Nothing beats face to face...

Cute pic right? Well, I'm using it to represent my sentiment concerning face to face interaction...it's just too precious and so necessary for developing into a normal, healthy human being. Hands down, face to face is still the best way to communicate with new friends, old friends, family, colleagues... people in general. Yes, sometimes it can be a bit awkward, especially when you are clumsy like me and tend so how manage to spill food on yourself every time your in public. At other times, it can be frustrating, especially when you just can't spit out the right words at the right time to express the exact thought you have in your head. However, the joy of making a friend, meeting up with someone for the first time or in a long team and just really connecting just can't be beat. Even with all the technology in the world and all the continuous buzz around social media, nothing can replace the face to face.

No social media is not a fad. (Watch the video if you're still not convinced.) And I am not a social media hater. However, it will never replace the joy, or the necessity of meeting people face to face.



Yes, this video is totally crazy, a little bit scary and kinda makes me want to hide out for a while and unplug myself from all the chaos. Even for me, a Gen X/Yer, (I'm not sure really where I fit in..the end of Gen X or the beginning of Gen. Y), who is expected to be a tech savvy, up to date, early adopter of all this stuff, it's all just a bit, a huge bit, overwhelming. I can't imagine what it's like for the older...well you know... the more mature generation of folks like my mom, who still has difficulty figuring out how to get all her mother's day photos off her digital camera. It's no wonder since for most, including myself, by the time we figure out how to use the technology of today, it's obsolete. This whole change in the world of media, communication, technology is happening way too fast at an impossible rate to follow.

So what can we do? We can either hide from it all and hope it goes away, taking the ostrich mentality. (But let's face it. It's not going away anytime soon.) Or we can embrace it to enhance our face to face interactions and our care for others in our "network". Social networking is just a tool to enhance our real personal relationships, rather than a time-sucking virtual leech that replaces our real life relationships and interactions. You decide.

P.S. In my real life network, I made two new friends, who are not yet my Facebook friends. :) This may not sound so significant, but think about it. Unless you are in school, starting a new job, moving to a new city, when was the last time you made a friend? That's supposed to be the refreshing part.

When is a good thing, simply TOO much? (continued)

After a weekend of dwelling on this post, off and on, I haven't really come up with anything particularly brilliant to add, except that knowledge (in the form of information in this case) really belongs to, well... the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It really doesn't have anything to do with the other tree, the tree of life. 


Interesting contrast right?
The tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil vs. the tree of LIFE.


Despite the common concept and understanding, I myself often times included in this, it's not about good vs. evil. It is about knowledge vs. life. Are you interested in knowledge or life? Knowledge can never satisfy, but life can because He is the life (John 11:25). Actually, the more knowledge we have the more dissatisfied we are. Think about it? Either you keep pursuing it to the point that the need for knowledge consumes you and you are enslaved to it. Or, as you are pursing it, you realize that it is a hopeless cause because can never know the purpose of everything until we know Life, the person that is life.

When is too much of a good thing, simply TOO much?

The paradox of information and technology is that in an attempt to make our lives easier it is in fact making it more and more difficult to find exactly what we are looking for. Today, human beings are creating more information faster that we can organize and consume it. You'd think a plethora of information would in fact be a good thing. However, what is the point of all this? What is the motivation for human beings to seek so much information. It is just the desire to know? Is it the need to create? What is it?

As I've been considering these things and in my frustration of not finding information I need, and not being found when I have information to share. In the end, I have the realization of the following concerning man (in the plural sense, in the way it is used to capture mankind):

1. Man has a vacuum that can never be filled with information or knowledge. Otherwise all of us would be already exploding.
2. Man desires to create, communicate, share. (I like to believe that this is because we were created in God's image and according to His likeness" Gen 1:26.)
3. Man is limited. We simply are incapable of knowing and understanding everything.

well... let's dwell on that for a bit.

to be continued...