The Tech Mask

Technology is great, I really enjoy it and embrace it. One of my few vices is having the latest gadget or gizmo. There has been a ton of buzz over the past few months about all of the social networking sites and technology that has become extremely popular...ala MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and more recently Twitter. And of course there are a variety of ways you can access these social networks from your pc to your phone not to mention all of the different applications that can help you manage your profiles on each of these sites, some even allowing you to update multiple social networks at once. I enjoy all of these though in the last 2 months or so Twitter has become my new favorite passing Facebook. I haven't used MySpace for some time now and I'm still getting use to LinkedIn but I digress.

One of the things I have noticed recently with the combination of advancing technology and the rapid growth of online social networks is the ability they give to individuals to become self-proclaimed "experts". Now, I'm not saying these aren't actually experts, just that I've noticed everyone is an expert of something now. Technology is allowing us to determine our own field of expertise with one of, if not the main credential being the number of followers, friends or connections one has.

If we're not careful we can find ourselves wearing a mask or masks that technology makes possible for us to wear that will eventually fall off because it's not who we are. I'm guilty of this myself as a matter of fact, in my last post even. Technology has allowed me to be a movie critic, or at least wear the mask of one.