Yes, I realize that social networking is not new. Yes, even the online social networks that are the focus of this article have been around for a few years. Consider this, though: the ability for human beings to communicate clearly with one another, anywhere in the world, without a need for any acquired knowledge outside of one’s own spoken and written language, and practically instantaneously, arose from the telephone. The earliest such clear communication from one place to another removed place, that is documented, happened on March 10th, 1876.

America Online was founded in 1983, over a century later, and was the biggest online social network of its day, back when AOL implied it was an interface for the internet and before the general public realized that was untrue. MySpace came about twenty years after that and really generated a recognition of the capabilities of the online social network, but was loosely regulated and regimented. And on September 26, 2006, facebook.com opened itself up to anyone with a valid email address.

Thus, the social networking scene of today only began a few years ago and is still new in the grand scheme of things. I’ve only been on facebook since 21 August 2007!

* the editorialization above is mine, of course

The social networking technologies I currently use are: facebook, twitter, linkedin, instant messaging, and blogging (henceforth, The Big Five). I still email, occasionally. I basically email for work and to those acquaintances of mine who have not joined one of the social networks. There are two of those people in my circle of contacts. Two.

I first started using the internet with my Apple IIe back when Compuserve competed with AOL for dial-up modem users and the hackers found BBS’s to keep them entertained and scoffed at services that had GUI’s. And nobody who used a computer was considered cool by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. Once I got into university, I discovered these things called unix and VMS and acquired something called an email address. I learned to finger people and carry that shame with me to this day. In these early days, the only way I knew to communicate with someone via computers was to find them on AOL and mail them within that service, or find someone in JHU’s printed mail directory (fingering them to make sure it was the right person — sounds awful, doesn’t it?) and then mailing them there. I probably used pine to do it, too, since I didn’t like elm. What the hell am I talking about?

Back on track, one day while trying to figure out how to use a computer to tackle a physics internship project, I discovered a program on a Sun station called NCSA Mosaic. Some user before me, I think, had set the homepage to WebCrawler. I knew pretty much nothing about what was in front of me, but there was some sort of field where I could type and some sort of button that my cursor could click and thus my life’s productivity began its downhill journey. (for younger readers, this is akin to discovering Google for the first time)

What I discovered then, and subsequently cherished for about a decade, was an unrestricted access to anything that the world wide web of tubes had to offer. If I wanted to find out information about an actor on Friends, I wasn’t limited to what AOL was willing to show me. If I wanted to communicate with someone from my youth in Korea, they didn’t have to be at my university, all I needed to do was track ‘em down with InfoSpace or WhoWhere. My previously restricted access to only my joined services exploded into access to anything broadcasting the http service. And I adored that freedom. I reveled in it like a non-nerd might revel in backpacking across the globe.

Sad to say, from the beginning of my use of the internet, I ran into spam and spoofing. I fell victim to some scams at first, just like most newcomers to internet fraud. By the early 2000’s, I was getting a ratio of something like 1000:1 spam emails to legitimate emails, even using a new email address! When I first discovered MySpace, through a swing dancer friend, I suddenly found a way in which I thought I could communicate with people from all around the world… but only REAL people, not spammers and scammers. That lasted a day or two. The overwhelmingly irritating abundance of abusers on that site made me wish for a service that was similar in robustness but with better security against annoyances. And then came facebook and the other internet technologies I currently use.

The primary reason I use The Big Five in order to communicate with the world at large is that I am, by and large, shielded from garbage feedback. If I don’t want to see junk from an app on facebook or to be friends with someone there, I block it or ignore them, respectively. I choose who I follow on twitter. I choose my connections on LinkedIn. I choose who I instant message and whose IMs I accept. And there are lovely plugins that protect me from spam on this wordpress-powered blog. If a service is more annoying than it is rewarding, I’ll take my time and money elsewhere. BTW, this is also why hulu.com generally kicks youtube’s ass: more reward than junk.

These days, most of my legitimate emails are either internet purchase receipts, or notifications from a service for which I signed up. There are many reasons why I like facebook, but here’s a quick one for anybody who’s not already onboard: how would you like it if all your emails were ones you actually wanted to read? There you go.

