I just deactivated my account on a social media site, and I am angry. I am angry at multiple things. Was I just another brick in the wall? It depends on your perspective. I have been using the internet for a fairly long time, or as some prefer to say, I have been online for ages. The internet made it possible to connect with people more easily. Back when I was a child in the stone age, I wrote messages on paper, put the completed message in a folder piece of paper called an envelope, and sealed the envelope. I then wrote a name and an address on the envelope, affixed a stamp to the envelope, and handed the whole thing over to a service called a post office that had its own special building. The stamp was a means by which I could pay the post office for transporting…
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I’ve been thinking about various discussions about social media and free sites that do take some of your soul for their own profits. For years, social media “just worked”. I mean, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so you have always paid for the free services with your data. The ethical issues with these services have just kept on growing, especially recently. 2025 is the year of reckoning for me and my use of social media. I have lots and lots of thoughts on the matter, but not all are clear in my head yet. I am still working things out in my mind because some steps can mean leaving communities that I do care about. For example, I joined a certain birdsite back in 2008, and I learned so much from people in the technical communication community and the accessibility community. I made friends online, but…
Leave a CommentI just attended the LavaCon Content Strategy Conference (for content professions, a.k.a. technical communicators, technical writers, and MANY more) for the first time ever, and it was like Christmas and my birthday all at once. I attended the Virtual Track from the comfort of my home, so I was not in Portland, Oregon. Thanks to the very professional setup and management, the conference was marvelous, and I loved it. The Virtual Track will go on my wish list for 2025 for sure. Only virtual because I want to avoid flying. My mind is still trying to wrap around where to begin summarising for my work colleagues. If pressed to tell you my top takeaways, here is what I’d say: 1. Accept our responsibility (our duty, even) to become AI literate and teach others and think hard about potential abuses. This is just one gem from Noz Urbina‘s profound talk entitled…
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