Socially networked

This is something I am not, not in the today sense of the word, at least. I do know people who know people which means that in some roundabout way I know the people that the people I know do know, if you know what I mean, because I am not sure I know. But it’s called networking – knowing someone who can find you someone you need when you need that someone for some purpose that you can define only in reference to a specific context, since why would you need that someone if the context was not what it is at a certain point in time? Be that as it may be, it just happens that ever since I started working with a newspaper many years ago, my social networking skills improved. And if I did not know someone, I found that I invariably knew someone who knew someone who was exactly the someone I needed at any moment in time.

But this is the old-fashioned version of networking. Today it all happens in cyberspace, where someone pings someone and then invites them to join some social networking site or the other and exchange news, views and plain old gossip with everyone else who happens to be a member of the same social networking site. So there is everything from Orkut to Facebook to LinkedIn to goodness knows what else, leaving me cold and rather bewildered about why anyone would want me to be part of the whole cloud of chatter going on online. It is not about being part of something that large and unwieldy, or even that I become a tiny mote in a community that is stretched beyond the limits of my knowledge base and my personality management skills, but a rather more simple reason I prefer to stay out of it all. My memory. Each of these sites needs a registration form filled in, with a password and a login name. Which means that even if I just join two of them, I need to remember four more pieces of information that are not exactly earth-shatteringly important to me or even remotely relevant to what I do through my day.

But, being conformist up to a point, I agreed to log into three such sites. Which never fail to send me email telling me that there is a message form someone or the other waiting for me. And that in itself leads to more problems than I want to handle. First, I need to log into the email accounts that tell me that I have those aforementioned emails. Which is manageable, since I use those addresses anyway to check mail, personal and for work. Then I need to open the mail I get from whatever networking site it is, and go into the site itself. That asks me for registration details, which I will have forgotten, since I rarely use them. That in itself implies two or three stabs at it, with me flailing – in a manner of speaking – not just on the keyboard, but also in cyberspace. When I finally access the message, it will probably be a friend suggesting I join some other group online, which means more registration forms, login names and passwords….

That is why I am very glad that many offices are gradually banning the whole concept of social networking sites being accessible. While I wish the easy ways of communication, from MSN Messenger and Googlechat would continue working they way they do, their access via a bootlegged gateway or otherwise, I am fairly glad that Orkut, Facebook and goodness knows what else have been blocked at work. If they weren’t, I am sure that someone would insist I join in, with registration, login, passwords and whatever else I need to be part of a warm, friendly, communicative, valuable, useful, etc etc community. Frankly, I prefer to know someone who knows someone who knows someone.