There’s a saying, “technology changes, people don’t.” Yet, when we consider the impact of technology on our daily lives, some very interesting observations surface…A pen now feels awkward to hold and as such, our penmanship is deteriorating. It’s now common to sit at a dinner table with family and friends where some are actively communicating with others, listening to music or gaming via mobile devices … The future of the art of long form writing is at risk of becoming shrtr and less formal #forrealz …  

First: before we “write off” handwriting, as a teacher, I want everyone to know: handwriting is back in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for elementary students. The Texas Education Agency has decided that handwriting is important for knowledge processing and this year I and other Texas teachers will begin to re-emphasize it. This is because, technology or no, at the current time there is no cognitavely equivalent replacement for taking notes by hand.  Writing it down makes you think more clearly … tweeting, at least for now, may or may not.

Secondly, it’s true, people sit around at meetings (not at my dinner table if they want to eat) and SMS message other people.  But meanwhile I notice that teenagers do not sit around for hours on the telephone, as we did. SMS simply replaces the phone-to-the-ear syndrome. And people who SMS others while in class or meetings are simply rude. We do not put up with that in schools and I’m hoping that other places will soon follow suit. SMSing people while you’re supposed to be listening is cognitively dysfunctional.  You can’t sit there texting people and comprehend a speaker as well.  If Digital Darwinism means survival of the intellectually fittest, behaviors which actually make you slightly dumber shouldn’t survive, right?

As for the people losing the ability to read long works, such as novels, I do believe we read less now than we used to — it’s been going on for decades.  That does not mean the long form of writing is dying out. Reading was endangered more than anything else by the arrival of TV. Today, with surfing the internet, reading is at least basically important to communication in a way it wasn’t twenty five years ago.  And novels, while they may be less popular than they were, are not going away completely. It takes relatively little resources to produce and maintain a novel reading culture within the greater one. The number of novel readers may be shrinking, but we are not going away.

So, to recap: knowing things in the “old fashioned” way, by reading and writing well edited and thought-out works, is not going to go away just because we can SMS or tweet clever and not-so-clever thoughts when we have them. The future still belongs to those who can think. Social media may be a boon or a burden on human cognition, but it’s not going to replace “traditional” modes of constructing meaning. Not IMHO, anyway, and with that, I’ll close this blog post before it reaches 600 words.

I was so disappointed. I do have a few questions to ask God about. Some of them, not surprisingly, I can’t publish. But I think I could come up with a few that aren’t too personal:

Dear God, why won’t you just let us reach our goals and have some peace?

Is it really fair that those we love are free not to care about us in the least?

Why are there so many bad people in the world, anyway?

I mean, couldn’t we have gotten by with only about half the current number?

Could you at least get rid of half the bad people in my life?

And finally, could you just put to bed the question about whether there are dogs in heaven or not?

How about you, readers? Do you believe God may have an email address somewhere? If he does, do you think he had it ten years ago, before everyone else, or do you think he was a late adopter? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask God? If you do, would you dare to put them in the comments below?

I’ve met many women who tell me that the reason they spend so much time sitting across the table from uninteresting men, laughing at jokes that aren’t funny and eating a dinner salad when what they really want is a big juicy steak topped with bacon with a side of bacon is that these dates, no matter how horrid, help them create a checklist of they are looking for in a mate.

Is he the one? Or should you send him packing?

- Bob may have been obnoxious but he had great teeth.

- Seth had bad breath but he held the door open for me.

- Tyler slurped his soup, talked about his ex-girlfriends all night, tried to grab my breasts when we got in the car, and ate my cucumbers, but he has a job.

- James dresses great, talks to his mom three times a week, loves musical theater, has never been married, offered to take me shopping, give me a make-over, and set his roommate Brian up with my best friend . . . wait a minute.

I view dating from a different perspective. I believe dating allows you to create a list of things that you don’t want in a life-long mate. Once you find someone who doesn’t match that list, you know he (or she) is the one.

