random ramblings to overcome the blogofear

Having started this blog I suddenly find myself quite fearful to do anything with it. What to do, what to say? What if people see? (Wait... they're supposed to see it) What if they dont? What if what's on here drives them away? What if, what if? All quite ridiculous really. So... to just get over this damned phobia to say anything I'm going ahead and just blabbering out what comes to mind in this awkward moment. What got me to this place and where I am now. Beyond which will see how this space can be best used into the future.

Once upon a life I was very shy and fearful of people. Did some travelling, met fellow travellers who seemed less scary for the brevity of contact, exchanged addresses, sent and received the odd postcard. One of them contained (my mother's at the time) email address. About 7 months later a travelfriend met in a desert oasis, also back in home territory, responded via (her mother's at the time) email. Over the next 10 years (a few email and many physical addresses later) we had exchanged about 2000 pages (she printed it all at one point) of our most intimate thoughts, feelings, experiences, hopes, fears, desires, joys and woes. In a way it felt like the first 'friend' I ever had. Growing more comfortable to share of myself in the relatively 'safe' space of email started to make actual 'talking to people' back in the real world a lot easier. Learnt much about general 'girlie chitchat', something I'd always felt quite inadept at, in this manner. It also paved the way for numerous other friendships created and strengthened through cyber communication.

When blogs became a craze I briefly considered the idea. Some initial inhibiting factors were slow and irregular netconnections, though could certainly have gotten around that. More truthfully, I was sharing my life in diarylike detail through email every day. Couldn't imagine sharing with 'the world' the things I did in this private space. Shyness surfaced again. How much and what to expose to whom in what way? And so the years went by.

My daily diarystyle email relationship since faded as, about 12 years down the line, I guess both our lives just became too full of other things and people, and sharing every detail with one other across the world somehow less of a priority. By this time there were a number of others I emailed reasonably regularly, occasionally going in depth on certain issues but more and more intermittently. Having grown more comfortable with face-to-face interaction, the urgency to communicate through the computer had diminished as nurturing RL friendships became a priority.

Along came Facebook. There were other networks before it, but none of them had had particular impact in South Africa, hence they never really crossed my path. When FB initially did I avoided it. Feeling mostly that I'm in touch with enough people in RL (where, in addition to a much more active than it once was social life, I work as a social development consultant - talking and listening to people (and writing reports about it) is what I do for a living) and through cyberspace (email based). The supposed selling point of getting in touch with old classmates... hmmm... alas can't say highschool sparked any great nostalgic desires to reconnect with people whom I'm pretty sure wouldn't have called me 'friend' then.

[First a little aside: I'd taken up studying (verymuch part-time) again in 2006 after a ~6 year break. MPhil Anthropology requiring completion of number of coursework modules and a thesis. Browsing Anthro journals for a suitable topic for assignment 1 I stumbled on an article referencing William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. I love those guys. The Anthro prospect suddenly brightened from something most likely related to some third world development issue (which, don't get me wrong, I'd been happily engaged with academically and professionally for about a decade), to something... different... What exactly it would be was unclear at the time (still is a bit I must confess), but that it would somehow relate to human 'E-volution' using Internet technologies in the information age. Used this as a guideline for all subsequent modules, integrating issues of identity, relationships inequality (the digital divide), power dynamics (ala Foucault), public spheres (Habermas), and reciprocity (notably Mauss) covered in the modules with elements of cyberspace. Hoping to eventually integrate it into something coherent for a thesis (which is where I'm sitting now...) Along the line I submitted one of the assignments (looking at potential for Public Access facilities in city libraries to cross the digital divide, which, at the time, I'd thought to look at in more detail for the thesis) for a Communities & Technologies conference in Michigan. It was accepted and seemed a perfect opportunity to try get myself a US visa. For all the travelling of years back had never been very far off the African continent, and if indeed I was going to be studying issues around ICTs' impacts on humans getting a glimpse of life in a place where these technologies are more pervasive than here on the southern tip of Africa seemed appropriate. Got the visa and a fortunate wellpaid social plan for a diamond company along with some assistance from the anthro department helped pay for the ticket.]