And each of The Big Five fulfills a different desire for me:

• facebook is like a great unending party full of my friends. Sometimes they’ll wander off to another corner, other times they’ll run up to me to share a fun meme, and once in a while something crazy will happen involving a sheep or a muppet. When one friend passes out another might wake up. I always share at least one thing in common with each person there. Occasionally there are an abundance of shared interests and discovering them at the party makes us closer friends. We walk by each other and make comments like, “Hey, it was good to see you at such-and-such,” and “Oh, we should totally do this and that,” and “Happy Birthday!”
• twitter is similar but more in the vein of multiple conversations going on simultaneously, all of which revolve around, “So, what are you up to?”. The added benefits here are that you are perfectly welcome just to listen, and to listen to people whose paths you might never cross in real life. I’m enchanted by @feliciaday’s tweets and often laugh out loud at @michaelianblack’s tweets. I may reply to them once in a while in a semi-fan/semi-peer sort of way, but I don’t envision meeting them in real life. On the other hand, I also follow some friends and find this a great insight into their streams of consciousness.
• LinkedIn is my business networking in a social framework. I connect to various acquaintances and collect and give out recommendations in the hope that we’ll all mutually increase each other’s career values. If I came across a business opportunity, I’d immediately look to my LinkedIn connections first to pass it along.
• Instant Messaging / texting is email and telephone’s faster and cooler lovechild. I do realize those aren’t the same things, yet… I suspect they soon will be. This is my preferred method of direct communication when I don’t feel the need for the richer and more dynamic nature of a spoken conversation. It’s like a private conversation that stops and starts by either side’s whims, somewhat regardless of their current situations.
• Finally, Blogging is contemporary journalism. Sometimes, it’s simply a biased reporting of facts, other times (like this), it’s outright editorializing or feature writing. Today’s novice reporters need have no credentials but their own work, and not necessarily any sources but their own experiences. A gullible reader can easily be led astray from the truth, but I suspect that blogs will just train internet users to question more and sift reality from the falsehoods better than they otherwise would.

The current social networks are, obviously by inspection, inherently more limited than the internet at large. But a savvy user can choose their own connections to the existing streams of information and thus acquire a data feed that is much denser with usefulness than a yahoo search and empty of fraudulent African royalty.

What a beautiful world!

I have never stopped being proud of being a US citizen, but that pride is certainly renewed afresh with this auspicious beginning.  I admired the President’s address and applauded many of his points.  It is not required that I agree with all of my President’s statements as that is one of my treasured freedoms.  Yet if I have any qualms, I am far too happy to be a dissenting voice today.

I congratulate and welcome President Barack Obama!

I’ve never been interested in travel.  That’s not the same as disliking it, the way I really dislike moving.  Travel has just always struck me as a means to a goal rather than a goal in itself.  I grew up as a child of the military so would routinely move from one home to another every couple of years.  My parents would take me from Korea to Japan to Hawaii to Maryland to Illinois and back.  The trips themselves always seemed to get in the way of our purposes, which were generally to visit family.

When I settled into high school and then college in Maryland, I finally stopped moving with my family and was happy to put an end to the traveling, too.  On my own, I never went anywhere far from home.  With the onset of my dancing career, I started to travel for the purposes of getting to those dance events which were inconsiderate enough not to be in my backyard.  What I thought was that everywhere is pretty much the same.  People, places, things.  Gravity?  Yep, still 9.8 meters per second per second.  Now, where’s that venue?

It wasn’t until I started dating someone who loves to travel that I slowly began to understand a little bit of the allure.  The fact that every place is influenced by its own history and that the history of every place is different from its neighbors.  The beauty and uniqueness of each environment.  The culture and practices of different peoples.  There really are places where the grass is greener, the water is bluer, the horizon is wider, and the sky looks bigger.  There are towns where I fit in as if we were designed for each other and there are cities where I would always stand out no matter how still I stood.  The weather travels more than any of us and it has its favorite places, too, depending on its mood.

Even in that relationship where my eyes began to open, I still didn’t want to admit the fun of going to a new place and exploring it.  It has taken an overlong time for me finally to confess that the world is an amazing place full of astonishments and that all I need to witness more of those surprises is to stand on a different patch of land.

Two years ago, I started to enjoy traveling for its own sake and went on trips just to go on the trips!  Last year, I let go of the last of my reluctance and began to embrace every bit of it.  I liked the driving, I liked the flying, I liked the getting lost and the getting found, I liked encountering the people who spoke differently and ate differently and thought differently.  I sang along with the Discovery Channel commercials that declaimed Boom De Ah Dah, the world is just awesome!

