Tag: social media

A short list of things I didn’t post to social networks last week

Ryan SholinLeave a comment

While on vacation last week, in an effort to unplug, especially from the constant cycle of posting things on the Internet and eagerly awaiting validation, I spent a lot of time separated from my phone (no laptop present on vacation) and while I did *read* Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ periodically (often in the middle of the night while awake with kids experiencing their first serious Florida-style thunderstorms), I didn’t post or share a single thing.

Here’s a short list of the sort of thing I didn’t share:

  1. My pithy comment on your vacation pictures.
  2. Stars on your tweets laden with Rupert Murdoch + pie jokes.
  3. Pictures of my frosty rum drinks.
  4. Pictures of my child enjoying her ice cream.
  5. Pictures of my child enjoying her ice cream after falling off the bench she was eating it on.
  6. Pictures of other people taking pictures while holding up their freshly caught red snapper, fresh off the fishing boat, just before cutting out their guts and attempting to grill their filets.
  7. Snarky commentary on the foreign tourists burning their toes with charcoal while trying to grill their own catch by the marina.
  8. Pictures of the incredibly lush resort lobby.
  9. Foursquare check-ins at the resort, marina, restaurants, Whole Foods in Coral Gables on the way down, or any of the other semi-nostalgic South Florida locations we passed through, accompanied by appropriate photos of my kids in shopping carts or high chairs as logic would require.
  10. Facebook status updates about how my wife was at the spa and I was aimlessly wandering around in the incredible heat with both my children.
  11. Google Reader shares of your interesting analysis of the decline of Borders, News Corp, and/or Amy Winehouse.
  12. Plus ones.
  13. Likes.
  14. Stars.
I think that covers it.

Taking Egypt personally

Ryan SholinLeave a comment

Although it’s quickly getting pushed out of the news cycle by the Super Bowl and its commercial trappings, plus a big digital media acquisition immediately in the wake of the weekend, the story in Egypt has captured my attention for the last two weeks or so.

Why?

It’s not really the politics. At this point, I’m far enough past my teenage years to understand with some comprehensiveness the scope of “revolutions” like this one, where one dictator is replaced with another (worst case scenario playing out, at least temporarily, at the moment) or with democracy (best case scenario) and all its factions, party politics, and pendulumatic swing of power from one sect of the upper class to another, indefinitely, until another coup brings another dictator to power.

In other words, I’ve seen this movie before.

But naturally, I’m drawn to the digital nature of this movement, to the Facebook pages serving as vital organizing tools, to the missing Google executive, to the protestors executing the time-honored urban hack of charging their mobile devices using the wiring in a streetlight’s base, to Andy Carvin’s retweet curation of reliable sources on the ground in and around Tahrir Square.

All of this appeals to me. No matter how it turns out, this period has been a coming of age for a Web-native generation in Egypt.

It’s a generation a bit like my own.