New Obsession · 365 Project

New Obsession by Rondi Aastrup · 365 Project

When I was younger, oh so much younger, I used to devour such magazines as Seventeen. If I came across a picture of something I liked, I tore it out, carefully trimmed the edges and filed it in any one of a number of manilla folders I kept in a box. When I was a teenager, we moved to a house where I had my own room, a room big enough to have a fireplace in it, a table/study area, and a wall for a large bulletin board. I was in heaven there! I remember filling that bulletin board with the pictures I had collected, changing them out periodically, but keeping my favorites up, anchored permanently by staples or a pin (push pins had not yet been invented!).

I have to admit to still doing this, well not the bulletin board part, but certainly the folders of pictures and stories ripped from a myriad of magazines and newspapers that I once subscribed to. Unfortunately, the magazines began to pile up far faster than I could read and harvest them. And one by one, I stopped subscribing to my once beloved magazines until by the time I moved from MA to AZ, I had virtually no subscriptions to transfer from East to West. I am somewhat chagrined to also admit that There were a few boxes containing magazines I couldn't part with, as I'd not yet read them. And they still sit in those boxes, waiting for me to get to them.

I have steadfastly avoided the magazine rack in grocery stores and the rows and rows of tempting magazines in book stores. But then. Along comes an invitation from a blogging friend to try Pinterest. I had heard of it a month or two earlier when my niece showed me her pages (mostly filled with wedding ideas), but hadn't really given it much thought until that invitation. I succumbed. And am hooked.

Now in the evening intstead of playing Words with Friends for 1/2 hour or so before going to bed, I find myself scrolling through pages of photos of beautiful places, clothes, food, and quotes. And I find myself once again culling ideas and organizing them into folders and boards. Never in my wildest youthful imaginings did I imagine something like this! I'm not sure which I like best. One thing for sure, Pinterest certainly is greener!

The World is Flat

New York Times foreign affairs correspondent Thomas L. Friendman wrote a best-selling book a couple of years ago entitled The World is Flat. In it, he analyzes the progress of globalization, looking particularly at the early twenty-first century. He contends that the world has been flattened by ten flatteners, things that allow both teams to play on an even field, giving both equal advantage. The second flattener that came along (in 1995) was the invention of Netscape when, as Wikepedia describes it, "the Internet broadened its audience from 'early adopters and geeks' who used the Web primarily as a communications medium to everyone from 5-year-olds to 85-year-olds.

Tonight, my life was enhanced greatly as I enjoyed a mini- concert by the orchestra that my niece plays in at her college. This is an 18 hour drive from here, and yet via the magic of the internet I heard and saw her play live without driving a mile. It was the coolest thing to be able to do that! Now, whenever she is involved in such a program, all I have to do is turn on my computer and check out the live streaming video coming from the college. A dozen years ago, I could not have done that. Certainly my parents could not have not done that years ago when my sisters and I were in college! Nor would they even have dreamed it possible in the future.

Another of Friedman's flatteners is what he calls uploading. Open source software, blogs, and Wikepedia are examples of communities that upload and collaborate on online projects. This is "the most disruptive force of all," he says.

Well, if all this is true, my personal world is a little flatter and a bit disrupted tonight. I'm watching my niece play while a good friends conducts her and the other orchestra members (several of which I know), and I'm blogging it to people I have never met face to face, but who are good cyber space friends.

I used to say "it's a small world" with real conviction because everywhere I've traveled (and by now it's more than 30 countries), I've found someone I know or someone who knows someone I know. Now, I can say "it's a flat world" with equal conviction. Who'd've thought it? Surely the ancient explorers are rolling over in their graves at those words!!!