Miscellaneous

The Folger Shakespeare Library  has a book that dates to 1608--the Trevelyon Miscellany. Thomas Trevelyon would have been an amazing Facebook person. He collected information and recorded it and made a scrapbook, if you will, of the news and customs and occurrences of his times. He posted his information in a book for his friends and family to peruse--and no doubt discuss and admire and argue about. There were drawings and writings and decorative items, poetry and prose and an entire compendium of facts and useful information. It survived. And it is studied carefully, and applauded as a window into history and culture. It is the one-man Pinterest of its time, but also the Wikipedia and Facebook and scrapbook...all done over 400 years ago, without a computer.

My own Miscellany came into focus today. It is my birthday, and Facebook was counting all those who sent greetings. Ninety-six at last count. (Who knows? Maybe I can hit 100 before the clock strikes midnight?) These are the friends and relations who read my collection of poetry and prose and events and information, who have some connection to me and my interests. We don't always agree, but we are all invested in the world and in books and plays and movies, in science and humor and politics. We read and we think and we communicate about all sorts of things: our families, our activities, our likes and dislikes, our pet peeves and the things that unaccountably make us happy. This is what we are doing. This is who we are doing it with. Here is a picture of something I saw today. This is who we are, today.

There are folks who don't participate in this round-robin of information. They may be the smart ones. Perhaps we lose something by using the easy avenue of Facebook. Perhaps privacy is a casualty. Perhaps we are innocently offering hackers our lives on a silver platter. I don't really think so. I think that giving people access to the miscellanies of our lives is worth the risk. Perhaps my ninety-six is not only the number of my online friends, but a catalog number for the book that is my life and times, such as they are.

Facebook counts things--how many updates, how many photos, how many messages, how many friends. It counts what it sees--all those electrons speeding around all those circuits that coalesce into words, into pictures, into videos, into messages, relayed from server to server, to laptop, to iPad, to iPhone. From person to person. All the trivia, all the minutiae, the miscellaneous pieces of our lives, posted and read and collated on pages for our friends and relations to see and respond to and share.

Some people see Big Brother; I see my own version of Thomas Trevelyon.