Since this may be a new concept for you, let me illustrate with my personal example. Other than my husband, I’ll use descriptors rather than names. However, it is important to keep a couple of things in mind.

- These examples are 10-15 years ago (I was very young when I started dating).
- Most importantly, just because I (or you) place something on this type of list, it does not make the associated person bad or flawed (barring physical or verbal abuse). It just means they weren’t The One. When it comes down to it, most of my ex’s could list a flaw or two of mine (I’m not eliciting a challenge).

The Things I Didn’t Want In The One – As Learned From My Ex-boyfriends

- High School Obsession – Drank too much.
- Long Term High School Boyfriend – Didn’t get my sense of humor.
- Short Term College Boyfriend –More interested in my body than my mind.
- Long Term College Boyfriend – Wanted me to be a mild mannered, size 4, blond, Southern Baptist vegetarian.

Then I met Richie and he wasn’t all of the things I didn’t want.

We met in college, so I won’t tell you we didn’t enjoy a few cocktails on occasion, but there were distinct differences between him and my High School Obsession. First, he was 21 not 17. Second, he knew the difference between having a drink, and drinking to get drunk.

Not only did he get and appreciate my sense of humor, he made me laugh.

Richie and I both majored in Communication Studies, which provided a common interest, but even outside the academic realm there never seemed to be a shortage of areas for discussion. I won’t say he wasn’t interested in my body, but he always respected my decision to wait until I was married to have sex.

Richie and I were friends before we started dating, which has its advantages, one of which is by the time we started dating he had already seen the real me. The loud, silly, bacon loving, frizzy haired, charismatic, size 8. That is the girl he fell in love with.

The advantage to creating a checklist of traits you don’t want as opposed to a never-ending list of must haves is that you enable yourself to see your potential mate for who they really are and not who you want to make them into. Because the truth is, as much as you may believe you can, you cannot change another person, no matter how much you love them or how much they love you. That is why, whatever your expectations, if a potential partner does not meet them, you will both be much happier if you cut your losses and move on than if you spend the next ten years trying to change that person. I tell you that as someone who spent three years a very miserable size four, blond vegetarian.

But, then it happens! You find someone who isn’t all the things you don’t want. It may be someone you have known for years or it may be someone you just met. All you know is that this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. And you should. Because when you know, you know. And when that happens, I promise, you won’t need to date one more person to figure it out. Because your list will be complete.

How did you know he or she was The One? Share your thoughts.

Kristen Escovedo is a writer, a communications pro, a wife and a mommy of two. Her blog, The Waiting Room is a place where all these varied aspects of her life come together as she takes a look at life from its various Waiting Rooms ranging from the silly to the poignant. Follow her on Twitter @kescovedo.

Attention Pear Analytics, “status updates” are what Twitter was born doing, and, albeit that these days status updates have slipped to being the minority of tweets (41%) they are not “mindless babble,” they are the core of Twitter’s meaning. Like phonics being necessary before a child can read, status updates are needed before you learn to retweet, reply, link and network. Beginning twitterers use them a lot, and experienced twitterers too like to say what they are doing, too, as long as it’s perceived as funny and relevant.

Okay, now that I’ve calmed down (you see, I make a lot of status updates, and so the idea that my tweets are “mindless babble” was bound to get me going) here  is the  breakdown of the Pear Analytics research on types of Tweets:

“Pointless babble “40.55%

Conversational 37.55%,

Pass-Along Value  8.7%

Self-promotion 5.8%

Spam 3.7%

News 3.6%

The news story: Twitter Filled with “Pointless Babble.”

The entire white paper from Pear Analytics (this is actually a great resource which answers a number of questions, such as the proportion of “dead” (or inactive) accounts.

1) They develop and hone a unique persona.

2) They tweet a lot — at least 20 posts a day, sometimes much more.

3) They talk to others (@ message) constantly. When a new person @messages them, they really try to answer.

4) They use hyperlinks relatively infrequently.

5) They keep it positive, positive, positive.

6) Or they’re a celebrity. If you’re a celebrity, all bets are off.  I follow @DavidLynch, he almost never says anything, I don’t know if he writes his own tweets, but it’s kindof cool to follow him, he doesn’t need to prove himself on twitter, he just has to show up.

70 percent of your tweets share resources — blog postings, articles, opinions and tools
20 percent of your tweets engage in conversations and connections
10 percent of your tweets “chirp,” or chat about yourself, your life and your thoughts.

Well, no wonder I am not the ultimate twitter goddess that I thought I could be, because this is not what I’ve been doing. My scores, which I just got by counting my last 20 posts on Tweetdeck, are more like:

1) 15% share resources
2) 60% engage in conversation
3) 25% updates on what I am doing.

When I see articles like this one, I always think “so this is why my “All Friends” column on Tweetdeck is just one long rippling thread of hyperlinks and @tags. There’s precious little real message left in our SMS-based system. And even though my browser is pretty quick (since I bought the used iMac from @PeteWann) I don’t have time to click all those links. I don’t even have time to process what they’re about.

I don’t go to twitter looking for articles, I go looking for people, for personality. Also, I’m looking for freedom and the surprising. Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear “Twitter rules” I reach for my gun.

I’m not alone in this. Back in January @ChrisBrogan wrote the post “You’re doing it all wrong?” where he does a complete send-up of the idea that twitter can even have “rules.” I mean, yes, you can make a list of ideas on how to tweeet and call them “rules.” But really they’re only suggestions, guidelines. One of the big things about Twitter, I believe, is that there are no rules.

There are a lot of different types on twitter (I wrote this blog post pointing out a short list of some of the major ones) and each has their own formula of tweet balance. There are some tweeps who are more than anything else like a morning DJ, blasting out news and notes from the scandalous to the profane. Others go on all day chatting with friends. Some really do give updates on what they are doing. Is this okay? With me, it’s okay. I feel you have to work out your twitter identity with fear and trembling.

As for me, I might not be doing twitter right, because after a year I don’t have tens of thousands of followers. But I have enjoyed it a great deal and met some pretty neat folks. That’s good enough for me, for now.

And Now the Main Story:

The problem is with the DM’s. Increasingly, Twitter is becoming attractive to people who are trying to sell stuff. And increasingly, these types add you, you innocently and as a friendly gesture add back, and they send you a DM promoting their services. This is particularly a problem for users who access Twitter via cell phone SMS, because the commercial DM’s are blowing out their inboxes. For the rest of us, they’re just a garden variety iritation, which becomes worse and worse the more of the things you get.

Anyway, last week social media guru and prince @ChrisBrogan, who is followed by something like a 100,000 people, threw down the gauntlet. No more auto-following. The DM’s were just too out of control.

It was interesting to me when I read it, because quietly and undramatically and not followed by nearly six figures of people (last Twitter count was 1450 or so followers, many of whom I suspect are no longer reading my updates and which inevitably contains some MLM people and the like) I had come to the same conclusion. Thankfully, now twitter gives you a mini-profile on everyone who appears on your followers list. Instead of auto-following people, I go down the line, check out their location, their avatar, their bio and their latest tweet, and I can usually tell if they’re a spammer or not.

For a lower-volume user like me, it works. @ChrisBrogan, on the other hand, has had to resort to requesting that those who are legit @message him if they want him to follow back. But mine is a human system, so it’s not failproof. Imaging my irritation when someone I had hand-followed shot back an instant DM last week:

“Check us out at blahblahblah.com  for stunning marketing solutions … we can and do help people just like you … “

Oops. Looks like I’ve had a Personally-Administered Twitter Adding System error. Only remedy? Hand-Unfollow. Okay. All better now. See the rest of you soon.

That was then. Now, there’s no privacy on the web anymore. Now, everytime I turn around someone is asking to add me on FaceBook or following my Twitter stream and with about 2000 unique visitors a month here at this site, there’s no way of knowing which of my arch-enemies are reading this and making notes of my typos.

