Working like a dog?

I'm not sure why people say that. From the looks of our dog, I'd like to "work like a dog!"

Merry Christmas and the best of the New Year to you and yours!

It's following me!

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that people really aren't following you.

The Third Place, unlike a physical café, is a bit different and you have to be aware of it. Things that you put on the web as opposed to things you say in conversation never go away.  You can be haunted by things you wrote in a less-than-cogent moment for a very long time. And people do look -- potential employers, colleges, and who knows who else. Things can stay around for years. Even if you are successful in removing them from your place, who knows who else has copied them and referenced you in theirs? The bottom line -- if you don't want something you said or did resurfacing years latter to bite you, don't post it.

Check out this Place

Take a look at this article about YouMedia space in Chicago. An innovative idea for creative youth. This is an excellent idea to put young people constructively on the Internet and to get them together in a space where they can share their creativity and energy.

Isolated by the Internet

The Internet was supposed to open the world to us, but I wonder if we are being isolated by it instead. I think we need to ask some questions of ourselves:

• Where do you get your news?
• What sites do you visit?
• Who do you friend, follow, link to?
• Who do you communicate with?

If the answers to these questions is people like me or people who share my views or people who support my views,  then I think there may be a problem here.
I just listened to a great TED talk Ethan Zuckerman: Listening to global voices  which got me thinking about this issue.  (I'm developing my thoughts on this, so by the time it gets out, this might be an old issue.) He contends that the problems today are getting more global, but the news is getting less so.
I agree. You can see it in the unwillingness of people to listen to other views or to incorporate them into their world-view. We friend and follow and like, but I wonder how many differing opinions we allow onto these lists. I wonder how much effort we take to seek out opinions which don't support our own or to discover new and interesting things to expand our view of the world? Not much, for most of us, is probably the answer.

Where do you spend your time

Where people choose to spend their time says quite a bit about them. More and more people are choosing to spend their time online rather than in proximity of other people. And even when they do go out for coffee, say, they spend their time with their cell phones or laptops online with people in entirely different places.

My experiences with Starbucks has been interesting. I have had the opportunity to walk by a Starbucks in a Barnes and Noble store on different occasions at about the same time. The demographic has been interesting.

The first time, EVERYONE was on their laptop. Most of the tables had one or two people at them. But, even the tables with two people had both people on their laptop and didn't seem to be interacting. It was like your kids texting each other while sitting on the same couch or in the car. People were probably communicating, just not with those in their proximity.

Next time was much more social. It seemed that this time, there were larger groups. Some seemed to be families while others appeared to be groups who were doing something together. Perhaps the fact that they were out for other things made the social interaction more prevalent. The interaction was more on a personal level and some of it appeared to be quite intense.

The next time, there were a couple of large groups. You know, the type who pull chairs and tables together in order to be with each other. This was a very lively atmosphere with lots of interactions, some of it quite boisterous. These were groups of younger people, apparently out to have a good time. My suspicion was that this was just one point on their time together.

Social situations might dictate interaction in social spaces. More thought is needed.

The cycle of attention

I have not had a great deal of time to spend in my third place lately. Work pressures, especially, have kept me from other pursuits. This got me to thinking about the cycles of use of social media that I seem to go through and to wonder if others do so also. It seems logical that they would. After all, time is finite and often there are more things to do than there is time to do them in. I'm sure it's the same for everyone. When we reach that point, then something has to give. We need to spend more time on the higher value things and less time on the lower value things. I guess for me, social media is just lower value.

Taking Your Place with You

Over on the BobBreedlove blog, I talked about my ideal Netbook/tablet. It's a mobile place. One thing I didn't mention was battery life. I would like about 5-8 hours to make sure that I can attend meetings, go to the library, and generally be in other physical places for a good amount of time before needing to plug in. I purchased a 9 cell battery for my current Acer netbook. This gives me just under 8 hours of moderate use before I have to plug it back in. I find this sufficient to go to most meetings, sit at a coffee shop, etc. for the type of content creation work that I normally do. I can browse the Internet through WiFi and get the things done that I want to accomplish. It is a bit big, but I don't mind that. The battery actually puts the keyboard at a good angle when the netbook is on a table as it is where I normally work. It actually makes the system easier to carry around the office where I use OneNote for taking notes at meetings. I'd like a bit faster machine, but all-in-all, this is working well. (I have just added Ubuntu Linux to the machine to see how that works. Unless I find an equivalent for OneNote, however, I don't think I'll switch from XP as my primary operating system.)