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21st century communication
Social and Anti-Social
The 21st century forms of communication include social media. These venues, like Facebook and Twitter, feature the opportunity for interaction. Comments or replies, likes or favorites, those are the things that put “social” into social media.
Together with our blog site at 228Main.com and the weekly email newsletter, digital communications helped us stay connected with you when life was challenging. I’ll ever be grateful for being in the right place at the right time to use these methods to stay connected.
Social media can be a source of news and information and perspective. Experts in many fields are on Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook. These are sources we did not have in the olden days.
But there is a dark side to social media. Some use their participation to send negative messages or say hurtful things, or promote stuff that just isn’t worthy of your attention. We’ve heard some say “Twitter is a cesspool” or “There is so much garbage on Facebook.”
The slang term for a person who posts objectionable viewpoints as comments on another’s post is “troll.” It may just be part of human nature, not a unique feature of social media. At the café, barbershop or salon there is also a mix of people with a mix of opinions and varying ways of expressing them.
But objectionable people and posts can be blocked or hidden on social media. Life is too short to pay attention to trolls. Blocking and muting are valuable skills you can use to keep your social media from being a ‘cesspool’ or full of garbage.
Nobody needs to be on social media to get our viewpoints, not with 228Main.com out there and the weekly email newsletter. But if you are on it, you are welcome to connect or follow. There are social media links on the home page of 228Main.com.
Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.
Time and Space, Compressed
In his memoirs, Civil War general and president Ulysses S. Grant wrote about the first time he rode on a train. (When Grant was a young man, trains were a new technology.) Traveling overland at the unprecedented speed of 15 miles an hour, it seemed to him that time and space had been compressed.
In our age, one might have consecutive meals on opposite coasts. A journey that first took months, then weeks, then days, takes hours in the jet age.
Time is compressed in other ways, here in the 21st century.
• New forms of media let us interact at the speed of light with dozens or thousands of people, for less than the price of a stamp.
• Email and other forms of digital messaging allow communication between people who are never available at the same time. This represents quite a productivity boost over the days of telephone tag.
• Research begins with fingertips on keyboards, virtually everywhere, instead of with trips to the library.
Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. We had to effectively integrate these technologies into our business with you, and use them to maximum effect over the past few years.
21st century technologies have helped our old-fashioned conversations begin with more common ground, then go deeper into the topics in which you are interested. It seems to me we are closer now than ever before. This makes sense, if we are communicating more than we used to.
Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.
Anniversaries
We balance our attention between the moments in which we live, and the longer term over which we plan for the future. Anniversaries are a natural place to pause and take stock.
My 63rd birthday approaches. This may not seem like a particularly important number, but for me it is. My father and my eldest brother both passed away at age 62. Getting older has never been a problem for me; it is key to my intention to live a long and productive life. I am trying to do what I can to extend the string of birthdays so I can indeed work to age 92.
The 25th anniversary of my affiliation with LPL Financial comes later this year. It has always seemed like the right choice. With the challenges that we have had to work around in recent years, the flexibility and effectiveness of our partner LPL has become vital. In particular, full support for 21st century communication has helped us make a digital presence a key way to deal with periodic separation in time and distance.
Speaking of partners, I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary with the really important one this summer. In a life filled with good fortune, I count alphabetical order as a special blessing. On the first day of freshman year of high school, I found my assigned locker right next to Cathy Livingston’s.
You play a huge role in my long range plans: you are why I want to work to age 92. To say I am having a good time would be an understatement. While enjoying the moments as they pass, I’m also looking ahead to ways to build an organization that can better serve you, on a more sustainable basis.
Back to work! Thank you all, for everything. If you would like to talk about anything, please email us or call.
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