Here Comes Everybody, my version

Happy New Year! You'll have to visit someone else's blog to get a top 10 list, resolutions, or anything particularly introspective. While on break, I like to have little ideas!

Over the holiday, we visited with my family in Florida. I'm not from there, but my parents moved there after they retired. While I was there, I was reading Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky. I'm a big fan of his book and his talks, which are available on blip and YouTube. It's a great book and you should read it, but it's not what this post is about.

My mom commented on the cover, and I told her the story from the first chapter, about a woman who lost her cell phone in a taxi, the teen who found it, and the friend who made it his mission to use social networking to get the phone back. It's a good story, and you can read a brief version here.

Part of the story involves texting, which I knew my mom had heard of, but assumed she wasn't a user. I soon learned that my assumption was completely wrong. My mom and her friends have indeed been texting. They started as a way to quickly let each other know that surgeries had gone well/poorly from hospital waiting rooms. Texting got the word out quickly and allowed for more privacy than a call did. From there, texting has become part of this group's communication strategy just as it has for so many others.

I think of all the grousing teachers can do about technology and learning new tools. This group of retirees would put them to shame!

Who knew? I certainly didn't. Goes to show the truth of what they say about assumptions. . .