WHY    AM    I    HERE?

The Religion Tree above looks like a computer program flowchart.  The subject of my blog is why am I here? and my friend Matt had this recently on his FB page.  So, I stole it and it represents religion…. a whole bunch of them… AND it represents a flowchart, actually IS a flowchart… and (hang on) connects philosophy / religion with computers / social media.  The basic idea is the internet changes the shape of friendship.  With the internet people can now share common interests that may never, ever meet in person.  How can this not be a good thing?

Like, Frieda Persson (Swedish) ~~  now sailing, as sailboat crew member, she just sent me (and everyone on her FB) a photo of a little, sleeping puppy curled up at some exotic port.  I get to 'hear' from her (FB) often since she left "quaint" little Red Bluff High School in 2006.  I had many exchange students there from 2004-06, and we can all write each other now from anywhere.  And there's Viktor in Macedonia, Quinn in Norway, Magda in Germany, Maria in Brazil, Daniel & Cristina in Sweden and so many more...

…. like Eike and Alex who each posted their 'grown up' pics within days of each other last September (FB) each in different countries, both at weddings:

But what does this have to do with my blog ~ Why Am I Here ~ and the future of Social Media??  Ever since the dawn of time there have been long-distance friendships, by phone or post.  The internet just extends this trajectory in the development of human relationships… and the internet is mediating a change in all human relationships.  Look at how businesses now relate to their customers, the way we conduct scholarship, the way groups of like-minded people dedicated to a cause organize themselves.  These things are all being affected by this social revolution.  And I think it's a big deal.  How have we handled other advances… like guns, nuclear energy, and hard drugs?   So, it's not those things that are 

good or bad…. like marriage and money ~ it's all what we do with those tools, those structures, those contracts, those forums.  We scrubby, horrible yet often brilliant folks get to choose how we use anything online, what to say in social media, what to "Like" and not like.  Face it.  The internet is a new language… the changing of the guard, and it can be like the dystopian novel, Lord of the Flies showing the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the common good.  There are some pretty grizzly stories out there.  Took me seconds just now to google 'how many deaths because of FB?' and I see a report of an angry husband who got slammed by his ex-wife on her FB page, so he savagely killed her and left her to be discovered by their five year old child.  So reports Whitney Milam with over 1/2 million views on Ranker.com… and Whitney adds:  "WHY DIDN'T HE JUST BLOCK HER? Kids, please teach your parents how to use the internet.  It saves lives."

Things are happening way faster at a much younger age, though I don't expect five year olds to have to monitor their parents social media, nor (I'm sure) did Whitney.  But stuff in print is often taken literally.  This is all a new playing field.  How would you react in public if someone said something to you privately that you may not have liked hearing  OR  if they said the same thing to you in an auditorium with thousands of people and they were on stage with a microphone saying it and pointing to you.  Same reaction?  OK.  That's the difference and many do not think through that dynamic.  

So, why I am here, why are you?  To mix it up, learn things, have fun, laughs, learn things, be entertained, learn things, help each other, have fun, learn things.  

Read Richard Bach's Illusions.  "We're hear to have fun and learn things, hopefully both at the same time."   Good luck fellow classmates with your finals!   Hip, hip hooray for Professor Jon Knolles for bringing us all together with his CSU-Chico Social Media class.  It's been a gas, groovy, cool, rad, bad, awesome, the bomb and my classmates 20 and younger…. how do you say it now?   Au devoir~!~  

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