I'm making what Brad Berens calls an infinitely long thread, I know, of this MediaFree and Gridless arc. We're now in the summary section. I started summarizing in Part 8 and we have about ten more posts to go. I've shifted focus form whether or not it's true that people have a hard time unplugging and getting off the grid to the reasons for that behavior (when it exists).
I'm well into concepts of social contact and accessibility at this point. We continue from there.
What we're coming down to in this thread is the concept of accessibility as a definer of self-identity and social value. This isn't new. I remember, back when I was a truckdriver, the fellow that owned the company had a summer place on an island in the middle of a lake. His was the only cottage on the island. He had a very tall flag pole next to his cottage. A green flag meant "come on over", a red flag meant "stay away, I don't want to be bothered" (this was long before cell phones and mobile phones would never have worked on this lake. Much too far from any city).I've seen people with entourages (The group following and attending to some important person) and handlers (An agent who handles something or someone). NextStage has learned not to let me out in public without at least one handler. To get to the person in question you have to get past the entourage or handlers. I once saw a bunch of sycophants moving around a individual and all I could think of was asteroids orbiting the sun, wanting to stay close enough to benefit from its warmth and hoping they wouldn't get sucked in and destroyed. It was enlightening to see the looks on everyones' faces and their postures, to hear their whispers, when I excused my way through them to face their sun and ask a question directly. I had violated the rules, destroyed the social order.
It's great being a researcher. You get to do things like that from time to time.
(more to follow)
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- The Curse of Social Networks
- Email Bankruptcy blog posts
- The Eventing Yourself Blog arc
- Going Off the Grid
- The MediaFree and Gridless arc
- MediaFreeZones
- Proof I'm a Luddite
- Unplugging... why is it so hard?
- Voluntary Simplification blog posts
- IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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