~ The constant chatter ~

It's very easy to get your knickers in a twist about the internet. I keep reading about social media and wonder where I fit into it all, and then slap my forehead with the realisation that i'm already doing it. I blog, I tweet and i mess about on Facebook; what others call social media, i call chatting and having a conversation with lots of people. I'm quite a chatty person; I'm not overly confident in huge groups of people, but in smaller groups you just can't shut me up. I think too much a lot – i like to share those thoughts, I guess. What is life, really, if not a long conversation about stuff? About thoughts and experiences; about memories and future plans.

What really excites me about the internet, and life online in general, is how we can see it change even as we sit quietly typing our next blog post. The online world already feels different to how it did when i started this blog in 2006. I got my first email account in 1998; i can't remember when i first searched the internet, though i can remember my first trip to eBay (2001). I remember my dad typing a program into his BBC Basic computer, line by line, to make a game we could play – that was very early 80s.

My niece or nephew (who will be born in 2010 – our grandmother was born in 1899. Life is amazing!) will never know the pleasures of making a mix tape by recording music off the radio onto a blank cassette tape (and trying to stop recording just before the DJ starts talking again) or waiting by the home phone hoping a boy would call. I never knew how amazing the very first black & white television looked to my grandparents' eyes; by the time i was born a man had already walked on the moon.

I feel tiny in the face of all of this, yet can see that life on- and off-line is full of so much potential, so many new opportunities to learn and communicate keep coming our way. I'm glad we all get a chance to contribute to the conversation.