Record setting heat
Seatlelites’ discomfort
Easily reached
Author: Carl Setzer
A blogger blogging from just north of Seattle.
Our Collective Attention
So vapid a thing
Our collective attention
Oh look! A squirrel
Monday approaches
Darkness consuming
The day’s remnants fade to dust
Monday approaches
A Sunday afternoon
This Sunday, mid-day
Sunlight streams in through windows
Calmness seeping in
A silent evening
In silence I sit
With the stillest air I’ve known
Echoes of nightfall
Life, Death and Social Media
Yesterday had one of the surrealer moments in my life. A friend from childhood has been ailing at Stevens hospital (properly, it’s now Swedish Edmonds), and was given a few days/weeks to live. So, last night he posted on Facebook that he had just hours to live and that this was his last post. With his deteriorating health, I fully believed the statement.
There’s much within this, but I’m focused on the newness of this. Since he has a phone, which can be worked pretty easily even when weak and exhausted, this contact was able to be pushed out. Made me think of the last minute letters sent by rebels, resisters, those executed for political gain. Those letters were far more effort, and would only be readily sharable with a small group of people. Now, with a few strokes of your thumb, messages are sent to out to thousands, potentially millions. The ease of mass communication deeply changes our connection.
As shocking as such a message is, I expect this to become more commonplace. Perhaps we can eliminate the feeling of isolation. And, in the end, perhaps it’s good. Maintaining connection in the most challenging and intimate of times.
Compassion’s Flow
Remember dear friends
Seek out love and compassion
Flow through you and out
The Ever Changing World Of Social Media
Was just reading this piece over at Business Insider: Teens are ditching Instagram for Snapchat at a stunning rate. Well, this reinforces one of my underlying assumptions: that what we’ve currently labeled “social media” is a highly unstable sector.
So, we see that Twitter is falling in relevance; that’s been prognosticated about forever. And the same with the Facebook and it’s sidekick Instagram. But we’re seeing growth with Snapchat. Again, the focus of this article is teens, but I expect they’ll be the leading edge of social media trends.
They have two graphs that really capture things:
And this guy, which I think is more telling:
So, the world is shifting and shifting rapidly. It’ll be good to dive into Snapchat, if you’re not already there.
Scenes from my walk
Wandering my streets
With my basic agenda
And I find magic
Restarts
Rebooting myself
Discipline; thus a refresh
No fresh start promised