I attended a team meeting at work today, I work for a management and telecommunications consultancy company. Amongst many topics we discussed the role of social media in marketing. This got me thinking about this web-site.
Is running a blog with no followers the same as standing at Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner and mouthing off when no one is listening. Or is it like keeping a diary which you do not lock away.
I know that I do not care whether this blog is read by anyone, but after 38 years in the telecommunications industry I find it intriguing to think about the psychology of communications, especially communications made possible by digital technology.
In my old, static web-site, I referred to a science fiction story that I read back in the late 70’s. It was about a group of computer science students (set in the future, but it was written in the 50’s so it was quite primitive). These students were sent to a sort of bank that held in its computer “vaults” the electronic diaries of customers. The students job was to browse through the diaries of customers who had died, and then decide whether the entires could be deleted. Sometimes the Internet makes me think of that story. The idea that web-sites, blogs and social media will create a digital footprint, and that we will leave tracks in the Infoverse that future generations might analysis as part of a reseach project, I find it quite interesting. although I should know better, any such research will be done by computer programs. Ah well! I wonder what they will make of this blog, my own electronic Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.
I am a digital dinosaur, welcome to my foot prints!