I Pin Therefore I Am

I can't help it, it's an addiction. An addiction rooted in a very difficult time in my life, some thirty years ago when I first lost my hearing. Faced with a world which was every week and every month and every year getting quieter and more insular, I reached out for a life-belt to cling on to. And I found the new media. Just at the time when it was becoming more and more difficult to communicate with other people by word of mouth, the very first steps were being taken to create communication systems based on technology, systems that depended on the written word rather than the spoken word. E-mail was the Seventh Cavalry riding over the ridge, Prestel was a prophet come to announce a new age; Teletext was a new beginning and when, eventually, the World Wide Web was launched, I was in there - sans ears, sans cares, sans everything - exploring its' every possibility.

Many years later technology and medical skills came together and restored enough "hearing" for me to bump along in most situations, to tentatively move again in auditory circles. But my fascination with, and love for,  those digital crazes that saved my sanity a decade or so earlier has remained. Thus, there is not a digital platform I haven't gladly danced on nor is there a communications bandwagon that I have not chased down the street in order to jump on. I text, I tweet, I blog, I Facebook, I Google+ ..... I communicate and therefore I am. 

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that I have - somewhat late in the day, I admit - come around to Pinterest. I have been experimenting with it for the last few days and I must confess I rather like it. Now I know that some people have concerns about it, about their images been shared by people they do not know and possibly without attribution, but show me a new media where there are not potential problems and I will show you boredom. It's central thread of communication is the image rather than the word, and I am an image kind of person. What is more, it looks good : the layout is pleasing and the adverts are so well concealed I have yet to find them. For those who have concerns about copyright, don't worry, I will only pin my own material or material which is either copyright free and where permission to pin is openly granted.

If anyone wants to pin any of the images on my blogs, please feel free to do so : there should be a little Pin It badge hiding away on the sidebar. If you already use Pinterest, please follow me and I will happily follow you back (again there should be a "Follow Me" badge on the sidebar). No doubt another digital bandwagon will come along soon and I will jump on that as well. For me, that is what makes life pinteresting.