Saturday, June 28, 2008

Maintaining Connections

Related to my post on endings, I was going to make some comments about how technology is helping us stay connected, rather than the contrary, as popular opinion has long proposed. I then noticed my friend, Rich Samuels, posted something similar, so I want to reaffirm what he said.

While I have actually not be a fan of the social networking websites, I just started trying out a couple of more... because of my nerdiness. Yes, that's right. I was looking at different web browsers and came across Flock, which is based on Firefox, but has a lot of neat features built in, including blogging functions and social networking. It helps bring everything to you. Since I could use new fun technology features, I thought I would try some of it, and I realizing that it can be a very nice way to stay connected to people.

One of my struggles with social networking and forums before is that you have to constantly go somewhere else to check it, whether or not it's updated. It seems like a waste of time and energy. But with this new browser, the info comes to you, like email, and I like that. I've also started getting into the RSS realm, and it has really helped me stay in touch with people, news, and commentary. As I talk about conversation being important here, I recommend these tools as ways to keep up-to-date and involved in the conversation, particularly when things like Flock make it easy to do that!

I also constantly maintain that relationships are the primary purpose in our lives and the means for spiritual formation, so I guess I have little reason to keep resisting these formats just because of their popularity (why do we do that sometimes?). In fact, they can help our spiritual formation and keep us focused on our purpose in our lives. Just like Rich Samuels said in one of his comments to me about business, these social networking technologies can also help us keep focused on the higher goal of technology--to keep us connected and in relationship rather than just efficiency and productivity.

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