RANDI ZUCKERBERG

Randi Zuckerberg has published a book that advises us to publish more family pictures, and talk more about our private selves

"Hmm."

Randi is Mark Zuckerberg's sister. In my mind, this guy is the "King" of Social Networking. There are other big name-innovators, but when you say social networking, billionaire Mark Z is number one.
 
In 'her book, "Dot Complicated, Untangling Our Wired Lives," Randi said:
    "Right now, there are two generations in the workforce who think in diametrically opposite ways about identity. Executives who came of age in the pre-smartphone era take it as a given that you should have a separate professional persona that reads like a profile in Forbes and doesn’t overlap with your personal life.
    "But my generation came of age in a world with social networks, and we know that we don’t have that luxury anymore.
    "We should embrace this new world. The answer isn’t fewer baby pictures; it’s more baby pictures. It’s not that I should post less; it’s that everyone else should post more. Let’s change what it means to be professional in the Internet age. The time when your personal identity was a secret to your colleagues is over and done. And that is a good thing."

"Hmmmm."

Would I be reading about Randi' s ideas if she weren't Z's sister? (31-year-old Randi is 29-year-old Mark's older sister; his younger sisters are Donna and Anelle -- I searched everywhere -- can't find their specific ages.)

Randi Z's been building her professional identity for quite a few years, working with her brother, doing digital content stuff ( text, audio, video, graphics, animations on the Internet) for various prestigious clients, including The Clinton Global Initiative, Cirque du Soleil, the United Nations.

But when I checked out Randi's Facebook page -- hey, she doesn't reveal her married name, or her son's name. It took quite a while, in fact, for me to learn her husband is Brent Tworetzky. I couldn't' find out where he worked, but I found out that they have a home in Silicon Valley and a two-and-a-half- year-old son -- Asher.

So folks, what Randi is advising us to do -- share-share more personal info -- is not what Randi is doing for herself.

Anyhow, re sharing more about yourself -- most of what I see on Facebook is trivia -- pets, politics, movie-music-sports stars, marvelous photos of sunrises, sunsets and things like  waterfalls -- photos that get me wishing that I didn't live in the city. Mainly what I glimpse as I'm scrolling through news feed, gets me feeling yay, boo, wow, oh dear, or ho-hum.

I think Facebooking and tweeting are communication recreations, 21st Century ways to be busy using devices, tools, techniques that we spend time, energy, and money to acquire, and utilize skillfully. And being busy with those routines makes social networking mean more and feel more important than it is.

Confession:  I think social networking is a giant tower of Habel that keeps billions of us from feeling small and insignificant, even though that's what we are.

So would you buy her book?

Here is Randi chatting quite skillfully about her share-share ideas, though what she has to say doesn't really ring in one's mind.


UPDATE:  JUST HEARD THIS VIDEO WAS DEMOVERED... I am figuring it's Zuckerberg family power. Willy  was not overly flattering ......
Here's Willy Geist, co-anchor of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and The Today show, getting Randi Zuckerberg to say something that's very interesting about taking a day off or a weekend off even, from all our communication devices.


I take time off from social networking (which I dislike) whenever I can, but I like knowing more about Mark Zuckerberg's family. His stupendous success makes the Z name royalty -- there's Donna and Anelle, and who knows what Asher Zuckerberg Twortsky will be selling us in 20 years or so.

(VIDEO) WANDERING ONLINE

Em teases John.

Because John gets lost when he's searching or shopping on the internet, Em starts singing somewhat melodically,  "I wonder why you wander...."

John explains that odd facts, sports,  and photos of things divert him.

Em gets him singing about wandering, and praises him for being what he is.

IS PAPER GOING, GOING, GONE?

Is paper disappearing?

Are books going, going gone?

There have been rumors that reams of paper, notepads, note books, various paper goods -- yes, even toilet paper -- are going to disappear.

I wonder and worry about this. For writer Em, golly, it's important that books be published on paper, not just online, or  electronically -- books -- hard covers, paper backs, as well as pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers. Good Lord, if paper is disappearing, are books going to disappear?

Publishers were going out of business  before the Kindle appeared. Publishing houses were  merging; and manufacturers of typing paper, stationery, wrapping paper, cardboard  containers were shifting into plastic substitutes.

Back then, I figured it was just a trend.

Here's what I learned  from The Week Magazine's recent article about the book business. It was written by staff reporters, who quoted Nicolas Carr, who wrote three prize-winning books on where the Internet is taking us, what it's doing to our brains, and what's happening to books.

 Carr said, 
"The demise of paper has been predicted for a century,  Gutenberg, we
know, but what about  the eunuch Cai Lun? He invented paper in A.D. 105. -- mashing bits of tree bark and hemp fiber together in a little water, pounding it into a paste,  let it dry into sheets in the sun. Cal's  method is still pretty much the way paper gets made today.