Back then, I could shoot off my mouth at will, on a website, blog, or any portion of cyberspace, and never worry that someone from my family or from work, or from anywhere, really, was going to read what I wrote and, more importantly, associate my virtual web words with a real flesh and blood person, me, who was sitting across from them at an actual wood table. I could complain about anyone, anything, anywhere, and it would never get back to anybody. The web was my virtual confessional.

Eventually, my parents got on the web and my dad started reading my blog, but since I didn’t have any fights with him at the time that didn’t matter. Now, however, it’s pretty safe to say that everyone is on the web, with the exception of those too young to read, and, overall, you are never safe complaining about some member of the immediate or extended family, friends, or people at work, and feeling safe that they won’t find out. Probably they will. They follow you on FaceBook, they get your Twitter updates.

I heard that my ex-husband’s wife followed my blog and my twitter account, but that was okay … whatever she found there, she probably didn’t like me anyway, deep down, so what did I care? But the gig was finally up when I put a rant on my old blog, The Kids are All Right, about a member of the extended family — and she read it. The next time I was over at her house, huge innuendos were dropped like size 12 shoes about my blog, and how many people read it, and various other allusions to what I’d written.

Drat, I thought, I can no longer vent on the web. Mea Culpa. As I said, the web is not a safe place.

You heard it here first.  Writing “Uncle George has really really ugly green golf pants that make me want to throw up” will seriously put you at risk for, next time you see Uncle G., him asking, “don’t like my golf pants?”

I’ve thought of changing my avatar, my alias, my byline — but it’s too late. Everyone knows where I am and I’ve worked for almost a year building up the name recognition, etc. for this site and I’m not going to do it again. I’m going to have to do this the old fashioned way from here on out, and watch what I say.

I’m sorry people, but the days of digital freedom are over.

The news story:  Burleson Woman Killed in Head-On Collision. And also there is a short obituary with a guestbook signed by many, including friends from twitter.

On You Tube, she sang an a capela rendition of “Killing me Softly.” Danny Brown wrote a reflection on his blog about her passing.

Her last twitter update spoke only of an irritating case of strep throat. As the news leaked out over the twitterspere, ourpourings of sympathy rebounded. The shock was palpable — if you’re on twitter, you can read the thread on the topic by searching for @megapixel.

May she rest in peace — and be remembered. Truly we know not the day nor the hour.

I have always been one who likes to read the news, instead of watching it. But at some point in the past five years, we stopped taking the paper. It cost a lot of money, and I wasn’t sure it was really impartial. The only short-term cost was I was kept out out of knowing much about fires, explosions and car accidents in the local community. But as time went on, my life changed very little from stopping the paper feed. Except every once in a while a big story would blow in and I would left out.  I knew this “see no evil” approach to the news was not a lifetime solution.

I have instead adapted a new system of getting the news effectively, relatively impartially, and for free. It is foolproof? No. but I’m not sure I’m less well informed than I was years ago. My three step method to news aquisition is:

1. I read my twitter feed for about 15 minutes a day. If there’s anything really important going on I’ll hear about it. Meanwhile, I also pick up an ecclectic mix of blog articles from links on twitter and hear some outside voices that I wouldn’t know about if it weren’t for the internet.

2. I read the top story on Yahoo news. If something interests me, I search for it there. I spend about 5 minutes a day reading Yahoo news, on average. I find it to be very well suited to my needs — decently researched and respectably written. The bias I had become used to in newspaper journalism seems to be absent. I’m hoping, anyway.

3. My mother and daughter send me articles from the New York Times. I spend about 10 minutes a week reading these stories. This insures that I get some exposure to top-ranked modern journalism, and since Mom and Daughter are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, I feel I am getting a balanced ledger of news from various viewpoints.

In this way I stay informed about various trends in the country and in the community. Actually, I have to say I think I’m better informed than I was from reading one paper, and certainly more than I would be from watching TV news.