Arching over all of these is the Big Thing — and if you get it right, the details will tend to work themselves out. to help one another. And that business is a way to do that on a greater scale. To help each other, we have to connect I first got online in 1989, when “social media” was called virtual community, for those who had a name for it at all. Of course we knew that it would change the world, because it had changed our world so much. And yet, it didn’t change as much as we imagined it would. (In case you’re curious, online community looked pretty much exactly like it does today; the connection platforms are just easier to use now.
Spam and scandal, connection philippines photo editor and conflict all looked remarkably like they do in 2015. Human nature is a stubbornly consistent thing.) There were always a few mysterious denizens in any community who remained purely “virtual” to us. Some had dark secrets — on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, in the words of the 1993 New Yorker cartoon. And you only had to come across a couple of dogs before you learned to pair online communication with old-fashioned offline connection. To go “F2F” as we said back in the olden days. Here we are, on the cusp of 2015, and things haven’t changed so very much. The age of miracle and wonder The Internet allows us to connect in ways that are remarkable and new.
We can form friendships with anyone on the planet. We can share our message with thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions — at virtually no incremental cost. We can even watch an astronaut play a favorite tune … from space. (And talk with him on Facebook or Twitter about it.) And the more amazing the technology gets, the more it brings us right back around to who we fundamentally are. I like Jonathan Haidt’s definition of our nature — 90 percent ape and 10 percent bee. We are a social creature. Even confirmed introverts, like Brian and me.) And it is our deepest nature to connect and to work together. What made our 2014 Authority conference such a profound experience for all of us at Copyblogger Jerod put it nicely in yesterday’s post.