Mark P. McDonaldTwitter, Facebook and other social computing platforms are filled with people’s activities, what is going on with their lives. Most of it is interesting and often you get to see the routine pace of others.
Yesterday the routine became the extraordinary in a simple way.
A friend of mine from College and I had just reconnected via Facebook over the past six weeks. And while I was on yesterday he sent a routine message from his phone to Twitter “Stuck on the tarmack in New York waiting to go to Buffalo” I thought nothing of it, pretty routine, pretty normal.
Well there was nothing normal about it given yesterday’s tragedy.
I have experienced that before with the explosion of the SwissAir flight over Canada. On board was the second string quarterback from my high school football team and his wife. They were going on the the trip of a lifetime. I did not find out about that until I was looking through the Newsweek and they had the pictures of the victims. So the news and my knowledge of were Mike was brought me back to that day in the barbers as I was flipping through the newsweek.
So what was the first thing I did, not call his home phone to talk to his wife with the question of wether Mike was on the plane or not. I cannot imagine receiving such a call. No I went to the Facebook page and there it was a message “Enjoying balmy Buffalo” So I wrote on his wall and pray for the people who did lose their lives in that plane crash.
The moral, well its great that people can tweet about where they are and what they are doing. And yes most of the time it does not matter, certainly in the way that it matters when there is a tragedy. Keep Tweeting and writing on the walls as we all like to know that you are safe, sound, and just going about your lives because that is what we are doing too.
Category: Fun Personal Observation Uncategorized web 2.0 Tags: Add new tag, home life, personal, Social Computing, web 2.0
1 response so far ↓
1 Marc Andonian February 19, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Your observations also point to a practical, perhaps essential value that can come from these evolving technologies. How many families, friends or co-workers have emergency communications plans in place? In this ever-connected world, perhaps there is an opportunity for a shared commitment – to post one’s status in one or more places to help keep those we care about, work or interact with posted – just in case. Many people have a directory entry in their cell phones under ICE (In Case of Emergency) – with the contacts of their family. Could Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking software play a similar role? Thanks for your thoughts!
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