Last week I participated in what for me was the improbable:  an event about Facebook.  It was put on by CRAVE Seattle and the speaker was Hazel Grace Dircksen, the owner of Socialbees, a business specializing in “optimizing Facebook pages and other social media” for businesses. Twenty other women were there, all entrepreneurs, all talking the talk of social media.

Social media:  that’s a new term for me.  Although I was not the only one there still a novice with Facebook and maybe not even the oldest one there, I was keenly aware that I was a different generation.  I was the generation of a different face and a different book.  As one woman said with just a hint of irritation, “Is there a book I can read to learn about this?”

The answer, in truth, was no.  Social media like Facebook and Twitter change too fast for anyone to write a useful book.  You can read blogs, you can create chats, you can immerse yourself and learn by observation. You can purchase on-line consultation.  But you cannot organize the kind of learning that used to be the “how to” of self-development. 

The talk given by Hazel Grace was, in fact, too advanced for me. Words ran past me, a new vocabulary, words just hanging there without context or meaning for me: platform, apps (yes, I know, applications—but what does that mean in Facebook?), tabs.  Do you have fans or friends? (no foes?)  I took notes, listening in the way you listen to something that is not in your native language. 

I was at this session because I am developing a new business and I am confronted with the reality of modern communication.  I am forced to address this question:  do I want to be part of the modern world? If so, I have to learn to use Facebook; I may even have to learn (to?) Twitter (what is the noun?  what is the verb?).

I recently read an article that described how results of a court trial were challenged because a jurist had consulted the Internet to obtain more facts. This, of course, was contrary to the instructions, contrary to the long-held approach of sequestering jurists and denying them access to what used to be the source of all information—newspapers, t.v., and radio. The jurist had defied the instructions because getting information independently (whether from a reliable source or not) was simply part of his way of life.  The Internet is there; the information is there.  Seeking additional information is part of the Internet age. 

After reading the article I thought, “It’s too late to shut this down. The courts will have to find a new way.”  Just as music producers have to accept that downloading music is the norm for a new generation, just as professors have to accept that students will go to the Internet to get information (and to plagiarize), just as families have to accept that children will be texting as well as phoning, so will courts have to find new ways to manage jurors who want to use the Internet.

Which brings me back to me.  Is there some inevitability that I am struggling with?  Am I still resisting, holding on?  What is it that makes me ambivalent about entering this new world of social media?

First, there is the time element.  Already e-mail and web surfing threaten to steal—or at least fragment—my time beyond acceptable limits.  (I am retired, so I cannot complain that I don’t have enough time, but if I weren’t embarrassed to say so, I would say, “I don’t have enough time.”) Adding Facebook or, worse, Twitter, means more time in these forms of communication.  

But beyond the issue of time, there is the issue of my attachment to something else, something old.  A holding on.  Wanting the world to be a way it was (but hasn’t been for a while now…)

When I was teaching some lectures in 2008, I told my students that I had never sent a text message.  I don’t remember the context in the lecture that brought that up, but I do remember that I said it purposefully.  I wanted the students to know (and yes, many looked appropriately horrified or confused), and I remember (a bit shamefully) that I felt hostile.  I was angry about text messages, all those messages that destroy English grammar and spelling.  I refused to participate, and I was registering my annoyance.

That was really silly of course.  It is safe to say that no one cares that I don’t send text messages, and text messages are so much part of modern communication I am only affirming my dinosaur status by refusing to participate.  (I don’t want to pay for them either, but that’s a separate story.)  I cannot save the English language by refusing to text message.

My mother hated technology and dismissed it out of hand.  When she died—just at the millennium—my father went out promptly and bought a computer and a cellphone.  He took to e-mailing like a fish desperate for water, and we had six wonderful years of daily communication before his death in 2006.  Could my mother have enjoyed e-mail had she let herself? She became the example of what not to do:  how depriving yourself of new technology deprives yourself of good things you cannot imagine.

So that brings me back to Facebook and the challenge at hand: to become not just comfortable but also appreciative.  To free myself of my resistance and regret, to go willingly into the future that is now. I might be the oldest one in my Facebook class, but I don’t have to brag about it. Technology will always be a second language for me, but I suspect bilingualism is good for keeping the brain young.