"…[because he doesn't have a computer] there is so much of my life that he misses out on that the rest of my family gets to see…it's very hard for him to visualize what it is I even do in my day-to-day world."
In the above interview from PBS Frontline's Digital Nation series, producer and blogger Daniela Capistrano laments how her father's refusal to live digitally has disconnected him from her increasingly digital life. Her frustration resonates with me as I'm sure it does with so many people who have friends and loved ones still living in the analog.
We got my father a laptop back in '07 (I flew to Miami to set it up for him, seriously) and he's gotten pretty good at the basics like email (although I still have to remind him about email etiquette like thread hijacking and ALL-CAPS). My mother on the other hand, is somewhat of a tech whiz.
Family, the most important business
Capistrano's story reminded me of my own musings around the internet and the family dynamic. There has been a lot of talk lately about how web 2.0 tools allow businesses and governments to more effectively engage employees, customers and constituents. Blogs, wikis and social media tools like twitter and Facebook allow stakeholders to inform the decisions that impact them and collaboratively create knowledge.
Families are using some of these same tools to conduct the enormously important business of family. Web 2.0 tools allow for the active collaboration and decision making, and passive awareness and sharing. In my family for instance, we use a Google group frequently to discuss family matters and share information of common interest, particularly around health, personal finance and politics.
Business conversations are increasingly media rich and take place across many platforms; in my digital household, our threads are rich with links, calendars, maps, images and video as we go about the hard work of family.
As governments and other institutions struggle to regain the public trust in this age of turmoil, web 2.0 tools, and the ethos of openness that has grown up along side them, have become central to transparency efforts. I've seen a similar dynamic play out in my family in terms of what and how we share.
Now more than ever, I'm clued in to many of the challenges my parents and siblings face and involved in plans for facing them. And it's not just because I'm "old enough" to participate in family decision making - new tools make inclusiveness practical and normal.
A few stories from my Family 2.0
Facebook helps me keep up with six of my siblings; they always have some passive awareness of what is going on in my life and I can check up on my little sister's FB suitors and figure out a little about what's on my moody teenage brother's mind, leaving him notes to publicly remind him I love him even if he doesn't feel like talking to me.
This past Friday, my siblings and I organized a birthday surprise for my mother and I got to see the look on her face as she opened the fruit sculpture, from 1500 miles away.
As I write this piece, my big sisterbear is taking the lead in organizing travel for three generations of my family plus significant others to my graduation in June; her strategy doc, shared with the fams via Google Docs, would make her old boss at Deloitte proud.
One of the best laugh's we've ever had together as a family was over an email: A friend of mine emailed my father about interviewing him for her thesis research. My father replied saying, among other things, "The best way to get in touch with me is generally to just Hollaaaaaaaaa! Peace, El-Tehuti".
(My father recently changed his name from "Emory" to "El-Tehuti" which means something like "sage" in Ancient Kemetan. More on this in a future post.)
There is a lot that has and should be said about how digital technologies can tear at the fabric of family life. Yet these same technologies have brought my family together, and not just digitally.