Devolution: blogs, tweets, nings and social networking
Once upon a time, I promised my sons I would never visit Myspace or Facebook. It’s a privacy thing—-I wouldn’t go messing with their stuff; I wouldn’t barge into their rooms without knocking; I wouldn’t search their files on the computer. And it’s trust—-I have three sons, and they care about each other: they let me know if anything’s wrong. But it’s also a generational thing—-Myspace and Facebook just looked so strange, I wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway. Then came Gather. To be more accurate, then came the first ever Gather First Chapters Competition, just as I finished writing my novel, so I joined ( www.smd.gather.com ) and entered. I wasn’t sure what all these groups and connections were about—“It’s just like Myspace,” said my sons—-but it was a fun place for me to write and make friends. There was something on the Gather front page about blogs back then. Yes, I’d heard of blogs. I wasn’t quite sure what one was, beyond a public private diary, but I’d heard of them. Still...