Thanks for having a read and nice to meet you. I found this images here:
http://imgur.com/tRnNd.png

It was done by Ji lee. Hope all is well Simon

I have to say I agree. As much as I am a devotee of social media and a marketer by trade, what always attracted me about advertising was the power of emotional connection. So while it seems contradictory, one hand I feel the need to protect or at least champion authentic connection while on the other I use social in advertising. Clearly I believe there is a third alternative where tolls like social media are used responsibly by marketers but that is far too infrequent and I risk sounding naive.

I also agree that social media is a necessary evil in one sense as the pace of our lives is so accelerated. Slowing that down is an even more impossible task than keeping social media (in the hands of marketers like me) honest.

Ultimately everyone will filter information as they need to and determine their own level of engagement. I suspect for the next generation the threshold will be much higher than ours. In my book that comes at a price but they won’t know any different. As we further immerse ourselves in the parallel universe of online living, let’s hope marketers stay (relatively) honest, human nature (occasionally) screams for direct experience, and we remember that ultimately its hearts and minds we connect through and not technology.

Thanks and great to be in touch. Simon

We all need to make a conscious effort to force one another to stop allowing the social networks to be our conduit for interaction and get in front of one another so that we may once again have that human bond in which we have been communicating through for eons.

However how will that impact the speed and attention that is demanded from us now that we work in this new hyper environment?

There needs to be a balance of the two, I do not know what that is but perhaps you can help us see what that world looks like?

It’s funny how the marketer in me clashes with the parent in me raising the same concerns. As if digital intimacy wasn’t cause for concern enough, the way the next generation multi-task their communication is startling to me (just as you described with your son). To me, while this is obviously the new speed of communication and seems perfectly natural to them, it seems the relatives remoteness of digital intimacy (compared to face time) is exacerbated by the fact its happening on several fronts all at once. We should not be surprise if we lose eye contact with the next generation even during face time. I already watch my daughters friends talking to each other while playing a game on a computer while texting at the same time. What it all means for our quality of life is hard to say, and its almost impossible to judge another’s experience of life, but looking at life through a screen (big small or mobile) does seem one step removed from the innate appeal of direct experience. Let’s hope the quality of their experience expands with their reach, and we all have nothing to worry about. I also have great faith in human nature’s ability to find balance as heather mentioned above. Great chatting and hope all is well, Simon

That’s exactly the way I hope it works too. You reconnect and then translate that into the real world. I think I’m particularly sensitive to the intrusion of technology cause I spend so much time looking at what’s coming. And with the exponential growth of social media and new technology that will create even more screen time in our lives (Augmented Reality being one), I fear it’s easy to get swept up in it all. And even if we don’t, the next generation (as in my iPod listening, Club Penguin playing girls) will spend more time in cyberspace than we’d ever dream of doing. Maybe I’m being too much of a wary parent (and marketer charged with influencing people using technology) but when you see all the different things coming at once and the speed of current growth, it really feels like an overwhelming force. Fortunately, human nature has a long history of rectifying bad habits even if its only out of survival. I’ll put my trust in that. Thanks so much for chatting, Simon