Community or Alienation in the Social Media Age

The Railroader Behind
his two Brothers

My Father is 82 years old. He is my mentor, my inspiration and my best friend. He taught me or gave me most all I show as natural sales and marketing ability. He taught me humility and pride. He gave me my work ethic and my love of sports. He is the strongest man I have ever known, experiencing more loss than some 5 men combined. He grew up in a several small Midwestern towns with names like Schell City and Caruthersville and Slater. It was the late 20's and  early 30's and the Great Depression had its grip on the entire country. My Grandfather was having a tough time keeping food on the table. He was a Dentist and his patients were more concerned about  food, clothing and shelter.            

                                    Who had money to fix their teeth?         

Most of us will never truly understand the depths of  dark hopelessness that were byproducts of the Great Depression.  It got really dark in Caruthersville Missouri, a river town in the Boot Heel. Diphtheria and the winter took my Dad's baby brother Quentin at age 3. He is buried there and had to be left behind when the dental patients dried up and the young Irish family had to pack up again and seek opportunity elsewhere. They made their way North and West to Saline County and a town of 2,000.  Slater would be different and it felt different from the moment they drove downtown and heard all of the activity at the Train Depot. It seemed like the people dressed in nicer clothes too.  The Railroad was keeping this little village going during those tough times.  Almost half of the town was involved either directly or through a family member and prospects begin to look up for the Dentist and his young family.

Across town was a man named Hugh Montgomery an Engineer for the Chicago-Alton Railroad. He was a tall slender man with huge hands and hair that took some work to keep under his cap. Hugh was my other Grandfather. Yes if not for the depression I would not be relating this small town story. Dad and Mom were brought together by the Great Depression when they were grade-schoolers and would be together until Mom died in 1991.

 Things began to improve for the Dentist and although riches were not theirs he  was able to put food on the table, buy a house and even upgrade his tools and hang a sign as his practice grew. Regretfully he died a few years before I was born. The Engineer made a good living and raised 6 kids my mother being the youngest. The engineer it seems was an inventor type who had created or fashioned various devices and contraptions that would make ones life easier or perhaps more entertaining.  My favorite was the automobile cooling contraption for those hot muggy summer Missouri excursions in "Woody" the wood paneled station wagon. You see my Grandfather in his own way loved  what we call technology making things better and more useful. He had witnessed these advances all of his life and they would come faster and with greater impact  with my parents generation.

 I was curious about the use of the word technology and discovered that it really did not begin appearing in its current definition until World War II. Technology brought inoculations for the disease that killed baby brother Quentin and the polio that struck almost every extended family in the country. We were producing better food stuffs and refrigeration to retard spoilage. Progress and technology brought automobiles to most homes and an improved rail system. It brought Saturdays at the Movies and Fireside Chats with the President on the Radio. Progress and technology brought indoor plumbing and heating for our homes. It brought bigger and better guns which along with the blood of our Fathers would preserve our democracy. The largest weapon in our arsenal and the most destructive was developed at this time and ended the war bringing the Greatest Generation Home.

The human brain is the source for the vision, creativity and deductive reasoning required to deliver technology. The problem is that often times this comes without consideration of scope or impact on everything it will touch both inside and outside including the hard our own psyche.  This has been an issue for man since the day he began using fire. With the good has come the bad and the necessity for new words and verbiage, things like - Gulf Oil Spill, Terrorism, Pandemic and Sustainability.  We find ourselves with a whole new set of problems. We all know what they are... and regardless of your politics I think we can all agree that at times we are terrible stewards of our technology, our planet and our brethren, Will there be new technology developed to fix the mess we have made in the Gulf? 

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This leads me to the Digital Dilemma playing out in this thing called Social Media. It occurs to me that this phase of our digital evolvement may be at critical mass.  Consider this: Over the past 100 plus years we have seen several shifts in the Nuclear family and the neighborhoods where we live. Prior to the industrial revolution it was essential to survival that the extended family stay together. Today our families are scattered around the country and globe and sometimes we don't see each other for years at a time. And when it comes to our neighbors, the days of sitting in your porch swing  visiting on a summer night left with the invention of television and air conditioning. Was this good for us? Did it improve our ability to communicate? Did we become more altruistic? Did it improve our feelings of self-worth and remove any sense of alienation? Now fast forward a generation when Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates ushered in the PC revolution and soon we were surfing the web and sending e-mails. All of this marvelous stuff was so user friendly you would be hard pressed to find a person under 60 who has not drank the digital kool-aid. 

Ugh more technology creating more issues. Is it the end of the world as our grandparents knew it? Are we moving towards isolation and alienation in a virtual world? I think most of us have had those thoughts at the end of the day when we realize we just spent more time online than off. Most of us knew the Cold War and saw how isolation and alienation lead to bad things.
But Kevin you say these Naysayers are the ones who “just don't get it.” Of course there are those (and I am guilty) of us who claim we do get it. We all say it with a bit of edge and defensiveness. It is the digital divide, the  left and the right, the blue states and red states. “Are ye for me or ‘agin me?” Will we all be sitting in our caves with an unattractive pallor to our skin venturing out only occasionally and certainly not to visit anyone? Will this medium keep us from getting to know each other and changing the way we sometimes hate each other?  I guess I am into this thing so deep that I hang my hat on hope but where is the empirical evidence to support it?  I mean, you now can have a high quality video chat with someone 10000 miles away. We are developing new relationships on line with people from all over the world opening a window of interesting people we might have never met.  We are making connections with old friends and classmates and attending more reunions as a result of these online connections. And what about these offline gatherings with our on-line friends? The commerce side of the equation is emerging a bit slower but is showing great promise. It seems to me that the Golden Rule is back in vogue. No one can say for sure where this all going but you can make a strong argument that positive things are happening. I encourage us all to remain vigilant on that good front. I have just one question for those of you known as influencers. What is up with this Klout thing?