In the last several months I have spend an inordinate amount of time in coffee shops (I’m in one right now!), and most of my blog posts have begun here. Many times they start out as exercises in impromptu writing (as you may be able to guess…). In the time I’ve spent in these caffeine supply depots, I have seen an increasing number of people sitting in daze with their coffee…and their laptops.
If only because I am sitting here writing into my own laptop…at a coffee shop, I suppose you could guess that I don’t have any real problems with people sitting here with theirs. I have heard, though, of a coffee shop in mid-town Manhattan where the use of electronics is forbidden, and as a consequence is has become a den of raucous conversation and general social interaction. That sounds nice too…
No, the thing that has me thinking about this topic is that as long as I have been observing some of my fellow patrons at this and many other coffee shops, I see people sitting with their laptop looking at their Facebook page. I swear that this seems to be the sole use for laptops in well over 50% of the users I have seen (in several cities towns, in many coffee shops, around the great state of Minnesota). I suspect that this is becoming more and more common with high school and college students, young people in general (and for me, young people are under 40…one of the advantages of getting to my age, heh, heh).
I have a Facebook page and don’t see much wrong with the concept of social networking sites (yeah, I’m on Twitter and a whole slew of these kinds of sites…). But I often wonder about the real value of these sorts of sites, in that I only see the most mundane aspects of people’s lives there… I once heard from a friend that Google’s new initiative ‘Buzz’ was sort of like Facebook for Guys… I found this to be an interesting take on this new world. It may be that many people either take to these new personal adjuncts like fish to water, or that they completely ignore them. I am somewhere in the middle, and because I come from a place where these things are not innate (the 1950’s) they give rise to a lot of questions for me.
Perhaps in the sense that if I were to have some free time to relax in a coffee shop with internet access, there are easily about a hundred places I would be going to before the thought of going to Facebook would rear its head (figuratively speaking, of course…). All of this isn’t some sort of criticism but rather an exemplification of my sense of puzzlement about the whole business of why so many people play ‘Mafia Wars’.
Maybe it is the nature of my gender and age in that I am not as deeply compelled to interact with others all the time. Conversely, it may be that I could be a curmudgeon…I can’t really tell the difference sometimes… as an example of some of the things I look over when I have the time here are just a few of the links I check , besides all of the news sources, and general research I often do…
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2010/02/antarctic_iceberg_collision.html
http://matadornights.com/the-best-condiments-in-the-world-right-now/
http://www.wunderground.com/auto/wxmap/
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2009/07/mcdonalds-menu-items-from-around-the-world-40-pics/
http://academicearth.org/courses/introduction-to-ancient-greek-history
