Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The past, the present and the future.

An update from yesterday's post.  I got to the doctors late yesterday afternoon to see the nurse.  She took one look at the legs and gulped.  However she's given me some cream, essentially to help alleviate the itchiness and to help reduce the redness of the scratches.  If I walk, or go outside for any period during this hot weather my legs (since Sunday) have glowed red.  However this morning they seem to be showing the first signs of healing and the weather is way cooler and actually is a bit over cast.  Hello the English summer...

The itching though not as extensive is more actute in specific area's so I'm having to really concentrate on not attacking either my legs or the bites on my arms.  It's taking a lot of mental restraint not to go hell for leather and scratch all day.  I've got creams and lotions galore, and it will certainly remind me to think twice when out walking again.  However that may not be till the end of this week, as my thighs are a bit sore, as if I've strained them slightly, which wouldn't shock me the amount of work they put in, in the woodland.  I'm not wanting sympathy, I took the decision to proceed and I'm paying a heavy price for it.

On to other matters, and the use of social media.  It's been a matter of debate with myself and a few other people of late in terms of football transfers.  However it translates to near enough everything these days.  I know this is the earliest form of social media, but what it has created is a news hungry society, with the expectancy that those in the media spotlight will inform us of anything and every thing sooner, rather than later.  Be it a football transfer, a new album by a pop star, a new film etc, people are watching and waiting eager to learn as if they are the first to see the news and transmit the thing to all there friends or followers.  

Years gone by, we were kept up to date by news bulletins, news flashes if the story was important enough, the news papers and either/or ceefax or teletext. We'd perhaps have no idea of anything happening till we watched the news, or the papers arrived in the morning.  We'd learn our news from the papers with there own political slant, perhaps chaniging them every so often or using the same paper for years.  We were a patient lot then, now however if we haven't got the breaking story before the news networks we seem to be unhappy and rather shocked by it.  We make up our own opinions on people based on how they use social media, not that we atually know them, but behaviourly we thin we know them.  Why is that?  How can we know them from how they tweet or blog?  How when the only contact with them is written text?  Yes, you may cross reference them with what others are saying about them, but often it's all positives or all negatives.  No middle and often the middle is where the true person is.  

No matter what though social media is now part of our culture, it's going to shape how we live our lives and it will help evolve it.  When by the time the first generation of tweeters are retired (as if that will ever happen in the UK at the rate they putting the retirement age up), things will have moved on so much from where are today, and I wonder how many of us (if I can include myself in that, though I've only been on twitter a few months), will hark back to the good old days, as our parents did?  How many though will keep up to date with allt he technology quite the opposite of our parents I guess?  That's the thing that will interest me the most, and certainly from my own perspective will be something to watch.

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