rePost: I will not let this go...

No, this rePost does not have anything to do with the theological validity of potlucks but one I posted last Friday that I believe is worth looking at again, as no one posted comments on it....

As I have been delving into creating an open source CMS and continually engaging in social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others I have begun to ask myself (and be asked by others) about the connective tissue between these and my previous stream of posts on story/storytelling (which I greatly appreciate Jason and Steve's comments upon).  My intial observations are these
  • we often tell our stories without even being aware of it, in ways we are no longer even conscious of  through what we listen to, what we read, what we consume and how we publicize and encourage others to consume.  recently, I found that my re-tweeting excerpts from morning and evening prayers from TheUrbanAbbey was inadvertently encouraging others to follow these prayers as well, adding a whole new dimension to their prayer, giving them some indication of my own attitude toward prayer, and creating a new "community" of folks in this geographic area that follow TheUrbanAbbey.
  • what some see as passing fads in the areas of social communication, news sharing, and the exchange of ideas are actually deeply held and future/ancient mediums that natives now use for sharing story/storytelling
  • that there is an ever-deepening quality in culture to what Marshall McLuhan and Shane Hipps state/maintain: "The medium IS the message."

Thoughts?  You have been on some of this journey with me and I'll really like to hear what you have to say....

Sent from my iPhone...one of the many mediums through which I share my story and connect to the stories of those around me. 

Comments

Jason said…
I am curious to know if the stories we tell in the virtual world are the stories we want to be told about us (which may not be the dominate story in the non-virtual world)?

You hear about people posting pictures of themselves drinking or doing other inappropriate actions on the internet and "shocked" when those pictures come out to affect them in ways they did not anticipate. And yet they still posted the pictures/video in order to get a certain story out there.
Thursday, October 08, 2009 5:35:00 PM
pomopilgrim@gmail.com said…
i believe that you bring up a whole new dimension, that sometimes others tell our stories for us, esp. when we may not be able to remember them.

sidenote: there is an application for the iphone called "Text Messages from Last Night" that collects your texts in the anticipation that you would too incapacitated to remember them from the night before...interesting to say the least.

maybe what you are bringing to our attention is that now we live in a place and time when others can tell parts of our stories as well (like through RT or posting pics of us on social networking sites unsolicited)...interesting, do these others have an investment in our story?
Friday, October 09, 2009 2:48:00 PM
Steve Heyduck said…
know that i had much to offer on the original post, but reading it (a couple times -I googled "CMS") then the comments, has me wondering about the difference between one's story that one is telling, and one's story that is being told beyond one's own control.

Perhaps (this is almost off-the-cuff) modernity held out the illusion that one's story was actually under one's own control and entirely from within one's own generative ability and direction.

Whereas, of course, the kind of post-modernity I advocate means finding our place in other stories (or in Another Story) and growing toward living into that story.

Good stuff!
Monday, October 19, 2009 12:30:00 PM
pomopilgrim@gmail.com said…
i am a firm believer that as we continually develop our means of connectivity at such a feverish pace, we control less and less of our own story.

also, see post for October 20th...who controls our story when we are gone? how is that affected by the fact that so much of our story is online?
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:59:00 AM
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