Social Media Top 5: The Present and Future of Disconnecting

I just returned from a vacation in which I was somewhat successful staying offline—or, at least kept myself from being immersed in my personal Web 2.0 multimedia world at my usual ridiculous level.

Returning home, I got to thinking; how might different types of New Media makers disconnect on vacation, assuming they were capable of it? For my back-from-vacation edition of the Social Media Top 5, I took a stab at some guesses, as well as some possible future solutions (some of them admittedly extreme).

1. The Blogger:
• Current Method: Letting the blog lie idle while you vacation, perhaps letting a guest blogger fill in if your blog actually has regular readers
• The Future: “Idea Free” zones, where blog post-type thinking is discouraged, perhaps even punished. Want to relate Disney customer service to Web 2.0 marketing methods? Stop it!
• Choosing which rides to go on remind you of life-altering career changes? Cut it out!
2. The Flickr Fiend:
• Current Method: Self-discipline; waiting until you return home from vacation to post pictures online
• The Future: “Image free” vacation spots where there is absolutely nothing interesting to photograph, and your family is forced to wear drab clothes
3. The Twitterer:
• Current Method: Actually doing things, which tends to keep most of us too busy to tell other people about it—for the most part, anyway
• The Future: EMP resorts, in which focused electro-magnetic pulses are periodically unleashed to knock any Twitter-capable devices offline
4. The Video Seesmic/Qik/Ustream “Artist”
• Current Method: You know something, I can’t figure out anything that has kept people, especially Qik video streaming users, from live-streaming at the drop of a hat
• The Future: Hiring extremely ugly people to follow you around and remain within Webcam view at all times to discourage audiences, the fuel for any video artist
5. The Lifestreamer:
• Current Method: Disengages from social media by not doing anything; i.e., not having anything to stream. In all but the most extreme cases, breathing is allowed
• The Future: “Hypersleep” hibernation as vacation—with complete sensory deprivation and REM sleep (which may be deemed life-streamable) optional

Ok, so I wrote this blog post on the plane home. That doesn’t count towards “disconnecting,” does it?

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, twitter, flickr, vacation,