I’ve spent the last 2 days in New York, celebrating the wedding of a very old and dear friend. I got caught up with several people who knew me when I was still a shy, gangly teenager and discovered that another old friend now lives about 10 minutes away from my in-law’s house. Good times.
One thing that struck me in the middle of the reception was how infrequently I spend time in the company of people who are not part of the tech business, and how I really need to do more of it. Listening to writers and lawyers and doctors and teachers talk about LinkedIn, Skype, and MySpace was fascinating — of the three, Skype got the highest marks, for helping a grandmother video conference with her grandchild. MySpace got a universal thumbs-down. Only one person used it, and he couldn’t understand how anyone found “real” friends on it because all he got was invitations from porn spammers. The rest thought it was ugly and couldn’t see why anyone would want to have a profile there. People were interested to hear about LinkedIn, but only one person was on it and wasn’t too sure it was even useful.
All in all, it was a powerful reminder to me — what we in the Valley take for granted is barely on the radar screen of people outside the bubble. More of us should remember that.
I’m still in that stage where I just feel a great disappointment when I notice I can’t talk to the people around me. Remember, I don’t even live in the States, let alone the hub of current online tech. Even though I work in IT and web, it’s a bleak place to be.
However, at the heart of that lies a detachment similar to yours I suppose, from what is real to most people – and sometimes we get to see a glimpse of that. That’s when we do indeed notice what we’re involved in is still oh so much at the fringe of things.
I do wonder though: would we still like it so much if it wasn’t?
I’ve discovered some interesting things in the last few weeks. I was invited to participate in an online community dedicated to grassroots politics. You would think this was right up my alley, but I find myself becoming impatient with some of the postings and wishing it were a blog so I could read the important stuff and skip all the “I agree” and “good idea” posts. 😛 This from the woman who was unhappy to see the popularity of BBS on the wane.
There a lot of blogs I read for a variety of reasons, and a few where I comment regularly. Most of my web work is connected to RL interests, so I don’t feel isolated, but understand how easily I could be.