I would like to go to England and Canada and Australia and Japan and the various tropical islands where people play in clear sweet waters.  I’m sad to say, though, that I am a little stuck.  I have become estranged from my sister and mother and I think that my birth certificate and most recent passport were last in my mother’s possession.  I have a driver’s license and social security card, but no way to prove… well, that I was born. My physical existence notwithstanding, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how I can show that I exist and thereafter how to get a passport as a U.S. citizen.  My friend, Soo, has given me some ideas and so I will try to see if I can get a passport this year despite the odds.  I hope that I am not deported in the process.  Damn my slanty eyes!

Even if I don’t get a passport, I’m going to stay open to the opportunity of travel.  If I see a cheap flight to Boston or somewhere in Florida, I’m going to try to go!  Las Vegas, Seattle, anywhere in California?  Yes, please!  And if there is ever a last-minute cheap flight to Hawaii, I am so there.  Hmm, I need to find a dogsitter.  Or make friends with a pilot who likes flying with dogs.  Oh, man, that would be great!

Thus, I resolve to travel to places this year not just because a dance event is happening there (although I am looking forward to New Orleans for Showdown!), but just because I haven’t been there yet.  To give myself two quick guidelines: if I can drive there in less than four hours, it doesn’t count; if it’s specifically for a dance event, it doesn’t count.  I’ll start small and aim for just one completely new place before the end of the year!  And if I manage one, I’ll shoot for a second.  And if I manage two, well, you can see where this is going.  This resolution will go hand-in-hand with my fourth resolution and I will try not to let a lack of a clear plan prevent me from moving toward that new destination.

It’s taken me a while to admit it but the world really is awesome, and I want to see more of it.  Here I come!

I like to think I know what’s coming.  I try to prepare for the future by planning out my own path and predicting the obstacles I will encounter and then ways to get around those.  I don’t think this is a bad characteristic, necessarily.  After all, Carrie taught me that a man with a plan has a better chance of being a man with a happy girlfriend.  The problem that I have with planning is getting stuck there.

There’s a mental momentum to traveling from A to Z by visiting all the letters in between.  Missing a stop is at least disconcerting and at worst makes you a horrible speller.  I am not proud of the fact that when my contrivances have gone awry, I have reacted poorly in the past.  It’s not as serious a problem for me these days; I’ve become more flexible and accepting of accidents of circumstance.  Still, even if I no longer wail and gnash my teeth when my schemes fall by the wayside, I continue to begin each day and each task with a recipe of ordered steps.

Just as staying along the edges of life restricts me from encountering more of what there is to discover, so too does staying on a prescribed path.  In the musical, “Into The Woods,” when Little Red Riding Hood is attempting to evade the Wolf and stick to the path, he replies:

Just so, little girl – any path

So many worth exploring

Just one would be so boring

And look what you’re ignoring…

Sure, he’s just trying to catch her to satisfy his own vile desires, but he makes a valid point that has stayed in my mind for well over a decade now.  By staying on the path, I don’t know what I’m missing.  That’s not to say I shouldn’t try to get to my goals, and certainly the straight line appeals to my efficient scientist’s mind, but crooked lines possess a beauty of their own.  When I have strayed from the straight and narrow, I have found things like amazing architecture, intoxicating restaurants yielding exotic foods, magical sights of nature, and at least one remarkable girlfriend.

In 2008, I got a really good GPS device (my previous Magellan was garbage) from Navigon.  Since this acquisition, I have found myself happily driving off in random directions just to see what’s out there, confident that I can eventually find my way back to my goal.  But in doing this, I’ve also come to realize that I could have always made those drives.  I have no problems stopping and asking for directions, and roads always go somewhere.  It was fear more than disorientation that kept me on the well-known lanes.

Today, I have a credit card, a reliable cellphone, and that nifty Navigon.  The only thing that keeps me from wandering the world is me.  I think I am capable enough that I can get back safely wherever I go and whatever I do on the spur of the moment.  There are facebook events to which I get invited, there are Meetups that seem interesting in passing, there are flyers for events all over the place.  I turn away from things too often because I’m not prepared for them.  But what would it hurt me to try things without preparation?  I might stumble and look a bit foolish, but there’s no lasting damage that comes from foolishness.  Unless you consider knowledge to be lasting damage, and that’s debatable.  I want to shake off my anticipations on occasion and just do stuff because I really don’t know what will happen and I find myself yearning to find out.

