• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, September 19, 2008

I have friends who spend, I don't know, twenty hours a day on FaceBook.  "You can do so much" or some version of that is the usual comment on the engagement level social media offers. Panel discussions yesterday and today, regardless of what they were about, all seemed to orbit social media.  I'm on the outside of this, and I'm thinking it's my age.  I know it's probably a cliche, but still. I think if kids' meet the Web, and online social media, then their minds - who knows, perhaps their physical brains - are shaped by it enough so that their perception of society is of a digital realm, not a physical one, with digital representations of people.

Wait, that was part of the theme of a recent movie. Wall-E. Anyway. Anyway, those of us who grew up pre Internet probably still adhere to the old, washed-up view of social intercourse as one holds tightly to the tiller of sinking barge during a storm.  I simply don't GET the phenomenon, I don't want people to know things about me.  I do LinkedIn ostensibly for professional purposes but, God knows, I don't really use it. Not as I'm sure I'm supposed to.  And, really, who has time?  Well, I do, I just haven't managed it correctly. Otherwise I'd be updating my profile hourly, minutely, by the second.