hello, what are you doing?

I just got an invite from my dad to join Twitter. On NPR this morning, apparently Ashton Krutcher out twittered CNN. All this “My-Face” [sic] is really starting to get to me. You people are like sheeple. Right now you have 8 different ways to better “socialize” with each other because that is what we crave this social networking, so you got these eight things to use that all save you from perhaps the most grueling yet effective way of communication which actually picking up the phone and calling someone…. here is how I rank them.

1. Face to face
2. Telephone
3. E-mail
4. Messenger
5. Letter
6. Blog
7. Twitter, face book, myspace and all that other shit.

So with twitter, you send up to 140 characters letting all your close friends know the “things you do in-between blog posts and emails.” This is great, so now I know that my friend Chris is driving to Costco, I know that that my dad is getting ready to water the plants. Congratulations twitter!
This is my observation. When I was overseas, when I was in Hungary which some would consider a third world country lacking proper phone lines, and mailing systems I actually communicated better with my friends and family through letters and an occasional telephone call. People! Prison inmates “socially network” better than we do. We have text enabled cell phones on our hips, email, messenger, Skype, webcams, “My Face” you name it we have a million and one ways to communicate.
But are we doing it better?
Now that we live in an information based society, is this the natural evolution - we don’t need to know the emotional state of the people close to us but rather just random worthless tidbits.

Here is what I am going to do. I am going to make an effort to keep my blog updated daily with stuff that I am doing, truthful stuff that has some meat to it. Kind of like a journal. But more importantly I am going to reach out to the people close to me. I already call every member of my family pretty regularly, but I am going to extend that to my friends. If you don’t want to talk to me, just don’t answer. I am not trying to stand on a soapbox here and speak down condescendingly, or act as if my stuff is so important that you should read about it and hear me talk to you about it, but rather I am trying to open up the lines of true emotional communication and connectedness and more importantly, I want to listen to what you have to say too.