Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Message in a Bottle



(The following essay is from August 2009, and is clearly dated, but it reflects my fascination with social networks at that time. I was not yet much aware of the downsides. Accordingly, it is like a message in bottle from an earlier, more hopeful time. I’ve edited it lightly.)

One of the characteristics of a big family is all the different roles people take toward one another, especially over time. Of course, if you're Dad, you're always Dad, but the relationship with your children evolves as everyone gets older.

My oldest three kids know more -- much more -- about all kinds of stuff than I do. My youngest three kids are familiar with technologies, cultural trends, and music that I’m only just learning about. 

Case in point: There's no way I would know that "SpongeBob, SquarePants" is a brilliantly-written TV show unless I had young children.

Besides all of this, there's a network effect as you add people into your family through marriage and friendships. The bigger the group, the larger the multiples, as family members create different relationships with each other.

This is why social media like Facebook, if you keep at it assiduously, will eventually yield a community of contacts in the thousands. (Note to file: I don't do this.)

Although there is no possible way you could ever get to know, or even meet all of those people you are a degree of separation or two away from, when you add in keyword search, and targeting technologies, you can see why a service such as LinkedIn might well help you find your next job.

This was all swirling around in my head today as my older son helped me prepare for an upcoming conference presentation. I meanwhile, was channeling Julia Child and cooking him an omelette, my prosaic new cooking specialty.

This is a mid-week that features my two middle children, both boys, here with me. One of them is also a youngest child, while the other is also an oldest child, due to the peculiar math of having raised two separate groups of three.

So, at breakfast, my 28-year-old, a neuroscience PhD candidate was walking me through the logic of a fascinating if obscure exercise about how color affects our brain's response time when completing simple tasks, like reading.

Then, we packed up his stuff for his upcoming trip to Burning Man.

Next, the news came in that my other “middle” child, 14 years old, has made his school's varsity soccer team as a freshman, after a grueling eight-day tryout in blazing heat. He also has advanced up to honors physics through testing at the same time.

They are two boys in the middle of the family pack, with two older siblings older and two younger. Despite my obsession with math, I'd just never thought of them as in the middle that way before. You'd think that with 128 “years” of parenting under my belt plus two more “years” to add before next month is out, it would have occurred to me, but there you have it.

Burning Man. Neuroscience. Soccer. Physics. Two boys, one Dad. Just workin' our network...and feeling the benefits.

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