Prudence Baird reflects on midlife connections in the age of social media.

I know why baby boomers are joining Facebook faster than Bernie Madoff’s victims are moving in with their adult children.

We’re not done yet. We’re not done dominating popular culture as defined by our presence in the media, including the “social media” like Facebook and MySpace.

We’re not done with—even though we’ve long exceeded—our 15 minutes of fame. Each. We’re not done prancing in the spotlight—even if for some of us, it’s our first time.

Anyone can reinvent herself on Facebook, showing up (or off) with great photos, sparkling witticisms and 916 friends under her belt. (Apparently, there’s an unwritten Facebook rule that states “she with the most friends wins.”)

If people I don’t even know are requesting me as their friend, (and they are), I’m thinking they’ll ask anyone. This isn’t a self put-down. I just find it weird that acquaintances of friends who are already orbiting at the outermost periphery of my life—and whom I’ll never meet—want me as their Facebook friend.

My favorite friend request was from a 24-year-old dude from L.A. who wrote as his interest, “Meeting ladies.” I guess that includes me—although he’s three decades younger and I’m married. He wasn’t specific, after all.

Another person called me—on my land line no less—and asked, “If I request you as my friend, will you say ‘yes?’” (Note to self: ditch the land line.)

Isn’t the whole point—to keep communication on the Web? What happens on the Web, stays on the Web? Evidently, not in the case of Facebook, which is the virtual equivalent of junior high school, complete with all the same rejection and self-doubt that accompanied that horrid three-year stint in hell.

This is our last chance to grab the attention of others who may not have spent five minutes with us in real life. This is our last chance to feel good about our public personas, to reweave our life’s story as something other than chopping wood and carrying water for 50-plus years.

But, we risk becoming that old man on the park bench who will bore anyone who sits down next to him with the details of his mundane life; an old geezer who is afraid if he finishes telling his story, he will cease to exist. No audience means no pulse.

We boomers can’t help ourselves. The anonymous life is not for us. We want to remain the all-powerful force behind the curtain, still pulling the strings, controlling the lights and the fog machine. Never mind that—like the Great and Powerful Oz—we’re shrinking in stature, perhaps a little hard of hearing and a bit arthritic. Not to mention, we’re not all that interesting.

Still, we flaunt our accomplishments; show our best faces, post our kids’ pictures, our reading lists, promote our causes, our whatever.

And we collect friends, some of whom we even know.

Cathy Fischer listens in on the sounds of yesterday and today.

The other day as I was driving down the street in North Berkeley, my reverie was interrupted by the all too familiar sound of a car alarm. As I got closer, I realized that the sound was coming from a classic yellow school bus. Honk, honk, honk… it repeated over and over again without breath or pause. Why, I wondered, did this particular alarm strike me as odd?

Okay, I sound a bit like Granny here, but stay with me. When I was young and rode the school bus, there was no such thing as a car alarm. The incessant alarm coming from that bus made me stop and wonder, what other modern noises have become a part of our surroundings? From the phone click of call-waiting to the bleeps of Tivoing through commercials, new conveniences have brought about new sounds.

Much of my youth was spent in Los Angeles. The repetitive whirl slap of low-flying police helicopters and shrill sirens from a nearby fire station were part of the city’s soundtrack. Children at play and mothers yelling to come in for dinner added human chords to the immigrant neighborhood, where the scent of night blooming jasmine and pan-fried onions also filled the air.

Music has always been important to me. How innovative was the transistor radio, that forgotten ancestor of the MP3 player? I’ll admit, sometimes I enjoy listening to James Brown playing on my iPod while squeezing cantaloupes at Whole Foods, but usually I prefer to be earbud free and instead of being deep into “It’s a Man’s World” out in the real world and in the present.

I went to the theatre the other evening to see an ACT production of Jose Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted. I was thankful for the pre-curtain warning “Turn off your cell phones and pagers” but, sigh, someone’s Nokia ring went off during act two. I later noticed that the playbill had instructions printed in the back, under the heading “Cell Phones!” (the exclamation point is theirs); it states, “text messaging is very disruptive and not allowed”. Texting in the theatre? Sacrilege!

Recently Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was disrupted during a briefing by not one, but two cell phones! These are journalists, mind you. Are they not in the business of communications?

Remember the days before email pings, ringtones and microwave beeps? Remember those analog sounds like the return of the typewriter carriage or coins dropping in a pay phone? And those small pops and scratches on vinyl records that gave a dimension of sound where now there is none?

What sounds do you remember? Are there new sounds you wish would go away?

My day job as a web content producer makes it natural, almost compulsory, for me to critique the new White House website.  While the site is not perfect, it’s a major improvement from its earlier incarnation which screamed bad design, stodginess and a “we could care less” attitude.

President Obama has been experiencing some rough speed bumps lately and pundits are saying the honeymoon is over, but not for me. Here are five reasons why I’m feelin’ the luv at White House-dot-Gov.

1)  Not just pixels, but people

The www.whitehouse.gov site launched on inauguration day; how did they pull it together so quickly? The stark contrast of “before and after” reminds me of the difference between McCain not using email and Obama holding on to his Blackberry for dear life.

