Citizens of 4F, June 10, 2014

On the 4F bus this morning, I see an unusually large number of Pin-Twit Faces.

The hybrid buses that are now the norm in Minneapolis are configured so the back third of the vehicle is raised above the front, creating the space that houses the huge electric batteries for the bus. When you sit near the front of this rear platform, you can look down majestically on the front 2/3 of the bus and the passengers who sit there.

This morning, at least nine Pin-Twits sitting ahead of me spend the 35-minute bus ride with thumbs in frantic navigation on smart phones, checking their Pinterest, their Twitter, their Facebook feeds and who knows what else. Their free hands usually grip a Starbucks iced coffee, while the opposing thumb goes through frantic calisthenics that amaze me. Social media platforms seem to spring up daily, and I can no longer keep up with them. Our social media person in the marketing department at the office told me recently that Instagram and Google-plus are the coming rage....I have no idea what they are, really,  but the combined arsenal of all the social media platforms is certainly enough to occupy this group on the bus this morning.

I try not to be judgmental about this, but of course can't help myself. I'm now at that age where I sense that personal growth is more about emptying myself of irrelevant data and knowledge to make room for something more meaningful, and I can't help but wonder if in 20 years or so these 20- and-30 something adults might be in the same boat. Is the difference between these young adults and old geezers like me a cultural thing, an age thing, or merely a temperamental difference? Approaching 59 years of age, I'm aware that statistically I will likely be present for perhaps 25 or 35 more of these brief Minnesota springs, and I find myself paying very close attention to them. I can't imagine the appeal of burying myself never-ending Facebook feeds on a smart phone while spring passes me by outside.

But I'm aware that young adults are wired a little differently due to being raised with this technology. My daughter electronically multi-tasks like a bandit, and seems to be entirely well-adjusted and happy in life. She knows far more than I did at that age. And who am I to say that being connected to the entire world is somehow less valid than a narrower connection to the immediate environment? Years ago during one of the NASA missions, I realized that I could pull up a live image of the surface of Mars on my phone whenever I wanted. Certainly there is magic in being connected to the entire world whenever you want. Maybe it's just not my temperament to need or want this.

I have fair amount of digital savvy for an old geezer, but there's no way I could pull off what my daughter does, nor would I want to. There are moments when work pressures force me to be connected to email at all hours, and it's not a good thing for me. Clearly I am constructed to be happier when unconnected; I think this is more true for our generation than for this younger crowd, but perhaps even more for me individually.

Just below me, a young woman has a right thumb of Olympic talent. As I secretly glance over her shoulder, she goes through Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and several other media platforms, scrolling so fast that the screen is a blur.  Periodically she tries to shut the phone off, but after a few seconds is drawn back to it. At one point, I'm fascinated to see her scroll through at least 50 photos of the British princess. Outside the bus on Bryant Avenue, I see a front garden where a clever gardener has planted Siberian iris among the huge blue leaves of a hosta I recognize as Elegans, thereby creating what appears to be a new species. It is something I might try myself. To me, this is the real thing, but I'm quite sure if I pointed it out to the young woman, she'd see the Princess as a far more relevant thing.

Each to their own, I guess. But I can't help wondering what a 90-year old addicted to social media will look like. Years from now, I suppose our nursing home will be filled with oldsters with huge oversized tablets so that they can study images of a decrepit old Queen of England.

The Internet is Not a Video Game

An open message to kids and young adults who haven't yet got the message:

Facebook, Twitter and all other forms of internet-based social media exist in the real, adult world of cause-and-effect consequences. They are not video games from which you can punch the "reset" button if you don't like what's happening.

In the most recent local example of this, a popular young student-athlete in a nearby suburb of Minneapolis has been charged with a felony after he posted a comment on some kind of "confessional" web site where he stated he was having a sexual relationship with an attractive young female phys. ed. teacher in his high school.  He now claims this statement was meant facetiously, sarcastically, as a comment of the absurdity of what was transpiring on this web site. (That's possible, I suppose, but it frankly smacks of the kid's attempt to bluster his way out of big trouble.) But the consequences of his action involved the quote being distributed via Twitter to hundreds of people, which in turn lead to school administrators and police interrogating the bewildered gym teacher to her great humiliation and embarrassment. Once it became clear that the stories were entirely bogus, our young high schooler was first expelled from school, and now potentially faces felony charges for the harmful effects of his actions.

As my wife and I discussed this last night, we agreed that the problem here is that internet technology is really built by and for people who view it all as some kind of game and not part of the real world. When you hear hackers talk about their actions from prison cells, for example, they generally talk about not viewing what they did as real crimes, but just as interesting intellectual games they played against financial databases and national security web sites. Nobody seems to realize that the internet exists in a real adult world where actions have consequences.

I recall from our high school days both a very attractive female gym teacher and a couple of female academic teachers who were 6 or 7 years older than we were at the time and who were the subject of jokes and innuendo, too. But the difference between 1972 and today is that back then we whispered our distasteful jokes to a cafeteria table of five or six close friends. We wouldn't have dreamed of broadcasting  boastful lies to the entire school through the loudspeaker system. But in a world of Twitter and Facebook feeds, today's kids and young adults are broadcasting their every thought to the world at large. All internet-based communication applications should come with the following warning: "Say nothing that you don't want the entire world to hear."

The fact is that this single event, even if it was entirely innocent, will now follow the young man (and the teacher) for the rest of their lives. When interviewing potential employees these days, as a manger I of course do a cursory level of internet research. Can you imagine wanting to hire somebody who has this kind of thing in their background when you do a Google search of his name?

A subject for another essay is the somewhat puzzling response in the community where this event took place. Because the young man in question is a popular kid, captain of several sports teams, the community has united behind him with a petition of more than 2,000 names asking for his school expulsion to be reversed (I have an uneasy suspicion that this is so he can lead a sports team in playoff action). Yes, it's possible that felony charges might be overkill for this transgression. But a month or two of school suspension to teach the lad a lesson certainly doesn't seem inappropriate. We're not talking about a kid being suspended for having a pen knife in the glove box of his car parked in the school parking lot. This is real stuff; effectively an assault on the teacher.

The local chief of police commented on this, wondering why the support was mobilizing behind the young man and not the young teacher who has been so badly humiliated and embarrassed by the event. And why is it, I wonder, that the young man and his family are maintaining such dead-fast silence. If I'm this kid's father, I grab him by the ear and lead him to a microphone. A public apology for the unintended consequences of his action might go along way to justifying a response of understanding and leniency toward him.

No doubt the family is acting on the advice of lawyers, who as we all know exist in their own make-believe world.