Its a very strange time for me.  I have been working in technology for so long and consider myself an advanced user and even and enthusiast (but not a SUPER enthusiast)!  I work at Microsoft and have been used to "eating our own dog-food" and even had fun testing some of the newest devices.  In my life, I  been known to be considered a social butterfly and I don't find it insulting. 

I remember when e-mail first came around, it saved me many hours a day waiting by the fax machine for a document that I needed.  I even worked at one of the first national ISPs when the fastest speed was 14.4 and we used to IM via a shell account.  Its amazing to me how fast the times have changed and just how far technology has come. 

I have small kids and we often talk about the "old" days, which I think is funny because I am not that old, but to see the world through the eyes of children is so great... Anyway, we were talking about how the first VCRs to have remote controls, were remotes that had CABLES and had to be plugged in and unrolled to actually work.  I explained to my son that the first mobile phones were large and strong enough to hammer nails.  My son is 7 and he can not even imagine a time before cable TV (at least 10 kids  channels to choose from PLUS all of the On Demand options to choose from.  He often asks me how we were able to learn things if our parents didn't know if we did not have the Internet... he quickly tunes out when I tell him we used books called encyclopedias.  He often ends these conversations with I am glad I live now as he likes electronics (a true male - even this early).   I actually get "cool" points from my kids as they enjoy checking out my web-page to see pictures of himself and his sister.    When I started my SPACE, it was so long ago and I really only used it to update pictures of my kids so the grandparents and family could see them.   I thought I was ahead of the time.. I had my own web page and did not have to code to maintain it.  :-)  

Somehow I was able to manage to stay away from the MySpace craze when it hit.  It was not really hard for me to stay away as I did not have a spare moment in my day to do anything but work or take care of my family.  As I developed more time, I created a page, but mostly so I could view what was going on as my sister and other close friends had pages.  I logged on, checked them out and have barely been back on since then (seriously just once or twice since).  Then I changed teams at MS and my new team and the "older" part of society was using FaceBook, so I created and have been trying to keep up on it.   I truly love seeing what other people are up to and checking out new pictures.  What I have a hard time keeping up with is all of the fun applications, game, quizzes, etc.   Every time, I now go to my page, I am amazed at how many cool things people are discovering and inviting me to participate in.  I am trying to figure it out and really use it to stay connected with friends and family.  At Mix08, I attended some panels that discussed the future of social networks, etc. and am excited about some of the new possibilities they discussed, so hopefully it will get easier for me.  Time to run, but I think I will try to write more often.