Friends I Can’t Wait to Meet

I adore my friends, really I do. They have helped to shape me in to the person that I am today. But what about the friends I haven’t met yet? I am only 20 years old, and I’m hoping I have many years left to live. In those years I’m sure I’ll run into many people worth befriending, and I can’t wait. So here’s to you future friends, an ode to you and what you’ll bring to the duration of my life.

To the good friends. Hopefully you will open my eyes to what life is all about. Hopefully you help me to realize that life is short and it should not be taken advantage of. May we share good times, and work through the rough ones together one step at a time with little or no disagreements.

To the bad friends. May you help me to realize my faults and get past them. I want you to guide me in making mistakes so that I can learn from them. You’re the ones that will help me to grow and mature the most, I know this from past relationships with friends. ALthough we probably will not stay friends, I  the lessons you will inevitably teach me, no matter how life altering they are.

To passing friends. I know you’ll bring some sort of significance to my life. Hopefully you will make me realize the good and bad in myself and in others and allow me to grow from that point.

My Mother is On Facebook

Okay I’m lying, my mother is NOT on Facebook. However I do have many friends who have had this “problem”. Is it a problem? I’m not quite sure. I can see how it would be of conflicting interests to have your mother on Facebook, looking at your wall to walls, viewing those less than flattering pictures of yourself from last Friday that you begged your best friend not to tag you in.

I find it quite comical to be honest, but then again I am 20 and I don’t suppose that it would be quite as shocking for my mother to see a photo of me holding an, ahem… “beverage” in a photo on Facebook. Not nearly as shocking if I was 15 or so.

If there is one flaw to these social media networking sites it’s the mere fact that they make us undoubtedly vulnerable to anyone interested enough to figure out who we really are. A picture is worth a thousand words, and many of us have over 100 pictures, maybe even 1,000 pictures. That’s a lot of words!

I’m not sure that people my age really care to put forth any sort of effort to protect their reputation. It seems that many people have an online persona or demeanor and a real life one. For instance, if I was a person that presented myself as an irresponsible party chick on my Facebook page, I certainly would not want to offer that link up to my current boss or a prospective job I was applying for, that just seems outrageous. However more and more people are not thinking of the consequences of how their online identities are hurting their careers.

I always try to use my mom as my excuse. I ask myself the question, “Would I want my mom to see this?” If answered, “No” then certainly someone who was about to hire me would not either. It’s just something to take into consideration. Maybe all of our mothers should be on Facebook!

The Art of Chaos

Jurassic Park was my favorite movie growing up. The idea of bringing an extinct species back to life millions of years later was fascinating to me, absolutely phenomenal. As I grew older and continued to watch the movie every now and again, I started to become more familiar with the themes that are so profoundly disputed throughout. The most pressing I believe, is that of Chaos Theory. There are hundreds of interpretations of chaos theory by numerous mathematicians and physicists, but my favorite of these will always be what was stated by the character of Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park.

In the movie, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) concludes that the park is destined to fail because of the mere fact that “life cannot be contained”. He then goes on to describe what he calls Chaos Theory, which is more eminently interpreted in the book. Chaos Theory to Dr. Malcolm is the formula for predicting the consequences of an event or series of events. I say consequence because of the fact that the park turned out to be disastrous in the end.

When applied to everyday life I believe Chaos Theory exists in a larger scale. What we think we can control and have a handle on we cannot. We can make educated guesses to make ourselves feel more at ease, but in actuality we do not really know anything.

The best way for this to be described goes along with the Malcolm Effect. I found a fictional livejournal dedicated to Dr. Malcolm that really hits this whole Chaos Theory on the head.

“A theory discovered/published by Ian stating that no system moves toward equilibrium. All systems are inherently moving toward collapse. The more variables involved the more catastrophic the collapse.”

How perfectly described. Chaos may not seem like a form of art, but it most definitely is. Throughout the book they show specific formulas of Chaos Theory becoming more complex in its nature, although they are just representations since Chaos is not a tangible object it still shows us the complexity of the theory. Sometimes I wonder about how the world works, but when you think about it, we never can be too sure.

What are your thoughts?

Considering Media For the Rest of the Globe

Can you believe how far technology has come these days? Even looking at the past 2 decades it is hard to believe that before the web, some of the most vulnerable countries in this world were almost unheard of. Now at our very fingertips we can find out basically any sort of information we want to know almost immediately.

