Me and New Technology - Day 2

I have been using computerised communication tools (ei: email etc) since 1993 when I ran my own travel agencies. Both Offices were computerised for online bookings with airlines and wholesalers, accounting and communicating with our clients and other agencies. At this time our agencies were leaders in the IT fields as many still had manual booking systems and sat for hours waiting on the phones.

Returning to full time work after having my children meant that I no longer had time to sit down and write letters to my friends and family spread throughout the world. I didn't want to loose contact with people I had met during my overseas travels, some of whom I had been writing to for 5 or more years. So I contacted them all and asked for email addresses. Surprisingly, most had already had an established 'cyber-presence'. It was much easier and quicker to drop them all a line on a regular basis than it had even been. I now keep them all up to date with regular emails and really enjoy getting not only their updates, but the funnies that seem to do the rounds.

However, I have never been into chatrooms, forums or other forms of communication online. I know of several people that have fallen into the trap of gaining friendships through chatrooms just to find out that it was all fantasy. Now I am not saying that this is always the case, but I have no need to use this medium to find friends.

Having said all that, I know the WWW can be a wonderful source of information and I have enjoyed many hours helping my kids research their interests and school projects. I am pleased to say that the schools are teaching the kids to assess the validity of the information they get from the net.

As mentioned in an earlier posting neither of my teenage children have developed an interest in 'myspace' or similar sites. They are much happier talking to their friends either face to face or on the phone. Interestingly though, my daughter has found that most of her friends would much prefer to receive a text message rather than speak to each other directly. The down side to this that their messages can sometimes be mis-interpreted. I have heard many stories were one friend has got offended by a message from another and then pasted this onto other friends. Worse than chinese whispers!!

So I suppose my opinion of this technology is that it does have it's place in today's society, but we should all be aware of it's pitfalls and short-comings.

Happy blogging

Lee