Skip to main content

Social Work

 I am not one to say.  Or do.  I wish I could do social work.  I guess growing up in India I did some.  I volunteered at schools on day camps.  I also did some stateside.  With the Red Cross and with some non profits.  But not enough.

What would our world be if many able bodied people actually did more of it?  Instead of the other almost eponymous activity - Social Network?

I find that in the decades of my being on our planet, we discovered personal computing, then mobile technology and access to global information and then the culmination of it to be able to lookup anyone or anything 24x7 anywhere.

The looking up anyone took off, first for its novelty and then for what it truly was designed for - more efficient mass consumerism.  But as always happens the gullible were led down the road oft traveled.  They fell for it.

People began to compete.  The haves showed off while the have nots pretended to be the former.  Whether it was vanity or sheer stupidity all manners of folks; from the villages in Asia and Africa and South America to the power corridors of capitalist centers around the planet to the glitzy show biz airheads spouting their latest hairdos and plastic and chemical enabled avatars, they all wanted to feel connected.

And marketers were having the last laugh.  From the cliched 'looking hot' comments to pithy 'wows' the stay at home moms got an audience of thousands by clicking on glass.  What was the risk in that?  Hello Social Network.

Being at a job for five years or 10 called for the social software to urge others to congratulate the employee.  Do we know if this person felt congratulation worthy?  Do we even know if this person is in fact at said job?

No matter.  Software has taken on its own life and continues to pound out spam mail to scam calls to adulation and platitudes a plenty.  And suckers are being born and convinced every waking and sleeping minute to go out there and network.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A few good books

 On an informal mission to read one book a week as long as the eyes allow for such ambition. Fiction or non is not important as long as it entertains and /or educates. To that end the past few weeks have brought a bounty in the form of some wonderful and then not so engaging literature. Among the notables are - Non fiction category: 1. Good arguments by Bo Seo (how to handle a dispute or debate the most efficient way possible) 2. Genesis by Eric Schmidt (and former US Secy of State Henry Kissinger, who recently passed) - how AI might affect our lives as we know it 3. One in a billion - Zarna Garg (an autobiographical look at an Indian born American woman with a bindi narrated in a standup format - yes it is at times cliched but still funny) Fiction: 1. Personal by Lee Child (a vigilante story with Jack Reacher the giant, nomad protagonist of Child's novels goes hunting for a sniper) 2. Ramayana unraveled by Ami Ganatra (she might disagree about it being a work of fiction but oh wel...
Post a Comment
Read more

Back in DC

This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Costa Rica

 Our first foray into Central America. That elongated isthmus that forms the geographic boundary between two vast continents of North and South America. Specifically landing for NYE 2026 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Capital city for this region that does not have its own army, instead relying on its big bro the Estados Unidos to the north is a metropolis of approx. 500K people. Largely wilderness and with both a Pacific and Carribean/Atlantic coast the country is rich in bio diversity. In Spanish it means the rich coast so named by Columbus landing in early 16th century and being mesmerized by the local tribes sporting gold jewelry.   Our stay included visiting the foothills of a large strato volcano called Arenal and enjoying the naturally heated thermal baths for a while.  Lunching amidst lush forest and watching indigenous species of avian noise makers fly overhead. Toucans, some sort of pea hens, multiple song bird species completed the spectacle. Iguanas and a lonel...
Post a Comment
Read more