is that f/th/ph all sound the same to me.
With video, if I have trouble understanding what has been said I can ask someone to repeat and lip read. I can’t do that on the phone.
Lemme see:
Facebook - had an account for a few months back in about 2010. False name, throwaway email. Haven’t used it in at least four years. Never posted anything.
Twitter - never used it.
Snapchat - never used it.
Pinterest - have an account (false name, throwaway email) in case I want to leech a photo. Never posted anything.
G+ - never used it.
LinkedIn - never used it.
Reddit - never used it.
Answer your question???
Not quite. This bbs is social media. Given that you condemn social media and proudly wave your Flag of Refusal, why are you still posting here?
Correct. If one considers Reddit to be social media then this BBS is also social media.
Even I knew that, and I’m probably older than you are!
Except when you remind them that texts won’t be responded to while their parent is driving a car, but phone calls can be answered by pressing a button on the steering wheel so that’s the better option.
My extra daughter keeps me updated multiple times each day on how her son is doing via Snapchat. I hate that. You have to remember to check at least once a day or it’s lost forever, and you have to have your hands ready to click both buttons simultaneously to take a screen shot or the photo/video is gone forever. Why is this better than texting? Can someone explain that to me???
Explain?
Yes, someone please explain Snapchat.
I know I’m old because I understand what social media is, but no amount of explaining can convince me why it is.
She lived with us for a while when she was a teenager – her parents moved to the West Coast…long story – and my daughters think of her as an older sister. All 4 of the bio-grandparents to her son are immigrants with very old-world prejudices, so I am operating as the grandma she can actually discuss child-rearing and general life-planning with.
Two words: dick pics.
It’s tailor-made for people to send photos to someone that they’d like them to see, but not to keep or be able to share or spread around. Here’s my naughty bits, you alone get to see them, and then the photo is gone forever.
There’s easily a half dozen ways to do screengrabs though.
Anything that comes across my phone screen* can stay there forever for me to share with anyone and his mom.
*#sorrynotsorry
