It seems to me that everything the authors are excited about is illustrated in the Chapter 12 section, "a day in the life of the ubiquitous groundswell." It also illustrated everything that I am fearful of.
When I picture myself in this picture, I see a frenetic and unrelenting lifestyle where I must start my work as soon as I wake up, without time to bring myself into the day; the day bombards me with itself before the crust is out of my eyes. Perhaps breakfast is a quick banana and lunch will be a quick sandwich, never wanting to be distracted from the all-consuming responsibility of whatever product I am trying to popularize. "Drop[ping] off the grid" and knowing that "the groundswell can wait for a moment" entails only shopping for someone else and a rushed meal.
And my mind would be inundated by numbers. Twenty-five percent of this, 13 of that. Will I really know what it means? If 75% of comments are positive, are those tentatively positive or solidly positive? How many of those comments are negative or neutral but are mistaken by machines as positive because those machines pick up an extraneous word or cannot detect sarcasm? For that matter, how many positive comments are missed? I will act on that number because I do not have time to check the results but how accurate was my information?
It scares me because I know that employers would expect me to lead this lifestyle and I know that fellow employees would encourage it by complementing my hard work. But where is the time to relax? Can I hike without checking the reach of my product or spend a weekend away without wondering what the newest color is? Everything changes so fast that even a camping trip or "off-the-grid" trip to Toronto from New York would put myself and my company at a disadvantage. If checking stats as soon as I wake up and rushing a sandwich to check comments is necessary, than I'm not sure I ever could disconnect from the grid.
I guess what I learned from this class is that I am wary of working in the groundswell. I find it fascinating and challenging and I love when I get a chance to work on my blog. I was excited when I created a Twitter feed for my blog and when I re-organized the design but I don't think any of it is worth the sacrifice of full immersion and I do think that working in the groundswell requires full immersion. Everything changes too fast and there is too much information to not be fully immersed.
The thing is, I would never be able to think or relax. I'd be worried about wasting time if I were on vacation and my boss would be worrying about lost business when I didn't check my email over the weekend. If I lived such a frenetic lifestyle for my whole life, I don't think I would enjoy myself.
David: I appreciate your sane perspective to not let the groundswell overpower your humanity. To be clear, with the socio-cultural adoption of each new technology, particularly mass media, there has been a tendency to push audiences to spend increasing time consuming content. Often, such socio-behavioral shifts lead to effects that we are only beginning to analyze now. I'm pleased that you have a critical and analytical mind with which to reason your way through social media. Keep a balanced approach and you'll find your way.
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