Pinky on Conversation

Whether it is the long weekend or the spirit of Thanksgiving, I have been blessed by a lot of communication from friends and relatives, including some very nice surprises from old acquaintances and one freshman year in college roommate. The communication has largely been supported by internet applications, mostly Facebook and I have thus been noodling on the art and mechanism of communication. I actually emailed another friend from college who is a professor in communications and queried her as well. The prevalent question for me is: Are we truly engaging in meaningful dialogue with our many many threads of input and output, largely electronic, primarily unaccompanied by other than static photos, if that, or are we participating in an exercise that further separates us from emotional bonding? My husband ranted about front page news on Thanksgiving day being about the violence in Mumbai rather than for once being a local interest and warm-hearted story, but despite my initial disagreement with him, I do wonder whether our race to be the first to KNOW and our seemingly never quenched desire for blood is also somewhat echoed in our pale and superifical connections ....... I am delighted that I am able to be back in touch with so many friends from the years, but I wonder if I am destined to just give MORE people LESS of my ear and heart? I still am a believer in the urban legend that we only use 10% of our brains and I am committed to exercising more of mine, if possible, but.......

Pinky on Social Networking

I am definitely suffering from sensory overload...Colleagues and friends of mine and I have been rabidly discussing the impact of social networking on our respective industries, familiy connections, and impact on the planet (these topics in no particular order of significance). Emerging from the threads and discussions of today are three thoughts of the evening:

1) Is social networking in the virtual world REALLY how we want to interact as humans? Although the transcendence of geograhpic and cultural barriers afforded by the virtual communities available to us is awesome, I wonder if, as I posted earlier on this blog, the anonymity that accompanies many of our presences really allows us to be less humane.

2) If we truly only use 10% of our brains, I assume that we could learn, through generations, to accomodate the phenomenal amount of information now available to us through the various on-line communities and discussions we join. However, at the moment, I feel as if I am becoming superficially conversant in a variety of topics rather than deeply passionate and expert in some. Is this a good or bad thing?

3) I, aging English/Poli Sci major that I am, find it amusing and a little disturbing how loosely we throw around terms to accomodate our grasp of technological change. I have heard the word metaphor applied to database design; social networking to on-line communities; and agnostic to applications that can integrate with various others.......Does anybody use dictionaries anymore or are we just grabbing the buzz words of the day and running with them? I, as precise as I try to be with my language am guilty of all of same as I try to express myself, but I am curious about how our misuse of the language may drive our misuse of the potential of the tools at hand....

Just a thought...

Pinky on PG Ratings

We just finished watching a Francis Ford Coppola movie, "Youth without Youth". Briefly, it is an exploration using linguistics as the surface mechanism, of human conciousness. After all, as many have posited, our sense of being is only attainable and described via articulation....so, both cosmically and spiritually do we exist before we may express we exist? I digress...this conversation is another post...However, I have become fascinated by the new descriptions in the movie rating system. This movie, for example, was rated "R" for sex, nudity and "one brief disturbing image". I won't spoil it for you, but we pretty much figured out what the most probably image was that earned this rating, but a number could have made the cut. Much like my fascination with the J. Peterman catalogue authors and my new interest with the company descriptions on the Hoover's site, I have become curious about the new more specific language in movie ratings. How do I get this job? With this new attention to detail and undertone, I might rate my all time favorite, "Wizard of Oz" as an "R" for its graphic representation of cruelty to and genetic testing on simians.

Your thoughts?

Pinky on "Party" Politics

I had the great fortune to be dining at Michael Mina's in the St. Francis hotel on November 4th. The St. Francis was hosting the DNC that evening and the No on Prop 8 campaign (opposition to the ban on same-sex marriage in CA). Needless to say, the energy level was off-the-richter scale. So many thought threads are spinning for me about this election that a series of posts will result, but as a beginning: As a forty-four year old, I have often been disappointed in the lack of truly unifying rallying causes that have underscored my generation. In Portland, Oregon, some colleagues and I were in a conference room when the first air strike of the first Gulf War was televised. The stunned silence of the group as we watched the bombing was the first time as an adult that I felt a fundamental connection with those in my age group. In that room, the emotional lightbulb for all of us was that the men could very likely be drafted....Viet Nam was an extremely hazy recollection for most of us there and many of us shared our childhood confusion about the phrase "fighting guerillas in the jungle", which we had taken to mean that we were slaughering GOrillas. Although my generation's politics are far more varied than perhaps those of the Beat and Flower Children, there was at that moment a recognition that we could all be profoundly impacted by what we could so dramatically view through the advancement in technology.

It is with some degree of sadness that the years between that moment and 9/11 are more notable from a very individual, perhaps selfish tracking of time. Therefore, to stand across the street from Union Square in San Francisco, and celeberate not only with my political and generational peers but the majority of the population regardless of color, gender or age, was one of the most uplifting and deeply gratifying experiences of my life. Personal politics aside, I truly believe that we as a country have an opportunity to unite and celebrate shared principles and ideals rather than focus on our discretionary, individual, and separate agendas.

My hope is that the next moment in time of this consequence about which I would remark would be a presidential campaign and election that makes no reference to gender, sexual orientation, or race and color, but only to the success of the most qualified candidate.

For the first time in my adult life I am truly truly proud to be a voting citizen of the United States of American; my pride and hope as a global citizen has never faltered.