It's a wrap!

Well I definitely feel better informed and actually quite enjoy blogging! However, I still believe that social networking can be a trap if you don't know when to log off! (Please refer to my first ever post).

One of the caricatures I used in an earlier post (RSS feeds) makes one thing very clear - technology will continue to advance and at a rapid pace. In this particular cartoon some iPhones are celebrating a great, great grandfather's Birthday - he is a whole 5 years old - and the great grand children are wondering if they will ever make it to such a ripe old age! Therefore a training course such as this is invaluable, as it is very difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to keep up-to-date with the ever-changing changes.

I couldn't sum up Web 2.0 technologies better than Danny Katz in his recent column titled "Here's the thing". And the thing is I'm "not saying it's a bad thing, and not saying it's a good thing, but it's a thing and it's here to stay: no matter where you are, where you go, who you're with, a portable internet device is just a keyboard-tapping fingertip away and now laughs can be accessed instantly, conversations can be crosschecked on the spot, dilemmas can be solved definitively." And like Katz, I am of the same generation that kind of misses the days of the "delightfully drab non-computery way that humans have traditionally socialised."


Based on Susan Maushart's research for her book, The Winter of Our Disconnect, it is important not to spend too much time online. Maushart discovered that having less to communicate with led to her family actually communicating more.

And now there's a recently released movie, "Catfish", which is already known as "the other Facebook movie". I haven't seen it but the review I read in The West Australian newspaper was very interesting. Apparently Catfish can be "praised as a zeitgeist-defining examination of modern communication." The movie "speaks volumes about how the way we communicate has changed so rapidly recently and the benefits and the costs of those changes." Perhaps Libraries could take on the role of improving upon and enhancing the benefits and making people more mindful of the so-called "costs" or negative aspects?