The voice and intention behind the website is clear. A letter from the Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, lays it all out, “The White House’s new website…will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.” He explains how new media efforts focus on three priorities: communication, transparency and participation.

2) Transparency

“President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise,” writes Phillips.

The well-organized site has many features to “keep everyone up-to-date and educated.” The Briefing Room includes daily blog posts, photos, videos, proclamations, executive orders, policy priorities and press releases.

In The Agenda section you can learn about the administration’s positions on everything from “health care and the economy to alternative energy and foreign policy.” Plus, bios of leadership and staff members are available throughout the site.

3) Participation

Citizen participation is a priority for this administration. The Obama election campaign was fueled by new media communication experts who inspired a groundswell of participation with Web 2.0 strategies that focus on two-way communication.

WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise to “publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.” Now that’s fresh!

The “Contact Us” link is in a most prominent place, the upper right corner. A large box on the right side of the sub-level pages boldly urges “PARTICIPATE” and links to The Office of Public Liaison & Intergovernmental Affairs area, where everyone can “inform the work of the President.”

The White House Blog does not have a commenting option that is made public. I imagine that monitoring that section would be a nightmare. A sub-blog, for the Middle Class Task Force, posts that they received over 34,700 comments in just 11 days. Common themes from submissions are highlighted.

Once the economic plan is in action, a new site, Recovery.gov, will enable users to track funds. “Ultimately, this is your money, and you deserve to know where it’s going and how it’s spent,” says Obama. Did I say fresh?

4) Weekly Video Address

President Obama publishes a weekly video address every Saturday morning—a 21st century version of the fireside chat. This past week, the President spent five minutes “celebrating” the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “while keeping his eyes on the tough road ahead.” Choices include streaming video or audio, transcripts and the option to download.

5) Slideshows

The White House slideshows currently showcase History, First Lady, First Family and The President. A most entertaining choice is Presidential Pets, in the First Family section. From Amy Carter and her Siamese cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang, to the Kennedys, Caroline and John Jr., and their pony, Macaroni—it’s lots of fun.

What’s not to love about WhiteHouse.gov? Just a few nitpicky things:

More interactivity in the White House 101 section would work well. I expected “Inside the President’s House” to include more game-like activity, right now it’s mostly text. The First Ladies section has no images of the women; they exist at the National First Ladies Library. I bet teachers would be happy to have lesson plans. And one new idea: I think it would be wonderful to see “shutter bug” Malia Obama’s point-of-view in a slideshow.

I’ll be submitting these suggestions at www.whitehouse.gov, because it’s all about communication and participation. Are you feeling the love?

Visit WhiteHouse.gov >>

“I can hardly remember the last time I received an actual letter let alone one I enjoyed as much as I did yours.”

So begins a recent email I received last week. The writer wasn’t responding to a holiday form letter I sent, but a personal letter written only to her, telling of events transpired and thoughts I’ve had since my move to Vermont.

I sat down at my desk one wintry afternoon and wrote while a gentle snow tucked the world outside my window under a sparkling blanket of white. An email would have taken half that time, but would have given a quarter of the pleasure—to both writer and recipient.

Email replaces letter writing as our principal means of both casual and formal communication; it is, after all, so terribly convenient. But in bowing down to expediency, we are losing the detailed records of individual lives that inform the future about today.

Our emails vanish when we do, when we change Internet servers and when we send our correspondence to desktop recycling bins. (Just ask the Bush administration, which handily deleted over a million emails over the past eight years.)

Unless we give our email servers permission to donate our correspondence to some kind of archival entity—much like people bequeath their bodies to science—no one will ever know what we have written. (No one may want to know, but that’s another subject.)

Without this kind of access to everyday Americans’ writings, future historians will be unable to pore over today’s letters to establish states of mind, gauge reactions to events of our day and keep history books honest.

Text messaging and IMing muddy the waters further. What would a historian do with sup qt j/w @ 2nite pza – cm l8r k? omg pos, we! aas, me ? Add in emoticons, those sickening bouncing smileys, and it’s enough to make historian David McCullough cry. On the other hand, can anyone who punctuates correspondence with faces made from semi-colons and parentheses have anything of lasting value to say?

But aren’t blogs like this one the modern-day equivalent of letters to our posterity?

In this weird, wired world, we forget how fragile electronically stored information is, subject to insults from both humans—in the form of totalitarian governments that can erase all traces of our existence—and natural disasters such as fires and power outages.

A hundred-year sunspot cycle is due any moment now, according to scientists. The last major sunspot storm in 1859 melted telegraph wires all over the United States. Our dependence on the electronic grid has mushroomed (somewhat!), so a bombardment of electromagnetic particles from our nearby star might melt transformers, cause blackouts and computer shutdowns for as many as 130 million Americans says a National Academy of Sciences Report.

And if that sunspot storm fails to materialize, there’s always the possibility that technology in 500 years will simply be unable to access today’s encrypted computer files.

