As much as I am enamored with life online, life offline regularly steals the show. Every now and then I find myself in a conversation tiptoeing about a dirty little secret that there isn’t all that much time for social online connecting, and buzzing about “how do they do it?”
This came to me squarely some weeks ago while having a conversation on the mobile phone with one of my all time favorite people to be social with, my cousin Susan Kunz. She was speaking via mobile phone, using her freeway time to catch up. Being younger and definitely more hip, I’d asked about establishing more frequency on Facebook or some other digital app. “I don’t have time!” she said. “I don’t read e-mail, I don’t do any of that. There just isn’t time!” Even the household land line is seldom used. So a cell phone call is it with her. If she isn’t available leave a message and she’ll get back to you from some Ventura County freeway.
Then came the interesting comments from President Obama, the most tech savvy of all recent U.S. presidents, “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
That comment, made at the May 9 commencement ceremonies at Hampton College, Va., was itself like a shot heard round the world – prompting The AtlanticWire to ask, “Are techies more zealous than gun owners?” “By the looks of their reaction to President Obama’s remarks on “iPods and iPads,” maybe so.”
His comments brought about a round of conversational twitter about the massive flow of information and opinion that, well, overwhelms. The President had a valid point to make. He bemoaned the fact that ‘some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,’ in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets. ‘All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy,” said the AFP in its report.
“We can’t stop these changes… but we can adapt to them,’ Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers. ‘Education… can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time,’ he said.
Well said. Thoughtful. A personal issue of significance as Susan Kunz and many others in my circle have declared. We adults need personal information management strategies, and our kids need great education, I agree.
Two days later direct from The White House (president@messages.whitehouse.gov ) I receive a message advising of the President’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court – along with a dandy video. I don’t even want to count the number of articles and commentaries that emanated from this! I’m too busy.
I do note it’s reported that she does listen to all sides of an argument. Wonder how much social media she has time for?
Tags: Barack Obama, Communications, Social Media