So there I was, heading to a conference on 'Communities and Technologies', when another FB invite popped into my inbox. Sensing (rightly) that better understanding of such social networking platforms would likely increase my appreciation of the conference, I signed up. Within weeks the dreaded nightmare of old school acquaintances who found me via the one link I didn't mind remembering, now listed as 'friends', along with the 2-3 line message or 3 with each - 'hi, how are you, what've you been up to' etc., then nothing more had materialized. Initially with some rather disconcerting flashbacks of teenage angst. Seemed a good way to just come to terms with and get over it all. Have subsequently slowly collected more friends, some i know in RL, others I don't. Have sent and accepted some requests from strangers who have seemed potentially interesting. Some of those I've now met face to face, some I've conversed with upon occasion online, others are just 'there'. Have added and experimented with applications, removed some, some I still check, others are just there.

Almost a year ago I thought to change the thesis focus from public access issues to look at social networking, particularly FB, since it's the one I've been using most frequently (though curiosity had me joining a number of others to see what they're all about.)

[When I way this studything has been happening verymuch parttime I really mean it. Social development is a booming field here in southern Africa, and it seems not too very many people are doing it, so, most of the time, I'm pretty fulltime tied to consulting assignments. All the more so in early years as independent consultant and now with a small company on a commission structure where basically, when there's work (which there always seems to be a lot of) you do it. Also been moving around quite a bit, establishing new reallife social networks and ties in new places, which in itself can be quite time-consuming. So really, must confess, the online networking research has been very much on hold for most of the past year.]

New year, new motivation, drive, etc. Now it's really gotto be done. So I've spent the past weeks googling and quite obsessively reading articles and, mostly, blogposts on issues related to FB, social networks and networking in general, and a range of most fascinating, inspiring, and somewhat overwhelming, related issues. Feeling all the more insecure while doing so on the one hand, thinking 'What am I getting myself into? I don't know much (anything really) about all this.' While on the other hand growing ever more inspired as ideas filter and digest and spark thoughts leading to new ideas and possibilities to explore and... I'm sure any researcher knows the story. And really when I look over the past ~10 years of my life as consultant there are very few (if any) projects I've known much about when starting out. (Much as I've been plodding away at this M for years, guess in many ways I really am only just starting out now, with some pretty serious motivation to get it done.) But that's the whole exciting thing about doing research - delving into the unknown to illuminate unfamiliar territories.

So... in a nutshell (which this whole random rambling post so hasn't been so excuse the irony) I realized that if I'm to have any understanding of social media and networking at all I must have a blog. That it could be a platform for sharing ideas (once I start formulating them.) More relevantly perhaps it could be a place for such formulation to take place. Also to link to the so very many so very fascinating blogs of others that have kept me up days and nights over the past weeks to get up to date on what's going on in the field right now. Most importantly to gain more in-depth understanding of the online networking universe.

Having created this blog now (technically signed up in 2007 but never been back), I was suddenly seized with panic as to 'what to put on it'. For all the emailed communication and the FB world I'd grown so comfortable in, this really is a 'whole new world' of sorts. One with its own etiquette and uses and what to say/ not and so forth to get into. And so... to break the ice... I've rambled on here to somehow make sense of how I've come to this and what's causing this underlying fear. Knowing a pretty personal mini-dissertation like this most likely won't be read. Somewhat embarrassed at the thought that it might, feeling ever-so-self-aware about pressing publish to expose my drivel to the world. Yet feeling perhaps that's really just the way to treat this space for now - to let out stream-of-consciousness whatever comes to the mind, put it out there for the world to see (if it wants). And take it from there.

Guess the hesitance is all around the 'popularity' issue. The fact that all this social media, profiling, publishing of whatever comes to mind is all so geared around following and followers and how one appears to others. The fear that people will actually read what I had to say. The fear that they won't. The fear that it will matter, one way or another. Having come this far (still unsure whether to click the 'publish' link) I wonder whether it does? How much? and to whom?

Nuff for now. Perhaps something more specifically topical/ relevant/ concise when I do this again.