[Photo Credit]

Yes, you did!  You did come here to be amongst people; maybe to interact or meet someone new.  But sure enough, you and all the folks around you are isolated in these computer bubbles.  You’re an arms length from each other but might as well be miles away.  What gives?

Recently I was on vacation, visiting family.  My sister and I decided to take our laptops and work at the local Bread Company.  Upon arrival, we spent the first couple of minutes deciding where to sit.  It wasn’t very crowded so we had our pick of several seating areas.  After choosing our seats, we setup shop and each entered our respective computer bubbles.

As time went on and it crept closer to the lunch hour, the place got more and more crowded.  I really love observing people and enjoyed watching as several trickled into our section.  It was kind of interesting.  I looked up as each person came in, but none noticed my gaze.  Each was focused on a single mission . . . finding a table that was near an electrical outlet.  It’s funny to see people walking around, looking under tables as if they had lost something . . . contorting their bodies to make sure they’d examined every inch of wall space in search of that powerful prize.  Since I wasn’t a three prong receptacle, I was invisible to them!

Some found electrical outlets, others didn’t.  But all entered their individual computer bubbles nonetheless.  All but one. 

The Quest for Connectedness…

I observed this one gentleman.  He entered the section where we were sitting and selected a table that others had ignored.  You see, this table wasn’t any where near a source of electricity, plus it had an interesting wobble (he spent a few minutes placing something under one of the legs to level it).  This guy was the only person in the whole place (other than the employees) without a laptop. 

He had a book or a notepad or something and started doing the work he came there to do.  Occasionally I noticed a puzzled look on his face, but wasn’t really sure why.  After a while, my sister and I broke free of our bubbles to converse briefly . . . I then understood his look.  He seemed to be immediately inspired by our dialogue.  Just so you understand, I don’t think he took notice because we were discussing something particularly interesting, but rather because we were actually talking to one another.  So after a minute or so he and my sister made eye contact and he could no longer hold back his enthusiasm.  He blurted out something like “Can you believe everyone’s got one of these things?!”, and the conversation began.

He of course was referring to all the laptops.  He was a journalist & college professor and had relied on the use of a computer since the 80s.  Though he was a long time computer user, he was convinced that this age of technology proliferation was injecting a certain amount of isolation in our lives.  He remarked on how the early days of personal computing were focused on utility and efficiency.  Now computers & cell phones are reflections of personal identity like one’s clothing or hair style.  Like the commercial says, are you a Mac or PC?

So, I could certainly see where he was coming from.  However, I think technology also provides the means to connect with those we wouldn’t otherwise have access to.  For example, I recently found a friend on Facebook that I hadn’t communicated with in over 20 years and he currently lives in Alaska.  Odds are pretty good that we weren’t going to run into each other.

But there was no denying the merit of his words and our human techno-cocoon filled setting was proof enough.  As my sister and I continued our conversation with this gentleman, touching on subjects like globalization, ethnicity, technology, teaching, journalism and African dance, we started feeling a change.  After a few minutes we felt the eyes of people peering out from their bubbles and taking notice of our interaction.  It seemed that somehow, if only slightly, each of the bubble bound inhabitants of our section noticed the paradox of the setting and got in touch with their own desire for connectedness. 

My sister rotated to another table and started interacting with some other folks.  The dense peace was officially disturbed and a few real world conversations were now going strong.  We had to depart shortly thereafter, so I’m not sure if the good times kept rollin’, but it reminded me of the importance of connecting with people and the value of deep relationships.

The truth, is that we all desire that connectedness.  It is the essence of who we are.

"Our deepest human need is the need to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our aloneness."

- Erich Fromm
Social Psychologist and Humanistic Philosopher

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[Photo Credit]

Enter Flock

I’ve been a Mozilla Firefox user for a few years now and I absolutely love it.  It’s free, stable and you can add on new features to the product to really customize the experience.  I stumbled across an article a while back called "50 Firefox Add-ons you should DEFINITELY use".  It’s a pretty comprehensive list.  I found that many of the extensions listed were one’s I currently use or had tried.

So one day I was in the "clickstream of consciousness" and I read a comment somewhere about this web browser called Flock. I’m a pretty tech savvy person, so I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of that one before.  I decided to investigate!

Flock is a Mozilla based browser, meaning that it is based on the same web engine as Firefox.  Well that made me sit up straight and smile!  I found my way to their web site and downloaded it for free.  Once I had it installed, I realized that it’s like a blinged out 1st cousin of Firefox for the Web 2.0 world.

It’s filled with all of these integrated social networking features and capabilities.  Here’s the rundown:

People

The "People" sidebar gives you access to your list of friends/contacts in sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg and a bunch of others.  Facebook is where all of my people live.  Like many modern day Internet users, I’m managing a Facebook addiction and like my golf, gadget and good food addictions, I’m not really trying to beat the habit.  Anything that makes it easier to interact with my people is fine by me!!

When I open the browser, I see a nice list of all of my Facebook friends down the left side.  The ones who’ve updated their profile/status most recently appear at the top of the list and Flock makes a little media icon glow if they’ve added new pics or vids.  You also get an excerpt of their latest posting to their wall and a shortcut list of frequently performed actions for each friend (like message, poke, share link, wall post, etc.).

As for your own info, it shows numbers next to icons for new messages, pokes, friend and group requests.  You can also upload media directly using an upload tool built right into the sidebar!

Media

The media section brings up this bar that lets you search Youtube, Flickr, Picassa and a bunch of other media sites for images and video.  The cool thing is that the search results appear in the bar without having to go to those sites until you’re ready to watch the video or see a larger version of the image.  This is a real time saver.  You can position the media bar towards the top of the browser (default) or at the bottom (that’s my preference).

Let’s say you want to find a great image on Flickr of a beautiful ocean sunset.  You just type it into the search box and results appear almost instantly.  Holding your mouse over each thumbnail will bring up a larger preview in a little popup (see image below) and you can click on the thumbnail to see the full size version.

You can share videos and images with your friends by simply dragging the thumbnail of the video or image directly to that friend’s listing on your People Sidebar.  How easy is that?!

Other Sidebars

RSS Feeds
Flock’s RSS Feed sidebar keeps a running list of the feeds you’re subscribed to.  You have the option to view the list of articles in any one feed in a single or two column layout.  You can also adjust how much of the article is visible from the feeds section (i.e. the headline only, an excerpt or the full article).

Webmail
Flock gives you one click access to your favorite webmail accounts.

Web Clipboard
The web clipboard is a pretty cool feature.  You can drag and drop text, links and images to save them for later use.  I only use it occasionally when I come across a quote or interesting saying that I want to save.

Favorites
Flock let’s you save favorites both locally (like any good browser) and online.  You can login to online bookmarking sites like del.icio.us or ma.gnolia.com and save your bookmarks there.  You can also publish your local bookmarks to your online bookmark accounts.

Blog Editor
Flock has a pretty decent built-in blog editor.  You can configure it to connect to Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, Xanga or a self hosted blog you may have.  It’s got all of the basic editing capabilities you need, though I prefer Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer when composing for my blog.

The Verdict!

So, I’ve given Flock a go for a couple months now and here’s the verdict.  I’m sold!!!  Flock is really cool and I’ve been able to install all of my favorite FireFox addons!!  Truth be told, some of them don’t operate flawlessly like they do in Firefox, but it’s not a deal breaker.  Now I’ve got the best of both worlds!

Set yourself apart from the flock!!

"The most innovative member of a group is very often perceived as a deviant from the social systems."

- Everett Rogers
Communications Scholar and Pioneer

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