Imagine if Shakespeare’s plays, converted to millions of i’s and o’s, were waiting for some Anglophile/nerd to figure out how to get the Bard’s lyrical words unembedded from silicon-coated plastic. How poor our world would be!

But perhaps the most important reason we ought to take the time to write—even if only the occasional letter written after an event of personal significance, such as our feelings about witnessing America’s first African American president being sworn into office—is that someday far in the future, our words will allow individuals we’ll never meet to experience our world, which will then be “the past.” Isn’t that amazing?

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
—Attributed to Albert Einstein

At a conference last spring I learned that baby boomers have in fact embraced technology, however they are typically five years behind the curve. Early adopters? Not so much.

By day I’m an online producer. I work on websites. I don’t build them or make them function (the smart folks I work with do that) I’m all about content—what’s on the screen and how to get people to find, read, explore or interact with it—hoping it’s time well-spent. In the mid 1990s, I had a yellow handwritten Post-it Note on my computer. Like an affirmation it read, “Fear not the machine.” And soon, I got over it—the fear that is.

While I don’t fancy myself an expert, keeping up with trends is an occupational hazard. There are times I love technology—all the bells and whistles, portability and convenience—and other times, it’s a persistent frustrating annoyance. Today’s trends make me smile or want to commit murder. So, I’ve decided to break it down to specific popular options and ask the question: Technology: blessing or curse?

Text messaging: Blessing

Used in moderation, text messaging is great. Running late? Meeting up at an outdoor concert? Avoiding the riot police? It’s genius! Just don’t take it too far.

Twitter is where I draw the line. All the rage with the perpetually connected set, Twitter allows users to send text messages by phone or Web. For me, it’s too much information; but I never say never. Twitter was put to good use when during the San Diego fires, the PBS station sent out “tweets” with up-to-the-minute road closures.

Cell phones in social situations: Curse

Miss Manners is just getting around to writing the rules and sadly, too many Americans lack manners: loud talkers on the bus; beacons of bright light in the darkened movie theater; dining mates taking calls mid-meal—not good. Not good at all.

Social networks: Blessing

I admit it. I’m on Facebook. Wanna be my friend? My 19-year-old niece found it hilarious when I joined last year, and now the majority of users are older than college age. I’ve reconnected with friends and colleagues, joined social action groups and gotten updates with the click of a mouse. LinkedIn is also good for professional networking. MySpace? Too ugly—no thanks.

iPhone, Blackberry, Trio, etc: Blessing/Curse

I really enjoy my new iPhone. Luckily, I am not obsessive/compulsive, so I can power down when needed. Being connected 24-7 is too much! I’m challenged, sometimes, when I want to look something up right then and there—especially when my perimenopausal brain’s search function isn’t working—but I resist, most of the time.

I’ve just scratched the surface here. There are wikis, social issue games, webisodes, political organizing sites, online dating, maps and more.

My advice to the tech-challenged is to find at least one savvy friend, coworker or child, ask questions and have them show you the way.  Or take a class if you’re that type of learner.

Let’s try to lessen that five-year gap, y’all. We learned how to use calculators, faxes and answering machines in our lifetime, so just because we didn’t grow up with it, doesn’t mean we can’t catch up with it.

Technology: blessing or curse? What do you think?

Evolutionary art by Cristian René

Being in one’s fifties is a revelation and I am reveling in it. Though I never had as much energy in my life as I had in my thirties, I never looked as good in my life as I looked in my forties, I’ve never been smarter, more confident, more willing to say, “yes, I can” in my life than I am right now, and besides; my friends who love me and who wish to live long, tell me I look great! I am in the middle of C-H-A-N-G-E, change of career, change of habits, change of mind, change of life. The whole enchilada…the big megillah…seeing the larger picture…well, it’s all happening for me right now.

At 56 years old I am re-entering the work place. I haven’t had a “job” job in 20 years. I just started looking at a computer a couple of years ago, I just got my first cell phone, and though we bought a DVD player last Thanksgiving, (our dinner company hooked it up us for us and I still made them make the gravy), my husband and I have yet to turn it on. I freely admit that I am behind the technology curve. Not because I’m some kind of a Luddite, but because I just never saw the necessity.

My husband Lee and I, live in the sticks. Our community just got a cell tower (one of the ones that kind of looks like a tree, but yet not?) so we didn’t even get cell phone reception up till about six months ago. Who needed a cell phone? We got nagged into a DVD player, but we had satellite for Pete’s sake. Why did we need a DVD player? I love yakking on the phone. Why, oh why did I need to email anyone?

Well—email is fabulous, essential even, and I’m all over the computer now. It is my friend. Travel planning is easier, correspondence is easier, and Hey! I’m a blogger. Howboutthat? Then, on one of my trips to the grocery store (takes me 40 minutes one way), I discovered that what used to be a bank of six pay phones had been reduced to just one. One! Yikes! Thank goodness I have a cell phone, right? See? Change is good. Embrace it, use it, make it your own. I know this now in my fifties. Go with it. I still don’t know why I need the frikkin’ DVD player, though.

Blogging off,
Connie