On Steel and Social Internets

Sunday afternoon, post blacksmithing class, having consumed what worked out to be a second lunch (blacksmithing is a much more calorie intensive activity than I had anticipated), The Ravishing Mrs. TB asked if I was going to post pictures of what I made on The Book of Face.  "No" was my response, in keeping with my (relatively new) philosophy of supporting the Social Internet instead of Social Media.

What a strange and wonderful sensation that decision was.

Strange, in that I did not get the usual "Thumbs Up" and supportive commentary that I had in the past when I posted such things.  There was no instant feedback loop telling me that I had done something good.

Wonderful, in that I found that I was reclaiming a very small piece of my privacy and independence back.

That small spark - of doing a thing and not essentially advertising it to the world - meant as much as actually completing the works themselves.  I had done something and the world did not immediately know about it.

It brings up the actual idea of having a private life, a life which belongs to the individual and is not demonstrated to the world at large (just as it is not tracked, monitored, or surveyed).    The doing of things, the making of things, the sharing of experiences which is either kept or shared as one wills, not as a demand or an expectation.

I have blogs I follow that share a great deal about their lives and their activities.  I have blogs that share almost nothing beyond what they are writing about.  In either case this is okay as the individual is making the choice to share what they wish, not because they are driven to by some neurological need for approval or demand of a larger media, audience, or authority that says "You must".

The idea is not original with me, but I would argue that the true wealth of the "Brave New World" will be the ability to which one is able to have a life which is private, where one can do and go and be without having to navigate the social pressure of "posting everything" nor of the tracking of what one does.  Like all other things in the modern world, this is much more difficult than it used to be.  But one does not have to make easier by simply acting without thought.

Perhaps not posting pictures of coal, fire, and steel represents no great act of civil disobedience. On the other hand, at least for me, perhaps it does.