Thus, I resolve this year to jump into things without plans.  No, that’s not a plan, just a resolution.  A goal, maybe.  So, I’ll say yes to more invitations.  I’ll hear about something in passing and try it.  I’ll point to places on google maps and just go there.  I’ll call up friends and ask if I can join them in whatever they’re doing, just because I have some time to do it.

Speaking of which, what are you up to?

When I was in secondary school, I decided I wanted to become a teacher.  It was almost a defensive choice as it seemed to be a safe explanation for why I was such a know-it-all and why I always seemed willing and able to tutor my friends in various subjects.  I tutored primarily in maths and sciences but could also lead group discussions in writing and literature classes.  There were also a couple of semesters when I took art courses and people started coming to me for help on their sketching and painting.

I was no athlete nor a popular kid nor attractive, so holding a position of esteem by dint of being knowledgeable on a subject was terribly enticing.  The clincher for me was when I started taking Physics from Mr. Moore in my third year and discovered not only that this was a topic that explained the world around me but also that I grasped the concepts almost intuitively and could then explain them to my classmates.  That’s what I wanted to be!  A guru, a shaman, a demystifier of the peculiarities of life!

Then I went to university.  My spirit broke.  I still liked most of Physics from Newtonian Mechanics all the way through both types of Relativity… but then things got Quantum.  And I found no solace there.  Maybe it was because I aimed too high as I did attend a college known for its research concentration and graduate student programs and perhaps I just chose the wrong place to nurture my aspirations.  I wouldn’t have traded that time for anything, though, as I did make some great friends there and ended up learning the technical concepts that lead to my current livelihood.  Still, my thoughts of teaching classes faded with my enjoyment of taking them.

When I escaped academia and began to make my way in the private sector, I did occasionally fall into the role of tutor once again.  I would provide individual instruction on computer technologies and enjoyed it.  As I took up swing dancing, I found myself becoming that student who would learn the steps quickly and then could offer bits of advice to the other students.  I tried not to be obnoxious about it, but certainly if I saw someone struggling to figure out what they were supposed to do, or if I were asked for help, I would step up.

A few years into my dancing, I would join my friend Monica and then later my girlfriend Carrie in teaching some dance classes or workshops.  I don’t know how good I was, but I know I enjoyed it.  It was simultaneously easy and difficult to teach dancing since I would usually give the disclaimer that regardless of whether it was the right way to do things, this was my way to do things.  Then all I had to do was avoid looking bad and maintain consistency.  As I became a DC dancer instead of a Baltimore dancer, it was readily apparent that my teaching wasn’t needed in that locale.  There were several, sometimes as many as a dozen, incredibly knowledgeable dancers who were teaching around me and often in the styles that I liked.  I would be redundant at best.

Now, as I am content in my daily life designing and manipulating databases, and then heading out in the evenings to dance the night away, I rarely seek positions of teaching.  Yet, I still find myself sharing what I know and what I think.  I don’t tutor these days but I still dole out advice as though I were overflowing with it.  That might be an accurate description.  I thoroughly enjoy casual mentoring.  I’ve lived through some trials by fire and though the scars have taught me much, I find I like to veer others away from those flames by passing on my own experiences.  I find I want to teach more.

My topics of expertise revolve around my skeptical but positive view of life.  I find I am knowledgeable about the relationships between people in general and men and women in particular.  I am able to predict trends in business and entertainment based on my knowledge of how people work.  I read books, I read internet articles, I read magazines.  I also watch more educational television shows and documentary films than ever before.  Drawing from this personal pool of acquired tidbits of information, I advise my friends and find that when my advice is followed, betterment ensues!  Fantastic!

Thus, I resolve to pursue teaching this year in whatever capacity I can.  Business Writing for Nerds?  School for the Courtship Arts?  Dancing for Fun at Varying Speeds?  How to be Badass Without Hurting Yourself?  Santa Claus University?  Maybe I’ll take a page from Yes Man and hold Meetup style seminars on how to have a positive outlook in life.  Whatever I end up finding, I’m starting my hunt now.

Any questions?