On The Train, Feb 5, 2009 (Connection, Conversation)

I was sitting at the office, while waiting for my personal and office laptops to boot up, and staring outside overlooking the railway track when I realized I have one too many gadgets at my disposal. Thinking about it I asked myself if I really need them. While trying to find a clear understanding and answer to the situation the answer was right in front of me.

Virtually I am connected almost 24/7 and at one time or another one of my gadgets would ensure my connectivity. Of course on top of that I am present virtually as well. My virtual presence is via several channels and identity. I am in several social networking communities – Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, hi5 and maybe two or three more that I could not remember. I am an owner, moderator and member of 15 mailinglists within Yahhogroups and Google Groups. On top of these I use Google Reader to aggregate all the blogs and sites that has RSS that I subscribed to. At least I’ll be looking at around 100 postings a day. I blog on six personal blogs and have 4 very active email accounts managing on average 500 – 600 emails a day. Being exposed is one thing being amazed at how I have coped so far is amazing. Let see – in the office I deal with my office emails and sometimes use the social networking tools for work. I also, most of the time, read my feeds using Google Reader at the office. I mostly blog on the train going home and read my other emails and alerts at home at night. Although I seems to be too expose virtually I am not worried. One thing good about virtual life is that somehow the degree of trust is very high. Without this element I am very sure nothing on the net would last long. It you betray this trust the whole community would reject you and your deed would travel across the Net making you an outcast.

The busy virtual life that I live also open me, even more compare to others, to information overload. Yesterday I was introduced to the concept of agnotology. According to it the more we get information the less knowledge we gain if we do not filter and evaluate the information that we receive. This is due to misinformation that somebody or organization purposely published to mislead people to see from their point of view or make us confuse.

I was welcomed at the station with an announcement that the incoming train was a shuttle to Kajang. It was around 1636 the time for the Seremban train to arrive just like the one I took yesterday. So my first instinct just likes before to take that train but when the train actually arrived I decided not to as I was sure the next Seremban train won’t be too far behind. I was right. It was more or less the same number of commuters on the train as yesterday. But looking around I was surprised to find out they are a different set of commuters. I did not see many familiar faces as yesterday.