I "Heart" Blogging:)

Ninety blog followers and counting on Blogger; 51 followers on Facebook's Networked Blogs:)

Every time a new follower appears, I experience a childlike excitement.

It's like opening a gift whenever a new face shows up, and it's inspiring to dialogue with those who leave comments.

Who has come by? from where? We are now connected through my stories and comments and their thoughts and reflections on what I've shared.

It's been a year and a half since I set up my blog. At the time, I had no idea where the blog journey would lead me.

It’s been an amazing ride so far. I have shared stories from my youth with my children that were new to them. Followers I will never meet have commented on my blog from Greece, Australia, NYC, Indiana, Canada and elsewhere.
 
At local events people tell me they have shared my blog with their friends and relatives, and each time I am thrilled and grateful.

Blogging expands my world in delightful ways. I'm often surprised that the writing speaks to such a diverse group of men and women, ages and beliefs.

I always wanted to write a memoir to share my life experiences and the wisdom from them, but a book seemed so daunting. Blogging moves me one step closer to that dream.

A new world has opened with readers from all walks of life. My blog was featured on blogher.com twice and is ranked on the three Top 50 lists on Facebook’s Networked Blogs. http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/searchpage.php?tag=personal+stories.  And there are more followers on other blog sites, such as blogcatalog.com.

Each follower is part of my blogging life, and it makes me smile when they show up or share their thoughts.

But the most important discovery from blogging is the joy I feel every time I write.

My creative process springs from ideas that emerge in the car, the bathtub, anywhere, to finding images to enhance and complete the story, and finally to publishing it. I feel euphoric when I see it published and more so when someone "likes" it.

For me, blogging is the ultimate way to connect and share with those I know and many I will only meet in the virtual world. It gives me a natural "high"every single time. I am following my bliss.

Heart by pitabox987
Diversity 6 by bsk

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010-2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Facebook: See me, hear me, feel me, or not

Facebook, 5 million users, so many friends, so little time. Just want to connect, comment, like, share.

Superficial touching, remote caring.

We reach out to each other to gossip, brag, complain, protest to our virtual community of friends and family. We express ourselves and wait to see if anyone paid attention or noticed.

Almost like a popularity contest. How many commented? How many clicked "Like"?

We are plugged in, or so it seems. So safe, so easy to say nothing of consequence, share our lives, sort of, but not real contact.

We live everywhere; our time is limited; this is the best way to touch base.

The phone is hit or miss. E-mail not as quick to let you know. Virtual living in a time-starved, long distance world. Works to a point, can't live without it, satisfying but never filling.

Our anonymous and private lives in a public gathering place, technology's replacement for the village well, pub, stroll through the neighborhood.

Odd that it's called Facebook, an album of faces that stare back at me, on the other side of the screen from me peering in.
 

Intimacy, closeness, touching, not there. A moment of your time, please. Look at me. Acknowledge I exist today. Facetime via machine time.

Something is missing: time for each other. Stop the clock just for a bit and spend some time with me. Reach out and touch someone across the miles, the time zones.

Did I miss your post? How old is it? Too much information, too little. How are you...really? I wish we could just sit down and have a cup of coffee and tell me how you're really doing.

Our lives are more than bits and bytes. I am human; I am not a machine. I miss you.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

We Live in a McINFO World

We live in a McINFO world that is dazzling and dizzying.

Ancient cultures delivered information over long distances through drum beats, smoke signals and messengers on foot or horseback.

Today we send information digitally in a matter of seconds all over the world. Time has become inconsequential. You send it…it’s there.

No more waiting for the mail to arrive, the daily newspaper on the doorstep, the weekly magazine. There was a certain pleasure in the anticipation and delight when they did finally arrive. We had to wait and delay our satisfaction and perhaps appreciate them all the more.

The pace of our lives has changed too. Keeping up is impossible. Information is fed to us moment to moment, never ending bytes of headlines, sound bites, keywords, bullet points, images and animation.

Digital fragments…quick tidbits of what’s happening in our world, thousands of messages bombarding our senses daily. We use spam filters, “unsubscribes,” and firewalls to create some barriers to the ongoing sheer deluge of data.

Are we better informed by so much of so little? Do we understand complex topics that are presented in chunks, blurbs and captions?

What’s going on? Check Twitter; find out on Facebook; open
e-mail. Text it…share it…participate in the constant churn to stay on top of the news, your friends’ lives, and your profession.

We meet on the Internet at the digital well to share our lives, but we don’t drink deeply…just sips, just a taste for busy lives on the go. Have we lost something along the way…reflection…the luxury of pondering vs. pouncing on information as soon as it appears?

The digital revolution has affected our behavior, our relationships and our sense of community. I get my daily fix whenever I want it. I consider myself someone who helped pioneer the Internet’s power to reach everyone in a start-up venture that later evolved into AOL back in the ‘80s.

I championed the Internet then and even now to my students in
e-marketing and interactive content writing college classes. But I do wonder if our ability to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime helps us understand ourselves and our world any better.

Google (today’s Oracle), Wikipedia (today’s Encyclopedia of Britannica), and YouTube (today’s home movies) have become our educators, researchers, scholars and reporters who we rely on for information. Is the information accurate? Manipulated? Fact checked? What is true and not true? We don’t know. Many of us do not check the sources for credibility…we’re in a hurry to know and move on.

Are we smarter? Do we know more? Does it help us in our daily lives? Yes and no…it’s a tradeoff…know something now, right or wrong…to satisfy our insatiable thirst for more. Is more, more or less?

In spite of that, I’m hooked, an Internet infomaniac, who still believes in its power to enlighten and disseminate information when needed, even though it is harder and harder to distinguish illusion from reality and truth from lies in a McINFO world.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Rebana Ubi drum photo by Kasmadi Muhammad
Country well photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski