New Media Abe

17 Jan

Abe Lincoln on social media.
I’m currently reading the book “Land of Lincoln.” It has nothing to do with media directly, but it has some great lessons for us who make media for a living.

Abe never missed an opportunity to have his likeness made.
If Lincoln had had a Flickr account he would post his own image all over the place.

Abe traveled constantly and wanted to know as many people as possible.
He would spend months on the road talking with people in person. I know I know. We now can circumvent this whole time wasting task by using online video, chat, email, and phones (excuse me… Skype). But are people that much different than in Lincoln’s day? Don’t we still get more out of a real person face to face connection than our digital transactions?

Abe had a deep sense of history and context.
In simple terms – he was well rounded. Sometime I see us in social media as part of a large bubble. I know a lot of people who don’t even use the internet – let alone social media. I’m talking old and young people. Chris Brogan’s post on programming for the masses concerns me. There are MILLIONS of people who are not literate in this new developing language. How do we communicate with them? What if they never use Twitter? What if what we think is really helping us communicate is actually isolating us from true conversation?