The practicality of the uses of media lately has posed the question, “why haven’t we done this all along?” Advances in technology certainly have something to do with that I would say, and I believe you can agree. People’s sudden ambition to promote an awareness of the struggles that others face everyday, or of the corrupt countries that are abusing power and taking its people for granted, this is all out in the lime-light. It is as real to us now as if it were happening right in front of our very eyes.

Eyes. That’s what global media is all about, opening our eyes to the truths we never were able to see before. The veil has been lifted and people, regular people like you and me, are extending their open arms to help those in need.

The media is making this all possible. I am not talking about 24 hour news stations that are constantly reporting depressing issues that they say cannot be fixed, I am talking about real people using real media tools to make some sort of difference. Take Facebook for example. Whoever thought a site such as this could connect so many people in a solemn effort to promote world peace?  “Enabling people from diverse background to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term.” That’s some powerful stuff! (Check out http://peace.facebook.com/ for more information.) What about Twitter? Tweeting for causes, helping to raise money for charities and such. This is great! I only hope that regular people continue to try and make a change because it’s all up to us. We are the ones who have the voice of reason these days. We can make all of this worthwhile and worth living in.

How do you use media to benefit the globe?

How I Use Facebook

300,000,000. The magic number. This is the approximate number of active users that utilize Facebook daily. 300,000,000 people daily. That’s HUGE! It’s odd that just about every person I know is included in that number, as well as myself.

I remember when I first started using facebook. It was not very popular, opposed to MySpace and it seemed like a site no one would really pay any mind to. Then almost what seemed like an overnight explosion, Facebook totally took off and brought 300,000,000+ people with it.

I use Facebook for many things. The first is to stay connected, not only with friends and family but work associates, and people within a network that I feel I should belong to. For instance, I am majoring in Graphic Design so I try to find other aspiring graphic designers to keep in touch with for job leads, freelance work, etc. Once I make this connection I am self-assured that I’m not only helping myself, but helping others who may need some sort of reference in the future. Other then that I use Facebook in the typical manner, updating my status, leaving friends comments, looking at pictures from the past weekend, etc.

However, I know one thing that I do NOT use Facebook for and that would include applications, most of them I can’t stand, which is sort of a biased remark considering I haven’t even tried most of them. I just get annoyed when I have 15 notifications and I think “Oh look! People love talking to me!” and it’s 15 notifications about some barn animal I forgot to feed over the weekend on my silly farm I own via another useless Facebook application.
It’s all quite strange how the world works now that Facebook has been introduced. I cannot seem to remember what I did with my time on the internet before these social networking sites came about! I think we’re all sort of technologically dependent on these sites because they constantly keep us on the up and up and give us almost immediate communication with anyone, anywhere, at anytime. What will they think of next?

How do you use facebook? Let me know!

Here I am. . .finally.

November 13, 2009, Friday afternoon.

Can you believe it took me this long to enter the blogosphere realm? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my trail and errors with past blogs, needless to say they FAILED. So here I am… finally. I suppose I was apprehensive to start one because of the mere fact that there are millions of people maintaining blogs everyday, some of them 3 or more.

Ridiculous, unless you have quite the handle on something like that I guess.

Well anyway, I am Carla, 20 years young. I started this blog because of something I came across yesterday in my social media research.

Just for the record, I am an avid social media enthusiast. A little slow on getting around to some programs, all things considered, but I love love social media.

I am a big fan of Chris Brogan, for those of you out of the social media loop, Chris Brogan is a complete social media guru. One of the greatest consultants out there as of late as far as I’m concerned. Check out his website www.chrisbrogan.com if you haven’t already. He knows how to exercise the true value of social media and apply it to businesses. Social media was never about us — the businesses, organizations or individuals —trying to build relationships, it has always been about the consumer. How can we help them without selling our services in the traditional marketing way?

Well enough about that,  I could go on forever. The real reason I started this blog is to feature 100 blog topics that I plan on completing. A list of topics provided by Chris Brogan, perhaps you’ve seen it? Regardless, I plan on tackling each topic and writing about every one earnestly and fervently.

Feel free to comment or say hello, and make sure to stop back! I hope you enjoy.