"The craft of paper-making spread quickly -- within a few centuries, paper replaced animal skins, papyrus mats, and wooden tablets that the world was using for writing  and reading. When Gutenberg created the printing press around 1450, inky fingers became inky machines, but it was Cai Lun who gave us our reading material." 

Not sure where the article was heading about the future of paper, and books -- wonderful real books -- I devoured the statistics and details.:

The average American goes through a quarter ton of paper every year. Over the last decade, in developed countries, paper consumption has fallen sharply. The arrival of the personal computer and its companion printer didn't do it, but the rise of the Internet has made using paper an old-fashioned thing. We’re writing fewer checks, sending fewer letters, circulating fewer reports -- even love letters, love notes,  are passed between servers.

When Edison came out with the phonograph,  Scribner’s Magazine published an essay by the French litterateur Octave Uzanne titled “The End of Books.” Apparently every time a new communication medium has came along -- radio, telephone, motion pictures, television, CD-Rom -- pundits have said we won't need books anymore. H.G. Wells wrote in one of his books that microfilm would replace the book.

Even so, other authorities -- educators, researchers -- have said that flipping through printed sheets works better, helps you learn better than reading an electronic page. Tests have shown that reading is a bodily activity --  we take in information with our  sense of touch as well as with our sense of sight. A sequence of pages bound together into a physical object is very different from a flat screen that displays only a single “page” at a time. The physical presence of the printed pages, and the ability to flip back and forth through them, and develop a mental map of the contents of printed text, is "significantly important." Surveys in the U.S. and other countries, show that college students clearly prefer printed textbooks.

Hey, my husband, actor John Cullum, has said when he's  "up" (can't remember the next line),  he remembers the look of the  page, the  paragraph, and the panic vanishes.   

Back and forth, the magazine article went, between what's great about e-books, and what's important about books with pages you turn, finally reporting that after an initial boom, electronic book sales are currently five percent less than they were last year, that in the U.S., some two billion books and 350 million magazines will be rolling off the presses.

The very last sentence in the magazine article was Nicholas Carr saying: "Something tells me Cai Lun isn’t turning in his grave just yet." So, at least the eunuch who invented paper back in 105  isn't worried. 
  
Another brilliant guy, George Bernard Shaw, whom I admire and respect, said: "Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love."

Yes, yes, that's what I feel! I love books, old books, second hand ones, new books, the smell, the feel of them, the look of words on a page. I'm really not sure that there will still be books on paper to read 10 years from now, but it's a relief to know that other book lovers feel the way Bernard Shaw, Nicolas Carr, actor John Cullum, and I feel.
   

MY SPACE, MY PLACE

In that small red building,
next to the big building, is my space.

Who am I, and where do I belong in the scheme of things?

What things?  Well, the world ...

I belong in America, state of New York, New York City, in a hundred-year-old brownstone, in the heart of the city.

 

I'm just a rectangle amid thousands-upon-thousands of others.

What do I do? I write and try to get people to read what I've written -- most of the people who are reading what I write are like me  -- specks -- located inside one of the rectangles or curved, or other shapes. (NYC's got the Guggenheim Museum, and other odd-shaped structures you note, if you're looking down at the city from high above.) 

A speck?  Gee, when I was a little girl, I certainly wasn't a speck. I was first name and last name, with parents' first and last names, and when the school's attendance taker called out my name I said "here." If I put my hand up, and waved, the teacher would pick me to answer the question, or I could ask a question that might affect everyone.

My size and importance changed. I wasn't a speck when I took my first dance classes, or when I went I got a job in New York to help pay for dance classes. I was not a speck when I danced -- I was the center.  The spotlight was on me. I was somebody. (No wonder show biz stardom -- singer, dancer, actor --  is such a big dream for kids.)

But now, as a writer, I'm aware of the fact that I am one among millions -- rectangle or odd shaped space that you can see looking down at the world --  a speck inside a rectangle -- a speck among specks, who works -- not just to emerge from being a non-entity, but because writing -- what I do now, sort of evolved  from all the things I have done as I've grown up.

Right now, I'm aware of my friends, who are writers, bopping themselves on the head like me, who are asking what I'm asking  -- what is my place. where is my place on earth?

Okay, I am a reacher, a person grabbing at recognition, trying to seize  more space, a better place. When I leave the earth, will I be missed? Things I said or did may be remembered -- words, even tone -- but no, time will pass and as it passes, the rectangle I occupied will be crowded with, golly, billions of specs.

Hey --
it
just
hit me --
we
specks
are
mankind
and womankind.

Be we specks or whatever, right now, my house and your house are the world and we own the world.

Hmm.

That's more  than space and a place.  I like that.