I feel like I have taken a flight to circle the world during the past few weeks. I have become aware of the social media networking happening on the web. Up until now the web was a great research site for purchasing things or planning trips. It has been a way to communicate with family and friends via emails. But that world was very small and I am embarking on a journey through the looking glass.
When I was very small, radio was the only broadcastor. We used to listen to the radio to get the news or in print there was newspapers and magazines told you what was happening in the world. We listened to The Lone Range or The Shadow, voices with unseen faces. I also remember viewing world news in the movie theater on the big screen because that was the only way you could see it in realty. Think about how old that news was! It came just before the cartoons!
Then Television came along. We probably had one of the first ones in our neighborhood. The screen was probably 8 – 10″ wide and the furniture piece that encased it was a huge box probably 26″ wide and 3 and a half feet tall. There was hardly anything to watch on it and it was all hazy and not too clear. If I remember correctly, the sound was a bit tinny and a bit garbled. But TV improved and there was more to watch than just wrestling when the news wasn’t on.
I remember when I was in high school and we went to UNH with my math class to see some new technology – a computer. This computer took up the whole room. The room was probably 20 foot square at least. It spewed out cards with punch holes in it. Twenty years later we got a small computer for our home with the name of PC Junior. It was when they were being phased out because of lack of memory capacity. But it was fun for us and it also showed us in simplified form how the programs were made.
It didn’t take long for us to realize why they were phased out and we had to upgrade our computer. Now we try to keep up with the upgrades to the programs we use. There are so many programs that we use today between the POS program at the store, the 2 CAD programs that I have learned and the extensive facets to the Photoshope program. No wonder my mind just shuts down every once in awhile! Alot of our friends call this a senior moment but I think it is just overload. My brain is being challenged with so much new information that it’s probably running out of chambers to store all this knowledge. Then what??
Getting back to my original point. Now I am trying to learn about ways to communicate with people who I don’t know and who are , sort of, on a different plane than I am. They text message with ease, which I haven’t tried yet. They use language which I am trying to learn. They take for granted ways of communicating and sharing information that I had never dreamt of before. But I am finding this whole new world exciting and I want to be a part of it.
People I know, know how to use e-mail and maybe buy and sell on ebay and make their travel plans on the internet. They are mostly all retired so that trying to develop a customer base or expanding their personal contacts via the internet is not a priority with them. However, I am trying to reach a broader base for my artwork and to draw more people to our picture framing business. So therefore I need to keep up with the most productive way to attract customers. Old traditional ways of advertising are falling short today.
I also know, as an artist, how isolated creative people can be. Visual artists and writers, have to spend alot of time alone to create. With all that solitary time, some contact with the world is needed in order to continue to be stimulated to create. Actually, because of our store and our framing business, the contact with the public has made my artwork richer because of the exposure to things that I might not have seen otherwise. It broadens my experience which in turn gives me more resources to draw from when I do paint.
I have had a website for a long time but gained no social interaction from it except sales people wanting to sell my work for me. I am hoping this blog will stimulate responses as well as interest in my art. Plus I love to write and I think with all the knowledge I have in art and in picture framing that I have some information to share.
Anyway, now having joined twitter and getting all sorts of up to date news information, access to websites I never would have found and leads to interesting peoples’ blogs. I believe that there is a whole new world buzzing through space that I was totaly unaware of. Going from radio to twitter is like a ride on the tail of a comet!
Nancy