Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Dan Schwabel's "Me 2.0" book had me thinking on Gen X versus Gen Y use of Social Media. Being a person that moves among different age groups pretty easy, I've been thinking over how people use social media differently. Though I think there's a Gen X-versus-Gen Y difference (that is more a continuum), I've begun speculating that social media is useful in careers and life – but often misused.
Blatant biased opinion and analysis follows.
Imagine you're a professional and you tell someone you don't have a cell phone.
In most cases, people will be surprised (a few will be envious). Cell phones are almost expected right now. They're normal. They're even more normal for anyone tha drives in front of me on the freeway apparently.
As noted last week, smartphones were starting to become a social norm. Texting is rampant (even without Twitter). If I don't respond to text messages in an our or two people actually get worried.
Our technical usage has changed social expectations. What it means to be mature, connected, and even polite has been altered by the technologies we have.
About two months ago, everyone in my apartment was getting dissatisfied with the state of our cable internet provider. We had slowdowns, odd errors, and fixes that weren't really fixes. So we decided to try AT&T's DSL service. Since having a good internet provider is of interest to many of us progeeks (or regular geeks), I wanted to give a quick review – and because there's a special extra I discovered . . .