We are looking at the book “How to Live Forever” in our class at the moment, as part of our literacy work on stories with issues and dilemmas. So it was quite amusing to find someone on twitter this morning who was talking about an app for living forever! But talking about e-safety with colleagues on a training day made it all seem very relevant to the jokey conversation that had been going on (latest reply from fellow twitterer was that he would have plenty of time to read the book I’d just recommended for him).
The thing is, we use tools like twitter, blogs, facebook as a normal part of our lives. But some of the images that people are obviously still posting, not to mention the unguarded comments they are making, show that messages about e-safety aren’t always reaching them. It just struck me when watching the “Where’s Klaus” CEOP video again, that “How to Live Forever” isn’t a dream, a story or an app, but a reality. It wasn’t that the e-safety messages were new to me, just that recognition that the title of the book applied to reality. Through the interweb. Whatever we put on is there. Forever. There is no magic involved, just the same dilemma as the character in the story. Do we want to read the book and live forever? To which bits of ourselves are we prepared to give the immortality of the internet?
And if we are afraid to live forever by participating (albeit advisedly), do we rob ourselves of richness in the here and now? I don’t want to live forever, but by sharing ideas and experiences on twitter, blogs, through anything I write, then I know I receive back just as many ideas from other people.
So here’s the question. Do you participate so you live forever or to enrich the “NOW”? I would hazard a guess and say that the largest majority will be trying to enrich the “NOW”, but do we have bits of us living forever that we would rather didn’t?
great post! I love it
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